A Project Report On Employee

Empowerment in Organizations

Submitted By:
Name Roll. No.
Abhijeet Bhise 103
Dipak Kambli 121
Ashish Patil 134
Palkesh Ramteke 138
Nihal Shingade 148
CONTENTS:

No. Topics
1. Abstract
2. Introduction
3. Background to the Study
4. Meaning of Empowerment
5. Need of Employee Empowerment
6. Employee’s Empowerment as a Management Strategy
7. Employees' Empowerment Advantages
8. Approaches/ Perspectives/Ways to Empower Employees
9. Brief review of the work already done in the field
10. Note worthy contributions in the field of proposed work
11. Literature Review
12. Objective of the Study
13. Need of the Study
14. Scope for Further Study
15. Hypothesis
16. Research Methodology
17. Expected Outcome of the Study
18. References
1. ABSTRACT:
The recent changes and fluctuations in the economic trends around the globe has
increased the need for better and improved functioning of the organizations to deal
with contingent situations. Thus organizations and their managers tend to change
their mindsets and need to engage themselves in broad based thinking, visualizing
and nurturing accompanied by the best use of the knowledge and creativity of
employee’s .To fulfill this aim the best philosophy is to empower employees thus
enabling them to make decisions about their own work and taking responsibility
for their results.
2. INTRODUCTION:
Empowerment means encouraging the people to make decisions with least
intervention from higher management (Handy, 1993). Employee empowerment is
defined as giving the power to employees to make decisions. It is a form of
freedom in which employee takes decisions to ensure maximum satisfaction to
customers. Empowerment is the initial, fundamental and an extraordinary aspect
for achievement of success and growth for any business and enhances the
productivity. Employees and customer satisfaction is, therefore, effected by
empowerment using it as a tool through which businesses goals could be obtained.
Employees are the assets of an organization (Davidson, 2004) and can make or
break the organization; highly motivated employees give the unexpected output
while an employees with low motivation level can drag the company growth
downwards (Deal, 2005). Lawler & Mohram (1989) defined the employee
involvement as it a proper procedure to compete the capability of worker for
enhancing their commitment and achievement of growth and success of
organization. Handling the employees is the one of the difficult tasks for the
managers. A problem appears when an organization on parallel lines start work on
imparting employees empowerment as well as implementing various techniques to
improve performance. In this phenomenon, effort is to maintain a required level of
performance from employees while having trust on them by giving empowerment
for betterment of the organization. This display of trust through empowerment for
achievement of performance is, therefore, an important factor in service industry.
Lack of commitment on part of employees and frequent changes in duties by
employer without willingness are obstacles to employee empowerment. Spice and
Gilbert (1991) advised the managers to give the authority to workers in making
decisions for maximum utilization of human capital. Dobbs (1993) stated that
empowerment enhances the performance of workers and improves the work
environment of the organizations. Caring, respectful behavior and encouraging the
employees improve the quality and interest of the workers in job. Many managers
have been found unsuccessful in creating empowerment by creating direct
reporting channel otherwise if the employees are empowered with a common
vision, it ensures the movement of all concerned for same cause. Promoting
corporate values within the organization in true sense of implementation is an
effective and practical mode for achievement performance. In context, it is
essential to observe that to which extent employee empowerment leads to job
satisfaction of employees which results in better performance of employees and
organization particularly in service industry of Pakistan. The purpose of this study
is to determine the relationship between employee empowerment and job
satisfaction in services industry of Pakistan and to examine the difference between
job satisfaction level of male and female employees.
3. BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY:
Empowerment has a broad context and it can be viewed through various
dimensions and perspectives. It can be viewed as a set of managerial practices
