Organizational empowerment

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Organizational empowerment (also referred to as employee empowerment) is a multi-dimensional construct encompassing three organizational perspectives: that of the leader, that of the employee, and that of the organization itself (Page & Czuba, 1999; Honold, 1997, p. 210). Empowerment has been variously defined, but at its core is the idea of creating an environment where others are equipped and encouraged to make decisions in autonomous ways and to feel that they are in control of the outcomes for which they have accepted responsibility (Heathfield, 2006; Page & Czuba, 1999; Honold, 1997, p. 203). Empowerment can help organizations tackle the uncertainties of today's changing world by drawing out the creative potential of the people who make up the organization.

It is not merely a symbolic gesture intended to make people feel empowered, but a genuine sharing of power, opening the door for real dissent and thereby, avoiding groupthink and encouraging innovation. Organizations that do not empower others are like a parking lot where all the cars have dead batteries or faulty alternators. The manager must constantly go around with his jumper cables getting others started. Decisions are continuously passed up the hierarchy for resolution. Valuable time is lost and creativity is stifled.

Since empowerment is normally thought of as the giving of power to others, it is natural to begin with the leader's perspective. What does empowerment mean for the CEO or for the team leader? The following section will look at this question.

Contents 1 Leaders 1.1 Influence through context 1.2 Create an atmosphere of inclusion 1.3 Don't take back the power 1.4 Support employee empowerment 1.5 Communicate a clear mandate 1.6 Equip people for success 2 Employees 2.1 Practice open communication 2.2 Know how to work in teams 2.3 Listen to the voice of wisdom 2.4 Tolerate ambiguity 2.5 Encourage themselves 2.6 Accept responsibility 3 Organizational Structure 3.1 Decentralization 3.2 Information Sharing 3.3 Contingent Rewards 3.4 Teams 3.5 Alignment 4 The learning link 5 See Also 6 Works Cited

[edit] Leaders

This section focuses on empowerment from the leader's perspective. A philosophy of empowerment assumes that leaders behave in an empowering manner. The literature describes at least six ways that empowering leaders tend to approach management: they influence through context; create a culture of inclusion; give and don't take back power; provide moral and logistical support; communicate a clear mandate; and equip people for success. Each of these empowering managerial behaviors will now be discussed.

[edit] Influence through context

An effective gardener makes sure that his plants have the necessary water and fertilizer to grow. He knows how to properly administer these ingredients so that they don't end up stunting the growth of the plants. He knows that the force of growth is not in command, but in creating a growth-facilitating context. He trusts the principles of nature to produce the desired results. Empowering leaders have also developed a trust in a higher principle or guiding force that is present in life in general and in their organization in particular. For some leaders, that higher principle may be understood as the providence of God; for others it is a belief in the creative potential of human nature.

Regardless of the source of this belief, it allows the leader to trust the process. This approach to management is in contrast to those leaders who feel that the only way to manage is through their direct influence. Empowering leaders do not understand empowerment as a matter of "giving power" (which, unfortunately, is implied by the dictionary definition). Instead, they see themselves as responsible for creating a context where empowerment is released and nurtured (Honold, 1997, p. 2003). In The Company of the Future, Francis Cairncross says that such leaders "define context and standards at every level of the company and then give people the freedom to act and innovate, developing leadership throughout the organization" (Cited in Daft, 2004, p. 27). Once this context is in place, these leaders believe that it will naturally produce proactive employees whose combined wisdom will give them the competitive edge.

[edit] Create an atmosphere of inclusion

One of the characteristics of this empowerment-nurturing context is inclusion. Empowering leaders invite an atmosphere of inclusion across all levels of the organization by making sure that everyone has a voice and that their voice is heard (Ford, 2006, p. 515). This is in contrast to those leaders who include in the decision-making process only people who are like themselves and exclude those who are different (Rothwell, 2005, p. 182). While the disempowering leader fears dissent, empowering leaders see it as a source of objectivity and innovation. They understand that they cannot become a learning organization unless new ideas are allowed to penetrate the decision-making processes. Such leaders resist the urge to exercise their positional authority to "resolve" tensions created by conflicting ideas. For them, power is not a tool to be used upon others; rather, it is understood as "reciprocal forces within a tension-filled network of relations" (Ford, 2006, p. 500). In reference again to that higher principle, these leaders believe that the process itself will eventually resolve the tension but with a solution far superior to one that could have been declared through the use of positional power.

