Putting the Power Back Into Empowerment: Construct Clarification and the Incorporation of Trust

Organizations that have an empowered workforce contain employees who may claim higher job satisfaction, higher organizational commitment, lower turnover intention, and better job performance, among other desirable outcomes. But to best achieve such attitudes and behaviors, it is critical that a clear conceptualization and operationalization of the empowered state and the empowerment process exist.This dissertation has two objectives. First, a clarified and more accurate definition of the empowered state is presented. Despite the ubiquitousness of empowerment, no clear conceptualization and thus operationalization exist for the construct. Keeping in mind its power roots and its multidimensional nature, the empowered state is defined as a psychological state reflecting autonomy, control, and accountability. By labeling this the empowered state instead of empowerment, the internal state of the employee can be better differentiated from the empowerment process. The second objective of this dissertation, then, is to present and verify such a model of the empowerment process, which includes actors and forces in the employee’s external environment. This model identifies the factors impacting the degree to which an employee experiences an empowered state, outcomes of the empowered state, and other mediating variables. The role of trust between a manager and an employee in the empowerment process—a relationship not yet studied in an empowerment context—is also examined.To test hypotheses concerning the empowered state and the empowerment process, data was gathered from part-time/working graduate students and their managers. A total of 108 manager-employee pairs were collected. Factor analysis, regression analyses, and indirect effects models were used in the data analysis process. Results partially support the proposed clarified definition of the empowered state. The suggested antecedents of access to information and resources and core self-evaluation show significant relationships with the empowered state. Mixed results emerge for competence, meaningfulness, and goal internalization being mediators of the relationship between antecedents and the empowered state. Both an employee’s trust judgments about their manager and a manager’s trust judgments about their employee are found to play a role in the empowerment process. Finally, a number of outcome variables are supported in the model. After findings are discussed, strengths and weaknesses of the study are offered, implications are proposed, and future research needs are identified.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctor of Philosophy

Level thesis:degree_level

doctoral

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Labor and Human Resources

Grantor dc:publisher

The Ohio State University

Year dc:date

2013

Author dc:creator

• Polin, Beth Marie

Contributors dc:contributor

• Klein, Howard

• Management
• Organizational Behavior
• employee empowerment
• participative management
• trust

Statement dc:rights

• unrestricted
• This thesis or dissertation is protected by copyright: all rights reserved. It may not be copied or redistributed beyond the terms of applicable copyright laws.

Language dc:language

English

Repository record dc:identifier

http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1364903277

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:etd.ohiolink.edu:osu1364903277