aimed at increasing an employee’s autonomy and responsibilities thereby enabling
them to discharge their job or tasks more effectively and efficiently. Empowerment
can also be viewed as an individual’s approach to proactive work orientation,
thereby increasing the employee’s performance and efficiency. Employee
empowerment activities like self managed teams, total quality management, and
quality control circles are implemented with the objective of increasing employee
productivity and innovation (Lawler, 1992). Authors and researchers such as
Kanter (1977), Block (1987), Sullivan (1994), Vogt and Murrell (1990) and Menon
(1995) viewed empowerment from the perspective of the leader’s role in
empowering employees. This means that managers adopt the leadership style of
coaching to help employees solve problems and empower them through delegation
and providing latitude for decision making. 2 Foster-Fisherman and Keys (1995),
Thomas and Velthouse (1985) and Conger and Kanungo (1988) looked at
empowerment from the individual perspective. The individual perspective refers to
the ability of individual to influence his own behavior or having “self
empowerment”. Landes (1994), Sims (1986), Rothstein (1995) and Gorden (1995)
see collaboration and teamwork as a form of empowerment while Gilbert (1993),
Westphal, J D (1997) and Ward (1993) found it critical to change the processes of
work within an organisation to achieve employee empowerment. Against these
multi-dimensional perspectives on empowerment, most of the empowerment
literature reviewed concludes that an empowered workforce will lead their
organisation to achieving a competitive advantage. In other words, there is a
positive relationship between empowerment and performance.
4. MEANING OF EMPOWERMENT:
Empowerment in simple terms can be defined as giving authority along with
required resources to employees to use their own initiatives, such that they are able
to make decisions and have the power to implement them. Empowerment does not
in the least means that management is no longer responsible for organizations
performance rather it is the management which can create trust and best
communicate with the employees.
5. NEED OF EMPLOYEE EMPOWERMENT:
With the changing set ups of organizations and the way they work and function in
the same manner the way expectations, methods, beliefs of employees have
undergone a drastic change. Employees now feel that they will be able to perform
in a much better way if they are more informed and free to include their ideas and
ways of doing a task. This is the phase where a need for Employee Empowerment
arises in an organization and it aims to initiate an employee empowerment
program. Initiatives undertaken by an organization lays the basic foundation of
employee empowerment. Empowerment Initiatives are not just feel good practices
but they are and can be more productive practices because they help in problem
solving, invoke creativity in employees, increase the self-efficacy of an employee
and as a consequence leading to higher job commitments, higher involvement and
greater responsibility towards work. These initiatives can be in form of a small step
like information sharing, suing the twenty foot rule, suggestion program or
scheme, coaching employees, building up of informal participative decision-
making programs with an option of receiving feedback, self-managed teams, and
job enrichment. These initiatives can take a bigger shape in the form of setting up
of Quality Circles, Total Quality Management, Profit Sharing or Employee Stock
Option Plans (ESOP’s).
6. EMPLOYEE’S EMPOWERMENT AS A MANAGEMENT
STRATEGY:
The leader or manager, while either leading or managing employees in the
organizations, can use the technique of employee's empowerment. In the affairs of
the organization, manager exercises tremendous amount of power in hiring, firing,
performance appraisals and the like. Powers are available in a subtle way that is to
listen, ask questions and empower employees. A manager, possess the skills to
provide useful suggestions and resolve issues, when an employee comes with a
problem or concern however; he should not be quick to jump to a potential list of
solutions. Instead of providing his thoughts as a manager, rather should ask the
employee for business altering words. When a manager encourages employees to
think upon, they have the opportunity to openly express ideas, dreams and
passions, thus, the management style could delegate opportunity to employees.

