Empowerment According to the World

Empowerment

According to the World Bank, empowerment is "the process of increasing capacity of individuals or groups to make choices and transform those choices into desired actions and outcomes" (World Bank, 2009). This implies adding additional power to the individuals or groups, that they did not previously have. While a formal authority can grant specific powers, the term empowerment refers more to the removal of obstacles, which gives greater power for people to take control of their own destiny.

The article Employee Empowerment: A Conceptual Analysis by Sharma and Kaur provides an overview of the development of employee empowerment as an academic and professional management issue. The discuss the antecedents of empowerment -- organizational factors, supervisory style, rewards systems and job design -- pointing out that organizations wishing to empower their employees must do so in systematic fashion, taking the above variables into account. An organization must also be able to assess empowerment levels, based on four dimensions: meaning, competence, self-determination and impact. Lastly, the authors discuss the relationship between empowerment and participatory management, concluding that while the two are related, they cannot be viewed as one and the same. The also briefly discuss the roadblocks to empowerment.

The authors provide a useful framework for discussing the practical elements of employee empowerment. One aspect that they omit is the question of whether or not employee empowerment is best for the company. They come close to this issue when they discuss the relationship between leadership style, job design and other factors in the organizational infrastructure that facilitate empowerment. Yet the issue is framed more with respect to implementation than with respect to validity. Employee empowerment may be in vogue, but what organizations need is not as much lessons on how to empower employees. They need insight as to how to identify those situations where employee empowerment will bring the organization closer to its goals. Any tactical decision must take into consideration its costs and its benefits, and be used only in those instances when the company will outperform as a result. Yes, empowerment must be aligned with strategy, but the concept of empowerment is sufficiently vague that managers may have difficulty knowing when this is the case.

When the World Bank speaks of empowerment, the context is known. It is derived from principles such as democracy and free markets. If people can do as they please then as rational economic actors they will, in aggregate, improve their economic lot. The corporation, however, is a poor analogy for the world or a nation. Corporations have specific goals, and they also have constraints with respect to funding and activities that are not present in broader societies. Management's role in empowerment is much greater than the role of governmental leaders. Management must not only facilitate employee empowerment but they must actively manage the process. This is because unlike politicians, managers face performance evaluation measures that tie to specific outputs. This limits the degree to which employee empowerment is critical to the success of the organization. Which brings us back to the question of congruence with strategy. In corporations, empowerment is not as simple as giving people freedom. Each company must define empowerment in its own way, which even the authors of the paper admit has been the case up until now. They provide a framework from which the issue can be discussed, but ultimately each corporation must find the specific types and amount of employee empowerment that best suits its needs.