Abstract

Empowerment is considered a key driver of organization growth. Companies are realizing that in today’sknowledge economy, high levels of supervision and direction actually hamper the full utilization of the employees’potential to contribute towards the overall organization’s objectives.

Data was gathered from 243 employees to understand what really counts as empowerment and what impact it hason their effectiveness at work, their levels of innovation, leadership skills, commitment to the organization andtheir ability to manage stressful situations at the workplace.

The research shows that except stress management, a highly empowered workplace has a strong positivecorrelation to all the above mentioned factors- at least as far as employee perceptions are concerned. The moreinteresting fact emanates when one tries to see if the personality of the employees also has any impact in all of this.

The results clearly show that employees with higher levels of core self evaluation, self-efficacy, risk takingabilities, pro-activeness and an internal locus of control will do best only when provided with a work culture thatallows for their empowerment. In fact, wider the gap between the employees personality type and the workenvironment in terms of empowerment, the poorer will be the outcome on all these parameters-effectiveness,innovation, leadership skills, commitment and stress management. Interestingly, the reverse isn’t true. Providing amore empowered environment than what employees are thought to be able to handle (in case of employees withlower levels of self efficacy, etc.) does not lead to any similar negative consequences.

 

 

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