7. EMPLOYEES' EMPOWERMENT ADVANTAGES:

Advantages of employees' empowerment include (Magjuka, 1993): increased
employee education and training; employees participation ill creating their own
goals; increased employee contribution; increased respect among employees
secondary to teamwork, increased power equals, lower absenteeism and better
productivity; employees have more satisfaction of work; an increased depth of
competence among employees and less conflict.
8. APPROACHES/ PERSPECTIVES/WAYS TO EMPOWER
EMPLOYEES:
An organization can adopt any of the following approaches to empower their
employees with a view to increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of the
employees and the organization as a whole. The range and the level of
implementation of these initiatives depend on management’s perspective towards
employee empowerment at workplace. These perspectives can be categorized in to
social-structural perspective which states empowerment is where power resides in
individuals at all levels of a system and changes in organizational policies,
practices, and structures can be made so as to increase the involvement of
employees. According to the psychological perspective empowerment refers to a
set of psychological conditions which enhance the personal efficacy of an
employee. Lastly, the Critical and postmodern empowerment theorists contend that
empowerment should be in the form of giving power to others and this cannot be
achieved in absence of the formal power structures of direct worker ownership and
representation because real power still resides at the top of the organization.
Causes/ Reasons behind the failure of Empowerment Initiatives: - One of the main
reasons behind the failure of most of the Empowerment Initiatives is the basic
thought which is a part of culture of most of the organizations the “the boss is
always right”. This mind set of both the employer and employee leads to the
establishment of a weak foundation of the Empowerment Initiative that an
organization wishes to establish or imbibe. The other probable reasons behind the
failure of initiatives in an organization may be the lack of interest on the part of the
management, absence of acceptability on the part of the employees due to factors
like low self -esteem or due to external or internal locus of control (Stephen. P.
Robbins, 2003) Not only the above said but there are and may be various other
factors which lead to the failure of Empowerment Initiatives in an organization.
9. BRIEF REVIEW OF THE WORK ALREADY DONE IN THE
FIELD:
Empowerment has always been expected to be bring along with it effectiveness
and efficiency in an organization. The studies carried out on empowerment have
always defined empowerment as a way which keeps employees more informed and
an environment that gives them freedom to take decisions as related to the tasks in
hand so that they demonstrate more of accountability and develop a spirit of
initiation in the work they perform. Research reveals the fact that the traditional
perspective of employee empowerment was a employer driven approach in which
focuses on providing an empowered climate to the employee by building
relationships, sharing authority, providing feedback and developmental
opportunities and above all trusting employees thereby making them feel
empowered with time. According to a study carried out by Seibert, Silver,
Randolph (2004) in which they studied seven hypotheses the traditional approach
of empowerment has a drawback that it does not empower a high percentage of
employees. Thus, their study came out with a new dimension added to the old
approach which is termed as the power of self efficacy of employees. This
dimension states that the behavior of an employee is influenced by what they see
around them, observe the changing behaviors of other employees and management
and then themselves direct towards a way of thinking that encourages them to
behave in an empowered manner. It has been found that Empowerment Initiatives
like Quality Circles have been successfully implemented in Japan in the early
1960’s and in our country too it has been implemented in Mahindra & Mahindra,
BHEL , Godrej to name a few. Another initiative of empowerment in form ESOP’s
has and is being implemented in Infosys Technologies, one of best IT firms of the
country. Not only the above mentioned examples, but also new and substantial
amount of research has been carried out for better understanding of empowerment
and its initiatives.
10. NOTE WORTHY CONTRIBUTIONS IN THE FIELD OF
PROPOSED WORK:
The present day concept of employee empowerment ore an outcome of research
and contributions made by practitioners and theorists over a period of time.
Different theorists contributed their ideas in their own ways and even defined the
concept of empowerment in varied forms like empowerment has been described as
a venue to enable employees make decisions and also as a personal experience
where individuals take responsibility for their own actions. The credit of laying
down the foundation of empowerment at workplace through various perspectives
goes to contemporary management scholars and practitioners like Conger and
Kanungo, Thomas and Velthouse, Spreitzer, Kanter, Boje & Rosalie, Wendt
(2007) and others to name a few. The authors, Ken Blanchard, John P. Carlos, and
Alan Randolph in their book Empowerment Takes More Than a Minute, brought to
light three key ways to implement and initiate empowerment initiatives to
empower employee’s .These include sharing information with everyone, creating
autonomy through boundaries and replace the old hierarchy with self managed
teams. Findings of research done by practitioners and theorists namely, Aryee and
Chen, Carless, Sparrowe, Kirkman & Rosen, Spreitzer, Kizilos & Nason,(2005)
and others contributed to the study of benefits of employee empowerment in form
of high job satisfaction for both individual and teams, higher levels of
organizational commitment, lesser rates of turnover and less job strain. The recent
study by Cyboran, 2005 offers insight as to how individuals may enable their own
empowerment. It focuses on the role of reflection in sustaining psychological
empowerment, particularly during difficult times. Also, the study carried out by
Seibert, Silver, Randolph provided a broader and a much better way to making
empowerment easier to accept by employees because they change by self
motivation and thus adding pace and longer stability to employee empowerment
initiatives in an organization. Apart, from this another advantage of this study was
that when employees develop a sense of self-efficacy it lessens the cost incurred by
an organization to make its employees accept empowerment initiatives. The note
worthy contributions made by scholars and practitioners has thus laid the basis for
further studies and research on Empowerment and Employee Empowerment.

11. LITERATURE REVIEW:

Empowerment enables the managers to perform and help others working under
them to achieve through successful work systems. This requires that management
should take more responsibility to lead toward destiny with the intention to
develop internal commitment. An individual s personal reasons and motivation are
the factors that make him committed to a particular project, person or program and
create internal commitment. In this regard, internal dedication is participatory and
very closely linked with empowerment (Tony, 1999).

In balanced power structures interpersonal conflict is lowest. Similarly, in

organizations, benefits of high sociability are clear and frequent; however,
sociability rarely helps creativity. This motivates the employees to go further
within the official requirements of their job duties. In other, employees work
harder than required to maintain the impression of their social group for looking
well and flourish (Tony, 1999). In spite of the request of empowerment, many
people do not feel empowered by their managers. In fact, surveys have constantly
exposed that a large ratio of American employees consider their own supervisor as
major source of pressure on the work. Under which circumstances managers are
willing and able to empower employees and how they motivate and empower by
providing support and hold to employees working under them while increasing
current relationships and maintaining their own power remain unbreakable at the
same time (Brown & Lawler, 1992).

