Empowerment is simply gaining the power to make your voice heard, discuss.

University Degree Business and Administrative studies

“Empowering people do not mean disempowering managers. People want to be managed. The bedrock on which empowerment rest is ‘information’; managers must manage with incomplete information, but opening up listening channels provides managers and their organisations with more valid information about what change is possible” (Foy, 1994)

Introduction

The term “empowerment” is generally used to refer to a form of employee involvement initiative, which was widespread from the 1980s and focused on task-based involvement and attitudinal change. It is employers who decide whether and how to empower employees. While there is a wide range of programmes and initiatives which are titled empowerment and they vary as to the extent of power which employees actually exercise, most are purposefully designed not to give workers a significant role in decision making but rather to secure an enhanced employee contribution to the organisation (Wilkinson, 1998).

Empowerment is simply gaining the power to make your voice heard, to contribute to plans and decisions that affect you, to use your expertise at work to improve your performance and with it the performance of your whole organisation (Foy, 1994)

Most firms are leaning towards a team concept. One way to enforce teams is by empowering employees. Many organisations striving to edge their competition are turning to the empowered employee teams’ initiative. Most businesses want to achieve total customer satisfaction by anticipating and solving a problem before it occurs. Thus a new kind of team has emerged with the goal of insuring customer satisfaction from the start.

Empowered teams are built with empowered people whom have the authority and autonomy to make significant changes within the organisation. Instead of one individual making decision, the team makes decisions collectively with the middle manager position eliminated or acting as the coach. The strength of the team depends on proper training, timing and communication.

Before a team is created, the project to be completed must be defined, identify how much of empowerment is needed, and recruit the best people to work on the problem. Within every team, a cross-functioning method must be used for the team to be successful. If one of the team members is hard to get along with, they still can be beneficial to the team. Everyone’s input is important; the output of the team is greater than any individual’s output. A strong facilitator is also needed, who will guide rather than lead. Usually middle management, this person must recognise and understand each member’s participation, as well as coordinate the reporting progress. In order for team to be successful, senior management must be committed to recognise the team should be put in charge. This is done only when senior management defines a specific goal for the team to strive for. Too much management can kill a team, as the team might spend more time on reporting the progress than the task that needs to be completed. Middle management is the biggest obstacle for teams. To be successful, middle management must surrender its power and let the team empower themselves. Setting time limits are also important to the team success. Training is also important for team to succeed. Implementing a team takes time and a lot of effort, but the benefits are immeasurable (Hellinghausen, Myers 1998: p21-3)

Empowerment in context

In the 1920s the idea of F.W. Taylor, the father of scientific management, were influenced in getting management to break jobs down into small tasks. Under this regime, workers had little discretion with conception separate from execution, and brainpower was to be centred with management. The system was based on workers compliance. While this system was successful in term of boosting productivity, there were concerns over the alienation of workers reflected in high labour turnover, absenteeism and conflict. The work of Elton mayo and the Human Relations School criticised Taylorism and suggested involving workers had strong business as well as moral benefits. Workers could be self-motivated and carryout good work without close supervision (Rose, 1978)

With many problems apparent with traditional forms of work organisation there has been continuing interest in getting workers more involved. In the 1960s, job enrichment was established as an alternative work paradigm, the aim being to provide meaningful work for employees with some degree of control and feedback on performance (Buchanan, 1979). In short intrinsic motivation was seen as critical to job satisfaction and jobs were to be enriched by reintegrating maintenance tasks and providing some decision-making opportunities. In the 1970s there was greater interest in industrial democracy, which emphasised workers’ rights to participate. In the 1980s new forms of participation were developed less concerned with the concept of joint negotiation and with much greater emphasis on employee involvement. The key point about these schemes is that they did not challenge management prerogative (Ackers et al., 1992; Marchington et al., 1992).

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It was the late 1980s, which saw empowerment emerge in its modern form. “Productivity through people”, autonomy and entrepreneurship” summed up the new philosophy which when combined with “the customer is king” provided the context for current empowerment ideas. The message was that successful firms focused on managing culture. The implicit in this analysis was the view that managers could unleash the talents of individuals by dismantling organisational bureaucracy. Managers were exhorted to trust and involve employees. By the late 1980s business thinking had become attracted by the notion of new modes of managing. It was argued that markets were now more competitive, partly owing to the globalisation of competition and liberalisation by governments, and customers were becoming more demanding in terms of choice, quality and service. As a result, the emphasis changed from utilising economies of scale to more flexible, innovative and responsive firms. This shift was referred to as post-fordism, flexible specialisation and lean production.

In the new approach employers were urged to move away from an approach based on compliance, hierarchical authority and limited employee discretion to one where there was greater emphasis on high trust relations, teamworking and empowerment, with calls for employee commitment and utilisation of workforce expertise (Hyman and Mason, 1995). Furthermore, sectoral and labour market changes shifted the balance of power to employers so as to facilitate the introduction of empowerment.

