The Influence of Employee Empowerment on Employee Job Satisfaction in Five-Star Hotels in Jordan

This paper examines the influence of empowerment on job satisfaction in five-star hotels in Jordan. The influence of empowerment on job satisfaction remains a relatively unexplored area. A 52-item questionnaire, measuring empowerment and job satisfaction, was distributed to 332 employees in 12 five-star hotels in Jordan with a 56% response rate. Principal components analysis determined the factor structure and regression analysis determined the influence of empowerment on job satisfaction. The results revealed both structural and psychological empowerment have significant individual influences on job satisfaction, but more significant when structural and psychological empowerment are combined. Most of previous studies were conducted in western economies and little in the Middle East generally and Jordan in particular. This research contributes to the literature by including both dimensions of empowerment where previous scholars used only one.


Introduction
Responding to rapid changes in the business environment, competitive strategies and customer demands (Cho et al., 2006), human resource departments have begun to improve the performance of their organisations using empowerment as a tool for handling these rapidly changing and complex situations, with the purpose of establishing a satisfactory environment that can respond to customer demands, improve the quality of service (Ginnodo, 1997), enhance operations and maximize profits (Lashley, 1995(Lashley, , 1999;;Meihem, 2004;Ueno, 2008;Biron and Bamberger, 2010).Empowering employees is an approach to better overall organisational strategy harmonizing performance of employees and their job satisfaction.Employees feel that they can add valuable contributions to their organisations (i.e.participate in decision-making, provide new ideas, and present better ways of doing work), and those employees are more motivated and more productive in the work (Kemp and Dwyer, 2001).Research suggests that empowerment can enhance job satisfaction (Salazar et al., 2006), particularly in the hospitality industry (Hechanova et al., 2006;Dickson and Lorenz, 2009;Patah et al., 2009;Gazzoli et al., 2010;Pelit et al., 2011) and thus a way to improve workplace environments, reduce employee turnover, and help organisations function effectively (Erstad, 1997).
Empowerment has been studied very well in the previous research, but the role that empowerment plays in particular contexts is still under-researched.How empowerment influences job satisfaction remains a relatively unexplored research area.There is therefore a need to examine, from the employees" perspective, the levels of empowerment that are evident in the hotel industry and the influence on job satisfaction.This study was conducted in five-star hotels in Jordan.Many previous studies on empowerment and job satisfaction have been conducted in the context of western economies and very little research has been done in the Middle East in general and Jordan in particular.However, there is evidence to suggest that different geographic or industrial contexts, cultural values, as well as demographic factors can change the nature of relationship between empowerment and job satisfaction (e.g.Fock et al., 2011;Dimitriades, 2005;Boudrias et al., 2004;Hui et al., 2004;Sigler and Pearson, 2000).

Empowerment
Empowerment can be defined in different ways.It defined in a general definition as a collection of practices that consists of information sharing, employee autonomy, and delegation of authority (Randolph, 1995(Randolph, , 2000;;Blanchard et al., 1999).Empowerment is seen by other scholars (e.g, Conger and Kanungo, 1988;Thomas and Velthouse, 1990;Zimmerman, 1990) as intrinsic task motivation, or as the process of decentralizing decision-making in an organisation (Brymer, 1991).However, most scholars agree that the key element of empowerment involves giving employee freehand on certain activities with the full responsibilities that come with it (Sashkin, 1984;Conger and Kanungo, 1988;Schlessinger and Heskett, 1991;Bowen and Lawler, 1992).Thus, empowerment was focus on empowering management practices (Mainiero, 1986;Bowen and Lawler, 1992) as a set of procedures and that involves empowering workers (Conger and Kanungo, 1988), and that requires eliminating the levels of hierarchy to get less direct supervision (Randolph, 1995).
Numerous studies have revealed that empowerment was applied in service organisations in different forms (e.g.Conger and Kanungo, 1988;Thomas and Velthouse, 1990;Spreitzer, 1992Spreitzer, , 1995;;Zimmerman, 1995).Scholars realised the need to distinguish between employees" feelings or perceptions of empowerment and management practices designed to empower employees (Thomas and Velthouse, 1990).Thus, the literature has confirmed two distinct dimensions of empowerment, namely: structural/relational empowerment and psychological/motivational empowerment (Eylon and Bamberger, 2000;Greasley et al., 2008).