[edit] Don't take back the power

Leaders may start out with great enthusiasm about the idea of empowerment but then fall back into a controlling mode when faced with the ambiguities inherent in an empowering context (Field, 1997, p. 153). The sense that things are getting out of one's control is uncomfortable and this causes some leaders to tighten up the controls, which then causes employees to cease their proactive approach to problem-solving. It becomes a type of what Argyris and Schön (1996) called a "secondary inhibitory loop" (p. 99-100), a defensive reaction that sets in and prevents learning. Once they have given responsibility, empowering leaders resist the temptation to take it back.

[edit] Support employee empowerment

Above all, employees must feel that they have the support of their superiors to make empowered decisions. The perception of being supported is the opposite of fear. The fear of reprimand or sanctions--because a decision didn't work out--will kill any further efforts to become empowered. Spreitzer (1996) defines support as "endorsement or approval from or legitimacy granted by organizational constituencies" (p. 488). In describing his efforts to empower employees in an otherwise unempowered cultural context, Cesar Guajardo, General Director of Praxair in Mexico, writes:

I immediately gave people the responsibility and authority to do what they needed to improve performance in their areas. I did ask them to share large-scale decisions with me. But other-wise, I gave them the authority to make the decisions on their own. I also tried to get committees of two, three, or five persons to share ideas and get points of view. People needed to learn how to encourage other people to learn. Sometimes, I had to let them learn on their own by making mistakes. And at times, I had to support ideas that were not very good at the beginning, but at the end they worked just fine (Cited in Ashkenas, Ulrich, Jick & Kerr, 2002, p. 32).

The idea of support highlights the difference between delegating and empowering. Delegating simply means assigning a task to someone. Empowering means that, with the responsibility, comes the freedom to choose the means of accomplishing that task. It is a "two-way interactive relationship" (USACE, 2006). It means moving from being a "boss" to becoming a "coach." It does, however, mean that the objective is clearly understood.

[edit] Communicate a clear mandate

Herein lies one of the biggest paradoxes related to empowerment. Because of the emphasis on autonomy and power to make decisions, some may draw the incorrect conclusion that empowerment implies the absence of directive leadership behavior. In fact, the opposite may be true; the leader may have to exercise more directive leadership particularly in casting the vision and clarifying outcome expectations. A lack of clarity about desired outcomes and role expectations is intrinsically disempowering (Spreitzer, 1996, p. 487). It is one of the largest contributors to stress in the workplace. "Being held accountable for specific expectations and measurements is far better than consistently not knowing where you stand" (Evans, 1992, p. 121). When employees are not sure about what they are supposed to be doing or about the limits of their decision-making power, they will hesitate. This is why it is imperative that the leader clearly define the mandate, which includes both the ultimate objective and the limitations or parameters within which the employee is otherwise free to act. As Hersey, Blanchard, and Johnson (1996) put it: "Let the individual or group run with the ball--but within the playing field" (p. 252). The coach/leader makes it clear to the employee: "I want you to accomplish this objective and these are the criteria for knowing when the objective has been accomplished. You are free, however, the find, develop, learn, and employ the means of accomplishing the objective that you feel will best get the job done." Empowerment, therefore, goes hand-in-hand with "responsibility to the mandate" (USACE, 2006).

[edit] Equip people for success

As mentioned above, empowering leaders don't just delegate and disappear. They equip their people so that they have a relatively good chance of success in the decisions they make. This equipping involves training, resources, and information. Far too often, employees are given responsibility for an outcome for which they are not trained or equipped to achieve. Ashkenas, Ulrich, Jick & Kerr (2002) refer to this as "entrapment" (p. 53). Instead of feeling empowered, the employee ends up feeling that he was set up. In addition to skill training, an empowering leader also makes sure that employees have the necessary resources to accomplish the mandate before it is given (Spreitzer, 1996, p. 489). It may involve establishing a special unallocated resource pool from which people can draw to solve unforeseen problems (Spreitzer, 1996, p. 489). Finally, empowering leaders make sure that their people have access to all the information they need to accomplish the job. Kanter (1988) said it best when he wrote that organizations "must make more information more available to more people at more levels through more devices" (p. 5).

