Employee Empowerment and Price Penetration
ecent developments in the world of business offer strong examples of employee empowerment culture and penetration pricing.

Cultivating a culture of employee empowerment can increase a company's agility by freeing employees from the constraints of top-down bureaucratic decision making and decreasing the time it takes to identify and resolve customer problems. Electronics retail giant Best Buy's Twelpforce is an example of an employee empowerment concept that involves harnessing the power of online social media to identify and address customer service issues.

Customers often vent their frustrations concerning products and services online via social networking media. Twelpforce is a group of more than 2,500 Best Buy employees who have access to an employee-developed system that monitors social media feeds like Twitter and Facebook and alters the group members to posts that mention Best Buy. Twelpforce members are in positions throughout the company and around the nation. Together, compose a…...

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References

Bernoff, J., & Schadler, T. (2010). Empowered. Harvard Business Review, 88(7/8), 94-101.

Furtwengler, D. (2011, February 7). Penetration pricing: Good strategy or self-inflicted wound? Retrieved from  http://www.retailcustomerexperience.com/blog/5401/Penetration 

-pricing-Good-strategy-or-self-inflicted-wound

Gallagher, D. (2011, March 2). Wall Street analyst breaks down iPad price advantage. Wall Street Journal. Retrieved from  http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20110302-710065.html

Empowering Cases
What guidelines related to empowerment were violated by Ken Hoffman? By Ruth Cummings?

If you were an outside consultant attending the meeting, what advice would you give Ken? What advice would you give Ruth?

Should this decision be made by you alone? Why or why not?

If you answered the question, "Should I involve others?" affirmatively, which alternative in Figure 8.2 should be used in making a decision? Justify your choice.

What are the most important considerations in deciding whom to involve in this task?

If others are to become involved, how much empowerment should they have? What would you do specifically to achieve the appropriate level of empowerment?

Part

What guidelines related to empowerment were violated by Ken Hoffman? By Ruth Cummings?

As discussed in the case, Hoffman and Cummins seems to have both violated several of the informal guidelines that foster empowerment. The first case was on the part of Hoffman as she did not…...

The Importance of Motivation as a Company Strategy The literature abounds with evidence supporting the efficacy of employee motivation as a means of stimulating innovation, productivity, and organizational performance. For example, a survey of over 300 employees in one major organization found that employee empowerment in their respective roles was positively correlated with organizational agility, with empowerment being defined in terms of knowledge access, trust, motivation, and communication. Research on the relationship between employee motivation and organizational outcomes therefore begins with operationalization of the definitions of motivation and empowerment, as well as defining the terms of organizational success. Empowerment and motivation will manifest differently for different people, just as different organizations will define their success or outcome objectives differently depending on overall mission and vision.
Communication as a Component in Employee Motivation
If motivation is defined in terms of empowerment via access to pathways of knowledge and information, then employee motivation starts with…...

The penetration pricing strategy is intended to be temporary, such that once the desired market effect has occurred -- the penetration has been made -- the price is then put to a more "normal" price.
An example of this in recent news is the introduction by Burger King of BK Smooth Roast Coffee. This new blend of coffee was developed to make Burger King more competitive in the fast food breakfast business, where it trails the market leaders badly. The new blend was offered with an introductory price of 25 cents (QSR eb.com, 2013). The objective of this pricing strategy was twofold. The first objective was penetration -- to get people to try the coffee in the hopes of winning over some converts. Ideally, the customer would come in daily during the promotion because this is the cheapest coffee around, and develop a habit.

The other objective is to bring people…...