Whether managers are functioning with a high or low performing employee is

another likely factor which has an effect on the dynamics of authority and
dissemination of empowerment to employee. In practical, provision of controls
enhances the both the speed and excellence of empowered units and perfection in
awareness of market strain and improved modernism. Companies have been found
capable to decrease their company level operating cost and through closely
controlled inside power processes (Brian et al., 2008). It is the qualitative aspect of
concept empowerment which makes it complex for both managers and individuals
working under them to introduce it within their organization. Due to this
complexity, number of organizations adopt top down management approach and
various empowerment activities (Argyris & Chris, 1998). In this context,
empowerment theory suggests fundamental changes concerning organizational
formation, centralization of power and establishment of organizational processes
(Hofstede, 1991). Furthermore, transfer of power needs both subordinates and
superiors to postpone their deeply fixed values of disproportion and their different
roles. Superiors would need to give up with power, status and freedom (e.g. the
right to make rules and laws) which they have obtained over the years (i.e.
development through priority). On the other hand, subordinates would be
necessary to ignore their strong reliance toward their superiors and do task
separately (Hofstede, 1991). Avoidance of uncertainty further describes the ideal
point of formalization in an organization. The suggestion of empowerment theory
to replace precise control over employees, policies, suggestions and information
with introduction of trust within the organization is not likely to be fulfilled
universally (Goldsmith et al., 1997).

Ripley & Ripley (1992) and Spatz (2000) stated that empowerment can enhance
the responsibilities as well as motivation of employees in their routine work,
improve satisfaction level, quality of services, employees loyalty and productivity
by giving them self respect that worth a lot and ultimately increases the
productivity and quality of products and reduces the employee turnover. The two
awards were given to the software companies; one was Exceeding Customer
Expectations and second was Motivating and Retaining Employees for the reason
that the companies had happy and empowered employees (Best of the best, 1999).
The restaurant industry could get the benefit by giving the empowerment to
employees as his immediate decisions on customer issues enhance the satisfaction
of employees and save the time in the form of waiting decisions form the top
management (Potochny, 1998).
12. OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY:
The purpose or objectives of this study are –

1) To gain insight as to which methods or initiatives an organizations adopt to

empower its employees and its impact on an organization.

2) To know the attitude and perceptions of employees towards empowerment.

3) To bring to light the various causes & reasons of failure of Employee

Empowerment Initiatives and challenges related to the implementation and
functioning of the same.
13. NEED OF THE STUDY:
 The paper highlights the impact of employees’ empowerment in the
organization.
 The research helps the management to understand the employee’s training
provided by the organization.
 The study helps to gain knowledge about the topic of employee’s
empowerment.
 The research paper is good support for improving the performance of
employees.
 It helps to find the job satisfaction level of employees.
14. SCOPE FOR FURTHER STUDY:
 The study can be used as a reference for future research in the same area.
 The study can be used to bring changes in future training provided by
employees in the organization.
 The study can be used by the organization for considering employees
perception.
 The study is helpful for the management in understanding the employee’s
attitude towards the employees’ empowerment.
15. HYPOTHESIS:
The focus is to study the relationship between various independent variables like
the power of self efficacy of an employee, organizational structure, organizational
culture, Vision, Mission and Values with that of a dependent variable like the
acceptability and success of an employee empowerment initiative.

The hypothesis for the study is as under –

1) Whether self-efficacy of an employee is an important factor in success of

Employee Empowerment Initiative.

2) Whether organizational structure is a hurdle in the success of Employee

Empowerment Initiatives.

3) Whether organizational culture is an obstacle in the success of Employee

Empowerment Initiatives.

4) Whether the Vision, Mission & Values of an organization aid better &
successful implementation of an Empowerment Initiative.
16. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY:
Research is the process of systematic and in depth study or search of any particular
topic, subject or area of investigation, backed by collection, compilation,
presentation and Inference of relevant details or data.

The study is based on both primary and secondary data collected from various
research reports, journals and articles.

Convenient Method of Sampling was used.

17. EXPECTED OUTCOME OF THE STUDY:
The present study seeks to bring to light the increased need of empowering
employees in present day competitive environment when an organization has to
meet the demands for lower costs, higher performance and employee satisfaction
to retain its workforce. The study would highlight the view as to how initiating
employee empowerment an organization can earn the trust and commitment of its
employees the minimizing strain on tasks performed. The main focus of the study
will be to highlight as to which and how empowerment initiatives and techniques
are implemented in organizations. Also an attempt is made to bring to light the
reasons and factors due to which employee empowerment programs are
undergoing failure or are facing less acceptability by the employees of
organizations. Apart from the above mentioned the focus is to study the
relationship between independent variables like the power of self efficacy of an
employee, organizational structure, organizational culture, Vision, Mission and
Values with that of a dependent variable like the acceptability and success of an
employee empowerment initiative.
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