Although the reader has likely detected some overlap with other dimensions of empowerment, this section has primarily focused on the concept of empowerment from the perspective of its implications for leadership. Much of the literature on empowerment seems to give the impression that this is the only perspective. The experience of the employee, however, is just as important if not more important. This will be considered in the next section.

[edit] Employees

This section focuses on empowerment from the perspective of the follower. Just as a philosophy of empowerment assumes that leaders behave in certain ways, it also implies that employees will behave in a self-empowering way. In particular, the literature stresses that followers develop skills in and practice: open communication; working in teams; listening to the voice of wisdom; having tolerance with ambiguity; encouraging oneself; and accepting responsibility. These six behaviors are the choice that an employee must make if he or she is to experience empowerment (Honold, 1997, p. 204).

[edit] Practice open communication

Empowerment is similar to psychological liberation: the liberation of the creative human potential. Its opposite is a state of fear that causes people to withhold their ideas and true opinions. To become self-empowered, therefore, individuals must be willing to put their thoughts out on the table, to expose them to scrutiny. They must learn how to own up to their own ideas, assumptions, biases and fears and help others to do the same (Argyris & Schön, 1996, p. 117). Von Krogh, Ichijo, and Nonaka (2000) state that corporate cultures that promote creativity are characterized by "direct interaction and a policy of openness without hiding what one knows, creating space . . . necessary for creativity and spontaneity" (p. 34). The point here, however, is that this direct interaction and openness cannot be coerced. It is a choice that must be made by the empowered.

This kind of open communication is directly linked to organizational learning because it creates a climate where learning can take place. It gives groups what Rosen, Digh, Singer, and Phillips (2000) refer to as "the capacity to learn in real time around the table" (p. 287) as ideas are owned and challenged through honest and fair dialogue. This is not always comfortable but it is necessary for learning to take place at the organizational level.

[edit] Know how to work in teams

The ability and willingness to work as a team is another essential trait of empowered employees (Landes, 1994). It is not just self-empowerment; it is the collective empowerment that comes by learning to work together. Using the language of anatomy, the Bible describes the empowerment experienced through cooperation when it speaks of "the whole body being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, [causing] the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love" (Ephesians 4:16, NASB). Empowerment is not to be mistaken for a form of individual power-grabbing, where the increase in the power of one signifies the decrease in the power of others. Rather, is it a process of discovering and maximizing the gifts of each individual and coordinating them so that the experience of empowerment increases for the entire team.

[edit] Listen to the voice of wisdom

The idea here is that, if employees can no longer depend on superiors for the wisdom to make decisions and must accept the responsibility for making their own decisions, then where can they turn for that wisdom? They must themselves learn to listen to wisdom. This may include learning skills for thinking about the future, recognizing trends and anticipating events or outcomes that may affect the organization (Bell, 2003, p. 70). Daft (2004) makes a distinction between data, information, knowledge, and wisdom, defining wisdom as "the subjection of knowledge to universal spiritual principles and its consequent use in real situations" (p. 297). An empowered employee must move beyond data, information, and even knowledge. He or she must listen to wisdom's voice to make appropriate decisions for which they will accept accountability. This is a much higher level of involvement than the old boss-dependent paradigm that left the employee's mind and heart at the door and treated them like machines. In an empowering organization, employees think and pursue wisdom regarding the success of the organization just as much as does top management. Wisdom is not found in the closed sessions of some "planning committee;" it "shouts in the street, [and] lifts her voice in the square" (Proverbs 1:20, NASB). In other words, it is available through life and its experiences and, for a company, through the interaction of employees with customers, suppliers, and others with whom the employee directly interfaces.

[edit] Tolerate ambiguity

Empowerment requires a willingness to give up the protection and safety of dependency (Field, 1997, p. 153). Employees, however, often resist empowerment because it feels uncomfortably ambiguous. They may be used to having not only outcomes but also means and ways clearly defined for them by others. As mentioned in the previous section, objectives and parameters should be clearly defined by the superior; this will help to alleviate some unnecessary ambiguity. Nevertheless, in an empowering organization, decisions about how to get the job done are left to the employee and this in itself may be more ambiguity than what they are accustomed to. They will not be handed a pre-established "program" in which they simply adhere to the rules and follow procedures.