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Works Cited:

Clow, J. (2012). What small businesses can learn from Google. USA Today. Retrieved March 9, 2013 from  http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/smallbusiness/story/2012-05-27/small-business-can-learn-from-google/55188670/1 

QSR Web. (2013). Burger King celebrates new coffee with 25-cent promotion. QSR Web. Retrieve March 9, 2013 from  http://www.qsrweb.com/article/208731/Burger-King-celebrates-new-coffee-with-25-cent-promotion

Employee Participation
The Person/Environment Dynamics of Employee Empowerment: An Organizational Culture Analysis"

According to this article by Pennie Foster-Fishman and Christopher Keys, participatory management is becoming more common, where innovative service delivery and staff empowerment are becoming increasingly important in management. The article examines a human service agency specifically, entitled SERVE. Among the goals of serve included the objective to strengthen "the voice of frontline staff in agency decision making and policy formation." The administrators believed that this organizational approach would be an effective means of increasing employee morale and organizational effectiveness (Foster-Fishman, 1997).

In this particular instance, the employee empowerment initiative occurred within a public bureaucracy, where typically efforts to empower employees fail due to strict cultural features. Empowerment, defined by this article represents "the process of gaining influence over events and outcomes of importance to an individual or group" (Foster-Fisman, 1997). According to the article, the primary purpose of adopting an…...

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Bibliography

Byrnes, P., Choi, L., Fegan, F., Miller, R. & Petter, J. "Dimensions and Patterns in Employee Empowerment: Assessing What Matters to Street-Level Bureaucrats." Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, Vol. 12, 2002.

Foster-Fishman, P., Keys, Christopher B. "The Person/Environment Dynamics of Employee Empowerment: An Organizational Culture Analysis" American Journal of Community Psychology, Vol. 25, 1997

Nathan, J. "Empowerment as a Workplace Strategy in Small Business." Review of Business, Vol. 15, 1993

Ramos, E.L., & Tseo, George K.Y. "Employee Empowerment: Solution to A Burgeoning Crisis?" Challenge, Vol. 38, 1995

Empowerment
The concept of empowerment is not a new one, but it seems that within the last two decades it has become a buzz word. Thinking about empowerment goes back to people who were denied any type of rights whether that be to decide how they were going to live, work, eat, or make any decision regarding their own lives. It does not matter what era of history is perused there are incidents of leaders empowering people to become better.

Martin Luther was a Catholic monk who decided that the church was conducting religious business the wrong way. He wanted fame, but he also wanted the individual citizens of Germany to be able to see that they were responsible for the relationship they had with God. Of course, Luther had a rough time of it. He was arrested, excommunicated, treated as an outlaw, but he was the guiding spirit behind the beginning…...

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References

Business Dictionary. (2011). Definition of empowerment. Retrieved from  http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/empowerment.html 

Chamberlin, J. (1997). A working definition of empowerment. Psychiatric Rehabilitation Journal, 20(4), 43-46.

Cochran, J. (2008). Empowerment in adolescent obesity: State of the science. Online Journal of Rural Nursing and Health Care, 8(1), 63-73.

Dickson, K.E., & Lorenz, A. (2009). Psychological empowerment and job satisfaction of temporary and part-time nonstandard workers: A preliminary investigation. Journal of Behavioral and Applied Management, 10(2), 166-179.

What management does still exists must maintain an open door policy, so as to help lower level employees transition and communicate concerns but again managers are likely to have a clear idea that this is a behavioral manner of influencing actions. (Tyler, 1997, p. 323)
Though the transition to flat organisation may benefit most organisations, it is still a transitional situation that requires special understanding of employee empowerment as well as interactions. Smaller firms of coarse will find this transition easier while larger firms may need to create quasi-flat systems that better serve multi-factorial production systems and require the system to work together in a streamlines fashion, without one area of production causing unintended problems for another. Employee empowerment is clearly one of the biggest reasons why employees express happiness and comfort within a system and therefore create active retention and motivated work. (Weissberg, 1999, p. 46) a flat organisational…...

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References

Della Rocca, G. (1992). "Voice" and "Exit" in the Middle-Management Labor Market. International Studies of Management & Organization, 22(1), 54.

Dew, J.R. (1997). Empowerment and Democracy in the Workplace: Applying Adult Education Theory and Practice for Cultivating Empowerment. Westport, CT: Quorum Books.

