The
article defines empowerment as a “tantalizing notion that seems to offer organizations
the promise of more focused, energetic, and creative work
from employees.” (Forrester, 2000) The article addresses how empowerment
programs seem to run out of steam and discusses six ways on how managers have drained
their own empowerment efforts.
Precipitous Power mandates
– “Addresses the fact that even when the decision to change the power balance
is a deliberate one, its implementation may be too fast.” (Forrester, 2000) The article states that power
that is impulsive actually takes power away from everyone involved.
Overreliance on a narrow
psychological concept – The article states that empowerment tactics are
designed to “alter the belief systems of employees about their own power, to
increase feelings of self-efficacy, and to tap into employees' intrinsic
motivation to do their work.” (Forrester, 2000) It also states that psychological
empowerment provides less leverage to organizations as they have a committed
capacity to influence the inner workings of employees.
One size fits all
empowerment – The article states that empowerment tends to fail because it
fails to differentiate amongst employees. Not to differentiate empowerment is
unrealistic and is imperative to the success of an organization
Negligence of the needs of
power sharers – The article lists the following needs of power sharers that
should be taken into consideration. They are; control, achievement and
recognition needs as well as subjective attributions.
Piecemeal approaches – The
article states the importance of managers taking the time to make changes in
their system to enable empowerment to succeed. “Empowerment programs sometimes
founder because they are made up of piecemeal actions that are positive in
themselves but can't succeed without addressing the larger system.” (Forrester,
2000)
Distortion of accountability
– The article states how important accountability is in an organization and how
it can reflect performance and employee outcomes.
The article also addresses
the following suggestions in achieving empowerment and how to make it
successful. They are;
1. Enlarge power
2. Invest in building
employees
3. Knowledge, skills and expertise
4. Commit to the organization
5. Provide access to employees to build new relationships
6. Increase employees capacity to produce results
7. Differentiate amongst employees
8. Support power sharers
9. Build fitting systems
10. Focus on results.
The textbook
defines empowerment as providing freedom for people to do
successfully what they want to do, rather than getting them to do what you want
them to do. As the text states “To empower means to enable; it means to help
people develop a sense of self-confidence; it means to help people overcome
feelings of powerlessness or helplessness; it means to energize people to take
action; it means to mobilize intrinsic motivation to accomplish a task.”
(Whetton 8th Ed) I think one of the important factors the text
discusses is the difference between power and empowerment.
Power is
discussed as the following;
1. External
source
2. Ultimately,
few people have it
3. The
capacity to have others do what you want
4. To
get more implies taking it away from someone else
5. Leads
to competition
Empowerment is
discussed as the following;
1. Internal
source
2. Ultimately,
everyone can have it
3. The
capacity to have others do what they want
4. To
get more does not affect how much others have
5. Leads
to cooperation
The five core
dimensions of empowerment are also discussed and listed as an imperative part
of empowerment. They are listed as follows;
1. Self-efficacy
- A sense of personal competence
2. Self-determination
- A sense of personal choice
3. Personal
consequence - A sense of having impact
4. Meaning-
A sense of value in activity
5. Trust
- A sense of security
The prescription
of empowerment was also addressed as to what can be done to obtain as well as
maintain empowerment in an organization. They are;
1. Vision
and Values
2. Personal
mastery
3. Model
4. Provide
support
5. Emotional
arousal
6. Provide
information
7. Provide
resources
8. Connect
to outcomes
9. Create
confidence
I
believe that both the article and the textbook touch upon a variety of ways to
produce great empowerment results in an organization. I think it is imperative
that empowerment is looked at in a variety of ways and angles to ensure that it
is being successfully implemented and maintained in both team and
organizational environments. I believe that without touching upon many of the
suggestions and issues that the article and text discussed, then empowerment in
an organization is more likely to fail.
It
is inevitable that issues of empowerment in an organization or team will arise
at some point in time, however by having an open mind and reviewing what can be
done to achieve success of empowerment in an organization, I believe that the
chances of failure decrease, as the issues are being paid close attention to,
to ensure the success of the individual, the team as well as the organization.
References
Forrester,
R. (2000). Empowerment: Rejuvenating a potent idea. The Academy of
Management Perspectives, 14(3), 67-80.
Whetton,
D. (n.d.). Developing Management Skills.
(8thed.).
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