There is also a profoundly negative force, which has driven the empowerment initiatives. In the 1980s and 1990s rationalisation and downsizing were very much the order of the day. In this context, empowerment became a business necessity as the destaffed and delayered organisation could no longer function as before. In this set of circumstances, empowerment was inevitable as tasks had to be allocated to the survivors in the new organisation. Thus talk of enrichment and job satisfaction were very much secondary to simply getting the job done.

Although empowerment reflects recent developments, the basis and ideas underlying it go much deeper. Empowerment can be seen as a rejection of the traditional classical model of management associated with Taylor and Ford where standardised products were made through economies of scale and the division of labour, and employees carried out fragmented and repetitive tasks. Economic man was seen as accepting a trade-off of high wages (extrinsic motivation) for poor quality of working life (Wilkinson, 1998, p44)

Two broad sets of arguments were used to justify the utilisation of empowerment. Firstly, is democratic humanism, which resulted because of the excesses of scientific management and problems of alienation. This view of human nature is seen in the work of McGregor and his theory of X and Y constructs. While theory X assumes employees dislike work and shirk responsibility and are motivated purely by financial gains. Theory Y takes amore positive view as it assumes workers would prefer to exercise self-control and contribute to the firm’s so as to meet their needs for self-actualisation. Participation will satisfy human growth needs of self-actualisation and fulfilment and through this mechanism increase motivation and performance (Wilkinson, 1998).

Second, there is an economic case for empowerment, which is entirely pragmatic. It is assumed first that workers have the opportunity to contribute to organisation success and since they are closer to work situations, they are able to suggest improvement which management are unable to by virtue of their position in the hierarchy. Empowerment would increase job satisfaction and reduce turnover, as workers would be committed to organisational goals. The move to customised products with flexible specialisation (Piore and Sabel, 1983) and flatter and leaner structures was seen as the new route to competitive advantage and this meant increasing focus on labour as a resource not just a cost. Rather than trying to control people, they should be given discretion to provide better service and achieve higher standard of work. The argument emphasised the need for faster decisions in a changing marketplace with employees closest to the customer/product best placed to make decisions concerning related issues (Wilkinson, 1998).

Classifying empowerment

Empowerment is associated with redistribution of power, but in practice empowerment is usually seen as a form of employee involvement, designed by management and intended to generate commitment and enhance workers contributions. With employee involvement, the onus is on employers to give employees the opportunity to be involved. It is individualist rather than collectivist in its orientation, i.e. empowerment is based on individual workers or teams but not on larger groups such as trade unions. It encompasses direct involvement in work practices rather than indirect (Wilkinson, 1998). Financial participation and representative participation were not part of the agenda, rendering it distinct from other forms of employee involvement, employee participation and industrial democracy. Thus a distinction could be made between empowerment initiatives as defined above and initiatives which may empower (the latter including industrial democracy) (Wilkinson, 1998).

There is a need to question who is empowering whom and why, as well as examining to whom do the benefits (if any) belong? No doubt the empowerment movement appropriates language from wider political movements – feminism, and the ecology movement where empowerment is seen as a positive force, but a key difference is that these movements are rooted in the oppressed, i.e. helping people to help themselves, whereas the empowerment movement is driven by those in power, i.e. helping managers to manage the organisation (Hennestad, 1998).

Empowerment emphasises more direct business considerations, such as quality, flexibility and productivity. It is management who empowers employees and the initiative have tended to cover direct workforce involvement over a relatively number of issues usually connected with the production process, with the rationale that highly committed and empowered worker were more likely to engage in a beyond contract effort. There has tended to be little union negotiation, with design and planning excluding union involvement. However, what the quantitative growth of empowerment initiative means for empowerment in practice is another issue. There is a tendency in the existing literature to lump together all the various forms of empowerment (Lashley, 1997). No categorisation scheme for empowerment is entirely satisfactory as the boundaries between different types are not clear and much depends on the definitions adopted. However, sharing a common assumption that employees and employers’ interests are inextricably connected unites them. Taking all these into account, five main types are identified.

Information sharing:

Communication is the bedrock underpinning any organisational change. Good communication does not mean that all information is in public domain. Management needs to increase downward communication of organisational goals and the business position of the organisation, as this will enable employees to be more understanding of the reasons for business decisions and as a result more committed to the organisation’s actions. Communication is direct to the workforce rather than being mediated by trade unions. Thus, critics have argued that such scheme incorporate workers and /or by-pass trade unions and are designed not to provide better information to empower employees but convince them of the logic of management action and hence reduce the scope for genuine empowerment. In short, it may be a form of pseudo-participation (Pateman, 1970) with a move away from “you will do this” to “this is why you will do this” (Wilkinson et al., 1993, p.28). It is also important for employees to be allowed to express their views and grievances openly through a form of upward communication, rather than being able to raise only task-related problems.