Empowered employees have to think for themselves and often engage in what Scott and Bruce (1994) refer to as bisociative thinking, the use of intuition and thinking across the boundaries of different departments and disciplines to find solutions to problems related to their mandate. Under the pressure of ambiguity, employees often run to the leader for relief; they want resolution and closure as soon as possible. Leaders who do not understand the dynamics of empowerment, out of misdirected compassion or because it makes them feel more powerful, often succumb to these requests for resolution by telling them what to do. In so doing, they have disempowered the employee and reestablished dependence on themselves. So, a key skill to teach employees is tolerance for ambiguity. As author Mary Gordon puts it, "One of the most important parts of the creative process is to learn to be patient, to learn how to sit in the mess" (Cited in Patrick, 2006, p. 31).

[edit] Encourage themselves

Empowered employees know how to encourage themselves; the source of their confidence is not in others but in their own inner sense of spiritual resilience (Chandler, 2005, pp. 156-157). Handy (1990) refers to people who are skilled at "negative capability, . . . the capacity to live with mistakes and failures without being downhearted or dismayed" (p. 68). Employees who live with constant self-doubt will be unlikely to accept the challenge of empowerment because, for them, more responsibility only means more opportunity for failure which they avoid at all costs because failure threatens their fragile sense of self-worth (Handy, 1990, p. 74). This is where empowerment moves away from management principles and organizational structures and becomes very personal. The only way empowerment can be a reality is for individual employees to develop and maintain an emotional and spiritual health that enables them to accept the higher levels of responsibility inherent in an empowering context.

[edit] Accept responsibility

Above all, empowered employees accept responsibility for outcomes. "Empowerment . . . extends beyond delegation to encompass true ownership and hence the true burden of responsibility" (Jamali, Khoury, & Sahyoun, 2006, p. 339). They recognize that the autonomy side of the empowerment equation must be balanced by responsibility (Keidel, 1995, pp. 17-18). They know that they cannot blame upper management, suppliers, other department heads, or anyone else for the failure of their area of responsibility to produce desired results. They accept responsibility and this enables them to learn from their failures. This also means that empowered employees are willing to have their performance measured and out in the open. They are willing to subject their performance to objective, written, assessments because they see these as opportunities for feedback and improvement.

[edit] Organizational Structure

The previous sections looked at empowerment from the personal point of view: that of the leader and that of the follower. This section looks at empowerment from a structural perspective. Just as a philosophy of empowerment has implications for the people who make up an organization, it also has implications for organizational structures. Specifically, it calls for organizations to be more decentralized, to share more information, to have in place a system of contingent rewards, to be team-based, and to align itself with its goals and values. Such an organization will become an environment adequate for the development of an empowered workforce.

[edit] Decentralization

Individual empowerment cannot occur within a highly centralized system of control because such systems reserve decision-making power for the few who occupy the center, thus inhibiting individual initiative. Organizational learning is also inhibited because people are not motivated to learn when they don't have authority to do anything with what they have learned (Denzau & North, 1993). On the other hand, in a decentralized organization, decision-making power is distributed to the outer limits of the organization, "as close to the action as possible" (Handy, 1994, p. 135). In practical terms, this means giving employees the authority to make real-time decisions in the face of situations that fall outside the normal parameters of standard operating procedures.

[edit] Information Sharing

The possession of knowledge and withholding it from others is a way to maintain a system of domination (Ford, 2006, p. 499). On the other hand, in an empowering organization, processes are in place that ensure a wide-spread sharing of information. Information moves from closely guarded at the top to openly shared throughout the organization (Ashkenas, Ulrich, Jick & Kerr, 2002, p. 45). Ford (2006) suggests that, to be empowered, employees need two kinds of information: (1) information about the organization’s mission and goals; and (2) information about their performance (p. 499). In empowering organizations, information is no longer the property of individuals, but now belongs to the entire group. Daft (2004) explains it this way:

All the operating teams work in concert with each other and have access to the information they need to meet team and process goals. Teams are given information about sales, backlogs, inventory, staffing needs, productivity, costs, quality, and other data, and each team regularly shares information about its part of the build-to-order process with the other teams (p. 112).

Such an organization will be more prone to learn because, as information is more openly shared, the organization will begin to function less on the basis of opinion and bias and more on the basis of facts. Systems must be in place, therefore, that enable a wide spectrum of people access to both general information about the organization and also specific information about the performance of their particular department or team.