Duke, B.C. (1991). Education and Leadership for the Twenty-First Century: Japan, America, and Britain. New York: Praeger Publishers

Foss, N.J. (2005). Strategy, Economic Organisation, and the Knowledge Economy: The Coordination of Firms and Resources. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.

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.
hen the orld 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…...

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Works Cited:

No author. (2009) Empowerment. World Bank. Retrieved April 2, 2009 from http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/TOPICS/EXTPOVERTY/EXTEMPOWERMENT/0,,contentMDK:20245753~pagePK:210058~piPK:210062~theSitePK:486411,00.html

Sharma, Dr. Manoj K. & Kaur, Gurvinder. (no date). Employee Empowerment: A Conceptual Analysis. Journal of Global Business Issues. Vol 2, Issue 2, pp 7-11.

This type of empowement efes to empowement on an oganizational level. It efes to the concete tansfeence of powe to the employee though policies and diect actions that povide the employee with geate esouces and channels though which to execise thei powe. This may be in the fom of voting ights on key company decisions, o it may mean an open-doo policy fom management.
Thee concepts ae associated with empowement: infomation shaing, autonomy within cetain boundaies, and team accountability (Seibet, Silve, & Randolph, 2004). An empoweed oganization allows the employee to shae thei ideas and to have input into pesonal and team goals. It also means accountability to othe team membes fo pefomance. These thee pinciples epesent an empoweed oganizational stuctue.

Empowement was seen as the answe to authoitative wokplaces that stifles ceativity and that alienated wokes (Wilkinson, 1998). This old style of management ceated wokes who wee advese to thei…...

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references for empowerment practices by the "ideal manager" in China International Journal of Intercultural Relations. 31 (1), pp. 87-110.

Parker, LE., & Price, RH. 1994. Empowered managers and empowered workers: The effects of managerial support and managerial perceived control on workers' sense of control over decision making. Human Relations, 47, pp. 911-922.

Savery, L. & Luks, J. 2001. The relationship between empowerment, job satisfaction, and reported stress levels: some Australian evidence. Leadership & Organizational Development Journal. 22 (3), pp. 97-104.

Seibert, S., Silver, S., & Randolph, W., 2004. Taking Empowerment to the Next Level: A Multiple-Level Model of Empowerment, Performance, and Satisfaction. Academy of Management Journal. 47 (3), p. 332-349.

Spreitzer, GM. 1996. Social structural characteristics of psychological empowerment.

Empowerment
One of the dimensions of empowerment is competence, where empowered employees feel that they can achieve more and are more confident in their abilities. This can be due to an employee's own personality, with people who have this confidence in themselves more likely to be assertive and apply themselves. This kind of attitude or personality also changes how employees respond to challenges. For employees who have a sense of confidence in themselves, they are likely to be willing to work through a challenge when faced with one. In contrast, employees without confidence are more likely to avoid challenges. It is also important to note that this difference in how challenges are faced also alters the future development of the individual. The empowered employee learns and grows through facing the challenge. This includes gaining knowledge and skills as well as gaining in confidence. The end result is that they become more…...

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References

Billsberry, J. The Effective Manager: Perspectives and Illustrations. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2002.

Conger, J.A., & Kanungo, R.N. "The Empowerment Process: Integrating Theory and Practice." Academy of Management Review 13 (1988), pp. 471-482.

Pfeffer, J. Competitive Advantage through People. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School, 1994.

Stewart, T.A. "New Ways to Exercise Power." Fortune 6 (1989), pp. 52-64.

Empowerment Perceptions and Conflict
Modern organizations often grow beyond executive control. As a result, management process often becomes expensive to monitor. This is based on the knowledge that quality managers are scarce. However, there is an option of building internal organization mechanism; for instance, empowerment to substitute the absenteeism of management. This study shows how empowerment is applied to provide consensus in an organization. Parameters prompting an organization to apply empowerment as management supplement are identified. The study also examines the perception of power and its importance in providing solutions in a conflict situation.

