Employee Empowerment

Employee Empowerment

Introduction

Employee empowerment has become an important ideology and concept in the line of business and management in the past several years. This concept is a total contrast to what many large organization and management used to follow. Employee empowerment is against the traditional management style that was based upon keeping employees under strict control with the concentration of decision making power at the higher management level. This ideology soon became ineffective and unpopular due to its negative effects on the performance of employee and that of organization in the larger picture and then came the employee empowerment strategy proved to be quite effective in useful in improving employee job satisfaction level and trust in their organization by making them feel important and in control of their job and career (Hinckley).

Discussion

Employee empowerment is the process in which the CEO and leaders of the organization are open to suggestions and accept the decisions of the employees and subordinated by taking their feedback and response into consideration. Lower level employees are the ones who mostly come in direct contact with the customers and can provide the higher management with true picture and latest market trends and condition. Whyte came up with some important research data as to how large organization converted and transformed their regular employees into organization men (Whyte, 1956). He was of the view point the large bureaucratic leadership style and organization were limited to treated employees as an object of production and traded lifelong employment with individuality. According to Gustavsen employees were allowed to only concentrate on small and specialized tasks which affected their productivity and also resulted in physical and psychological issues due to reduced social support (Hauge, 2011, pp. 13). Many other authors were against such bureaucratic design and suggested that employees be provided with more scope of responsibility, freedom and decision making power in their jobs which would help in balancing and meeting both psychological and social needs of the employee along with satisfying the technical aspects and requirements of the job.

It has been suggested by some researcher that when employees are delegated with power to take decision so that have more control and autonomy to take decisions with related to their department or job then it not only results job satisfaction but confusion and ambiguity on the part of the employee with regards to his role and job specification. Eriksen is of the view point that at time increased flexibility and autonomy of power can lead to unequal distribution of power which may be costly for organization (Eriksen, 2001). Stang also suggests that increased flexibility may affect efficiency and effectiveness of functions as they may involved employees personal preference and bias (Stang, 2003). Authors suggest that empowerment generates ambiguity in a sense that it means different things to different people having variety of perception and also dependent upon the context and situation in which it is uses or applied. It may give rise to both objective and subjective behavior on the part of ...