[edit] Contingent Rewards

A reward system that is aligned with the purpose of empowerment may be the most difficult aspects of organizational structure to design. From a structural perspective, it has been widely recognized that empowerment and a contingent reward system go hand-in-hand (Honold, 1997, p. 210). A contingent reward system is a system of rewards that distinguishes between employees based on performance. Bossidy and Charan (2002) refer to this as "differentiation" and call it "the mother's milk of building a performance culture" (p. 95). Empowering organizations reward employees who make decisions that contribute to the accomplishment of the organization's purpose and goals. Paige Leavitt, of the American Productivity and Quality Center in Houston, explains how they use rewards to encourage empowerment:

We try to foster an atmosphere that has a lot of respect for people who make a contribution. . . . And we don't get hung up on expecting success every time a person suggests or tries something-otherwise they won't want to try things. . . . If you've come up with a good idea and your supervisor sends you a thank-you note or gives you a pat on the back-that does more than anything that we can do in an employee newsletter or a public venue (Cited in Schweitzer, 2004, p. 36).

Care must be exercised to make sure that what is rewarded truly reflects the goal of organizational learning. A system that automatically punishes failure is likely to inhibit further "explorations" into the realm of empowered decision-making. In fact, the system may reward an employee simply for attempting a new idea, even if it failed.

[edit] Teams

Another structural implication is that empowering organizations accomplish their work through teams (Honold, 1997; Landes, 1994; Scarnati & Scarnati, 2002). When considered from a purely individualistic perspective, empowerment can become a zero-sum proposition where the increase in power by one individual necessitates the loss of power by another. When construed as a team effort, one can more easily visualize how the increase in power is shared by the many and that the increase in power by one means a generalized multiplication in power for the group. From the perspective of the learning organization, learning also becomes a team effort as people learn to "think together" and to "diffuse their knowledge and skills from the levels of individuals to the members of the collective" (Jamali, Khoury, & Sahyoun, 2006, p. 344). The group becomes a body where the development of one member of the body increases the power of the body as a whole. This concept is also found in the Bible, particularly in the writings of the Apostle Paul who visualized "one body" with individuals who are "members one of another" (Romans 12:4-5; 1 Corinthians 12:20). As Paul points out, in a body paradigm, the individual members move outside themselves and become concerned with the success of all other members of the body (1 Corinthians 12:24). In the organizational context, this means that employees become concerned not only with the success of their immediate responsibility, with also with the success of the other members of the team.

[edit] Alignment

Life is full of paradoxes that often have to be balanced to avoid warped and potentially disastrous consequences. This is very true with regard to the topics of empowerment and alignment. Senge (2006) explains:

To empower people in an unaligned organization can be counterproductive. If people do not share a common vision, and do not share common mental models about the business reality within which they operate, empowering people will only increase organizational stress and the burden of management to maintain coherence and direction. . . . An organizational commitment to personal mastery [empowerment] would be naive and foolish if leaders in the organization lacked the capabilities of building shared vision and shared mental models to guide local decision makers (p. 136).

This is an important warning that highlights the delicate balance that must be maintained between autonomy, control, and coordination (Keidel, 1995). The organizational structure must ensure that processes, goals, structure, people, and reward systems are aligned with one another. This effort alone indicates that empowerment is necessarily limited by parameters defined for the organization, the team, and individual employees.

This concludes the discussion of the three dimensions of empowerment: the leader, the employee, and the organization itself. It is the thesis, however, of this article that empowerment is a necessary element of organizational learning. Though some hints have been made throughout the previous sections, it remains to be shown how empowerment contributes to an organization becoming a learning organization.

[edit] The learning link

A clear link exists between empowerment and organizational learning because people learn best when they know that they have power to implement that learning (Denzau & Norht, 1993; USACE, 2006). In addition, only when people have authorization to dissent with the leader do new ideas have an opportunity to penetrate the protective membranes of the organization (Gryskiewicz, 1999, p. 10). Empowerment is, therefore, one of the key elements involved in implementing a culture of learning in an organization.

[edit] See Also

• decision making
• human resource management
• individual development planning
• job satisfaction
• knowledge management
• leadership development
• management
• organizational learning
• organizational psychology
• organizational studies
• performance appraisal
• self-efficacy
• teamwork

[edit] Works Cited

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