Background of Empowerment in an organization

Aamodt (2012) establishes that organizations make sufficient change because managers when done their homework in matters related to employee appraisal. Previous research examined the close relation between the complexities of organization empowerment to the general quality of employee output. Empowerment is based on the knowledge that modern day organizations are often faced with…...

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References

Aamodt, M. (2012). Industrial/Organizational Psychology: An Applied Approach (Google eBook). New York: Cengage Learning.

Chen, M. (2008). National Culture and Employee Perceptions of Teamwork, Management Accessibility, Participation in Decision Making, and Innovativeness in a Multi-national Corporation. New York: ProQuest

Daft, R. (2007). The Leadership Experience. New York: Cengage Learning.

352).
Lastly, Cummings and Worley (2007) surmise that employee involvement can also "improve capabilities of employees thus enabling them to perform better" (p. 353). The authors give the example that when organizations wish to increase their employee participation in decision making, this strategy must be accompanied by skill training in communication and group problem solving (p. 353).

All three of these facets improve employee satisfaction and well-being, due to an improved work environment and a more rewarding job. In a cyclical nature, improved productivity also increases satisfaction, especially when there are greater rewards associated with this increased productivity. Improved employee satisfaction, that's a result of employee involvement strategies and increased productivity, can have a secondary impact on the organization. This high level of employee satisfaction can further positively affect productivity by attracting the best employees and help ensure the retention of these valuable organizational resources (Cummings and Worley, 2007, p. 353).

Conclusion:

In…...

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References

Cummings, T.G., & Worley, C.G. (2007). Organization Development and Change (8th ed.). s.l.: Academic Internet Publ.

Rosso, a. (Oct 2010). "Awakening corporate soul." Collector, 76(3). p. 18-20.

The influence of employee involvement on productivity: A review of research -- June 2000. (22 Jun 2006). Retrieved December 6, 2010, from http://www.hrsdc.gc.ca/eng/cs/sp/hrsd/prc/publications/research/2000-002584/page03.shtml.

Wolf, E. & Zwick, T. (Apr 2008). "Reassessing the productivity impact of employee involvement and financial incentives." Schmalenbach Business Review, 60(2). o. 160-181.

Empowerment
Delegation and Empowerment Approaches Used in Organizations

Delegation is the process that facilitates the management processes and practices within the context of an organization. In the development of an organization, the manager should be able to provide effective communication methods to enhance interaction with the subordinate staffs. Delegation refers to the process of managing and coaching employees who possess the required level of competence to execute the responsibilities at hand. The coaching and management of the employees offers the needed empowerment to the officials thus developing skills to survive on their own. The employees would develop significant skills to tackle and execute obligations and duties in the absence of their managers and supervisors. In the contemporary world, organizations adopt numerous delegation and empowerment approaches to enhance the performance and productivity levels of the business entity. The empowerment and delegation approaches aim at enhancing the level of decision-making, adoption of effective…...

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References

Hardina, D. (2006). An empowering approach to managing social service organizations. New York: Springer.

Daft, R.L. (2010). Organization theory and design. Mason, Ohio: South-Western Cengage

Learning.

Bennis, W.G., & Townsend, R. (2005). Reinventing leadership: Strategies to empower the organization. New York: Harper Collins.

Organization Alignment among Employees Page |
Importance of Organizational Alignment among Employees

Why is it important and how does one build organization alignment among employees?

Organization culture is developed from the set of values, norms and beliefs which is exhibited in the staff behavior and management attitude towards physical and human environment of the organization. Employees are well aware of their role and responsibility in the capacity they are working and they are very much aware of the expectations that management has from them. However, these roles, responsibilities and expectations are also drafted and documented in the policy guidelines of the organization which actually forms the culture of the organization. When these policy documents are widely accepted by the employees then it creates conducive work environment and positive culture that foster motivation and high level of commitment from employees. The organizational culture also contributes in the goal attainment and success of strategic planning…...