Upward problem solving:

There are various dimensions to this form of empowerment. Within an existing job, this may mean informing management of problems and letting them deal with it. Outside the job basic work process itself is suggestion involvement (Bowen and Lawler, 1992), where employees make suggestions but management decide whether to act on these, or more significant where workers have some autonomy through quality teams, addressing problems and in some cases implementing improvements themselves. This reflects Morton’s (1994) idea that workers have two jobs: one is to carry out designated tasks and the other is to search for improvements

Task autonomy:

This may mean creating semi-autonomous work groups now commonly referred to as teamworking. Such teams can have autonomy, concerning task allocation and scheduling, and can also be responsible for setting improvement targets (Wall and Martin, 1987). Developing a cell-base team structure helps communication, acceptance of change, and through peer pressure reduces the need for tight supervision and other forms of external control. This then facilitates delayering. Such groups possess skill discretion (solving problems with the knowledge of the group) and means discretion (choice in organising the means and tools of work) (Cooper, 1973), but are still working within a structure determined by senior management and remain focused on operational rather than strategic issues.

Attitudinal shaping:

This views empowerment as a psychological process and is often seen in the service industry (Jones et al., 1997). There’s often no change in work structure but workers are educated to feel empowered. Internalisation of the new values is seen as the key to new behaviour. There are researches that suggest that changing attitudes through education and programmatic change is to misunderstand the process of change. It is changed behaviour that leads to changed attitudes rather than the reverse. What matters is how management organise work so as to ensure new responsibilities, relationships and roles, which in turn forces changed behaviour (Beer et al., 1990)

Self-management:

This is rare in the real sense, as groups are constrained by working within certain limits set by management. Ideally, self-management should involve divisions between managers and workers being eroded and decision, rules and executive authority no longer set by the few for the many (Semler, 1989). Others have referred to high involvement (Bowen and Lawler, 1992) where business information is shared and workers are allowed participation in business decisions.

Recommendation and Conclusion

Any successful approach to enhancing empowerment within an organisation has to tackle a number of strands simultaneously-changing attitudes and behaviours at all levels of the organisation, providing people with the training and information they need to be taken on more responsibility, and removing the organisation barriers to empowerment. These barriers are for the most part the weighty bureaucracy and slow decision making characteristics of traditional hierarchical organisations. Removing these barriers is a critical part of empowerment. Most companies, however, attempt to implement an empowerment strategy with their existing structure largely in place or only partially adapted. If a company’s strategy is to empower its people, then it must develop the structure that will best deliver it.

Management writer Tom Peters argues that the only way to make the whole change process is transforming every aspect of the organisation. Ideally, an empowerment initiative would involve dismantling and rebuilding the structure from scratch. In reality, of course, structures are not easily taken apart and rebuilt, and most organisation find they have no choice but to alter their strategy and structure simultaneously. According to consultant Wally Cork, hierarchy is not completely incompatible with empowerment. The best shape for empowerment is whatever allows and encourages people to talk responsibility. Generally, the empowering organisation is thought of as being flat, broken into small semi-independent units tied to the centre by a small number of control and support systems. Communication systems are horizontal rather than vertical and command paths are run so that empowered teams are answerable to their internal customers rather than to their boss (Foy, 1994).

A critical thing to take into account in restructuring or creating an empowered organisation is that of purpose. What exactly are we trying to accomplish at organisation, team and individual level? How do these purposes fit together and interact? In bureaucratic organisations, there is frequently clarity of role but little sense of team or company purpose. In empowered companies, people can readily assume someone else’s role and are guided in doing so by their understanding of the larger picture.

The right shape for empowerment must of course take into account the needs of customers. A traditional organisational chart usually appears as a pyramid, with executives at the top and customers at the bottom. Empowered and customer responsive organisation have attempted to dispense with this structure, forming instead organisation based on the needs of customers. The feel of an empowered workplace is noticeably different from that of a traditional organisation. The feeling of being excited in one’s work is very real. There is an open exchange of ideas and a good dose of constructive conflict.

A critical trap to avoid in any empowerment initiative is confusing restructuring and empowerment. Restructuring alone will not empower an organisation. It will only help make empowerment possible by removing some of the barriers to it. To create an empowered organisation, it is also necessary to change attitudes and behaviours, and to provide people with the skills they need to function in the new structure. Structures can only be effective if people working in them have the skills. In a fluid, flat, empowered structure, individuals will be called upon to use skills such as influencing, problem solving, and teamworking.

In conclusion, while there has developed a variety of forms of empowerment that share a common basis in being managerially driven and hence within an agenda that allows for largely task-based empowerment, there is a need to recognise that empowerment has different forms and should be analysed in the context of broader organisational practice. The importance of these initiatives depends on how they are translated within the real terrain of the workplace. Empowerment may not in practice dilute overall management control: rather it can reconstitute the nature of such control. This does not mean that empowerment does not benefit employees. Nor while these benefits may be limited should they be dismissed as irrelevant. A pragmatic approach needs to be taken. Some remediation of problems in managing employment relation is certainly better than none. There should be a move to examining the conditions under which empowerment is most effective and how workers commitment can be increased.

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