Empowerment

Conceptual Overview

Empowerment is normally associated with a distribution of power to those in subordinate positions. A number of perspectives on empowerment are evident in the literature and range from psychological empowerment, which emphasizes feelings of self-determination and competence, to more structural forms, which focus on the autonomy or influence afforded by the environment within which people work.

While empowerment may be a new label, the underlying ideas are long-standing. One can identify two sets of arguments being used to justify the utilization of empowerment. The first is democratic humanism, which is usually seen as a response to the excesses of scientific management. The sociotechnical systems school stressed the need to design technical and social components alongside each other to optimize the two. Their influential study of coal mining in Britain showed how work could be redesigned within the existing technical basis so as to retain traditional features such as skill variety and a degree of autonomy. In the 1970s, the Quality of Working Life (QWL) movement developed these ideas and put them into practice, most famously in the Swedish car plants such as Volvo at Kalmar, Sweden. More recently, it has been argued that developments in the broader political and social environment, including more educated workers, have led to a higher level of expectation concerning quality of working life, and the notion of citizenship is important here. There is also an economic case for empowerment. It is assumed that workers have the opportunity to contribute to organizational success, and as they are closer to the work situation they may be able to suggest improvements that management would be unable to by virtue of their position in the hierarchy.

There are a number of ways in which empowerment could be seen as contributing to effectiveness. First, empowerment could enable workers to work harder. Second, where empowerment involves direct staff taking on additional responsibilities that others would otherwise have to perform (e.g., record keeping, inspection, task allocation), costs for indirect staff are reduced. Finally, the most important potential benefit of empowerment results from its ability to improve employees' competence, thus making them more effective workers.

Critical Commentary and Future Directions

There has been little detailed discussion of the issues likely to arise when implementing empowerment or the conditions that are necessary for such an approach to be successful. It is assumed that employees will simply welcome empowerment and regard it as beneficial to them. The literature also takes a universalistic approach, regarding empowerment as appropriate to all organizations in all circumstances. However, key contingencies include production uncertainty, product market competition, and labor–management relations. In addition, the literature underplays the conflict that exists within organizations and ignores the context within which empowerment takes place.

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