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References

Boswell, W.R. And J.W. Boudreau. (2001). "How Leading Companies Create, Measure and Achieve Strategic Results Through 'Line of Sight'." Management Decision 39 (10): 851-

J.B. Bingham and A.J.S. Colvin. (2006). "Aligning Employees Through 'Line of Sight'."

Business Horizons 49: 499-509.

Improving Performance through Empowerment, Teamwork & Communication
The staff of all public sector and private sector companies and other organizations is being compelled to improve and maximize their performances at work to keep up with the commercial pressures that are now building up. This requires that they change their work culture, and for the organization to invest in infrastructure. This has compelled many organizations to invest in new technology, equipment and buildings - which can even be seen in some instances. The complimentary need for investment in people and in the management of their performance has however not received the same amount of attention. Without this relevant and effective staff management, the organizations will not be able to achieve the required commercial success. The public service targets, which have been decided for them, will also not be met and a high opportunity cost will have to be met later.

The most common…...

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Bibliography

Blanchard, Ken; Carlos, John and Randolph, Alan. "Statistics from Three Keys to empowerment" Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 1999.

Nelson, Bob. "1001 Ways to Energize Employees" New York: Workman, 1997.

What's Working, Communication Practice, Mercer Human Resource Consulting, Australia, 2002

Maddux, R.B. "Team Building: An Exercise in Leadership" Crisp Publications Inc., Menlo Park, Calif., 1992.

The Profound Impact of a Strong Service Culture on Corporate Success
A robust service culture, characterized by a relentless focus on customer satisfaction and an unwavering commitment to delivering exceptional service, serves as a cornerstone for a company's overall success and long-term prosperity. Its transformative effects permeate every aspect of an organization, propelling growth, enhancing reputation, fostering employee engagement, and establishing a competitive edge.
Driving Revenue and Customer Loyalty
By prioritizing customer needs and striving to exceed expectations, companies with a strong service culture invariably establish a loyal customer base. Satisfied customers are more likely to make repeat purchases, recommend the company to....

Customer Service: A Comprehensive Understanding

Introduction

Customer service is a crucial aspect of any business operation, encompassing the interactions and support provided to customers throughout their journey with a company. It plays a pivotal role in building strong customer relationships, driving loyalty, and ultimately impacting business success.

Definition

Customer service refers to the assistance, resources, and support provided by organizations to their customers. It includes a wide range of activities aimed at satisfying customer needs, resolving complaints, and fostering positive experiences.

Components of Customer Service

Effective customer service comprises several key components:

Responsiveness: Prompt and efficient handling of customer inquiries and requests.
Resolution: Timely and satisfactory....

1. The impact of transformational leadership on job satisfaction in the workplace
2. Comparing the effects of transformational and transactional leadership styles on employee job satisfaction
3. The relationship between transactional leadership and job satisfaction among different industries
4. Exploring the role of transformational leadership in enhancing job satisfaction for employees
5. The influence of transactional leadership on job satisfaction in different organizational settings
6. Examining the correlation between leadership styles and job satisfaction in a mixed-method study
7. Investigating the effects of transformational and transactional leadership on job satisfaction among remote workers
8. An analysis of the mediating role of job satisfaction in the relationship between....

Transformational and Transactional Leadership Styles and Job Satisfaction

1. The Impact of Transformational Leadership Style on Employee Job Satisfaction: A Comparative Study

This topic investigates the relationship between transformational leadership style and job satisfaction among employees. It examines the effects of transformational leaders' characteristics, such as charisma, inspiration, intellectual stimulation, and individualized consideration, on employee job satisfaction levels. The study compares the outcomes with those of employees under transactional leadership styles to determine the differential impact of each style.

2. The Moderating Role of Organizational Culture in the Relationship between Transactional Leadership and Job Satisfaction

This essay explores how organizational culture moderates the relationship....