Structural Empowerment
Structural empowerment can be defined as a management technique which involves the sharing and delegation of authority between managers and their employees (Kanter, 1983;Conger and Kanungo, 1988), and therefore employees and managers solving problems and taking decisions (Ginnodo, 1997).It is also defined as an organisational practice and structure that devolves power through information, knowledge, resources, skills development, support and responsibility (Eylon and Bamberger, 2000).Due to structural empowerment is seen differently by scholars in the literature, this study defines structural empowerment as "the extent to which employees believe that they have been given the autonomy and authority to act independently deriving from aspects such as training, reward systems and management style".Many scholars argued that structural empowerment consists of several dimensions rather than one dimension, namely: employees discretion (Bowen and Lawler, 1992;Rafiq and Ahmed, 1998), information sharing (i.e.confidence in the staff) autonomy, trust, rewards, responsibility, accountability, knowledge and resources (Bowen and Lawler, 1992;Rafiq and Ahmed, 1998;Eylon and Au, 1999;Eylon and Bamberger, 2000;Randolph and Sashkin, 2002;Seibert et al, 2004).
The application of empowerment in the service industry provides employees with different experiences and benefits (Lashley, 2001) that include fostering employees feelings of self-efficacy in highly confidence ways (Conger and Kanungo, 1988;Conger, 1989), providing employees with the necessary discretion and autonomy to produce successful service in general and to achieve customer satisfaction in particular (Bowen and Lawler, 1992;Ford and Fottler, 1995;Lashley, 1995) and this subsequently increases the success of organisation as a main concern by employees (Spreitzer, 1995).Thus, empowered employees in the hospitality industry are more committed to improving service quality (Lashley, 1995).Conger and Kanungo (1988) defined psychological empowerment as a motivational concept of self-efficacy.While, Spreitzer (1995Spreitzer ( : p.1444) defined empowerment as "a motivational construct manifested in four cognitions: meaning, competence, self-determination, and impact.Together, these four cognitions reflect an active rather than a passive, orientation to a work role".Similarly, Lee and Koh (2001: p.686) presented an inclusive definition, they defined psychological empowerment as "the psychological state of a subordinate perceiving four dimensions of meaningfulness, competence, self-determination and impact, which is affected by the empowering behaviours of the supervisor".

Psychological Empowerment
Empowerment is a continuous variable, where employees feel they are empowered, and therefore psychological empowerment is more about employees" perceptions that hold about their roles in the organisation (Spreitzer, 1995).Moreover, psychological empowerment can be considered as a unidimensional construct (Conger and Kanungo, 1988) or multifaceted construct that includes a model focused on power practices in organisations to energise or internally motivate employees, and therefore psychological empowerment results from a set of four cognitive tasks related to the individual role: meaning, self-determination, impact and competence (i.e.self-efficacy) (Thomas and Velthouse, 1990).
Psychological empowerment consists of four dimensions were developed by (Spreitzer, 1995), namely: self-determination, competence, impact, and meaning.The dimension "self-determination" reflects autonomy (Bell and Staw, 1989), self-regulated, resilient, creative and more flexible (Deci and Ryan, 1985).The dimension of "competence" means self-efficacy to work effectively and is a belief that one feels able to perform work activities skilfully.The dimension of "impact" refers to the degree to which employees can influence strategic, management or operational results at work (Spreitzer, 1996).The dimension of "meaning" refers to a sense of meaning regarding the evaluation of specific tasks (Hackman and Oldham, 1980), or as "the engine of empowerment" (Spreitzer et al., 1997).Moreover, Spreitzer et al. (1997) found that each dimension has different effects on various work outcomes throughout different relationships with work outcomes.Thus, they concluded that the "employees need to experience each of the empowerment dimensions in order to achieve effective and desirable outcomes" (Spreitzer et al., 1997: p. 679).However, psychological empowerment is still a different concept as seen by scholars, for example, Spreitzer (1995) revealed that psychological empowerment is consists of four distinct dimensions in the manufacturing industry, whereas Kim and George (2005), and Al-Sabi (2011) found a two dimensional model of psychological empowerment in the service industry.These dimensions are "attitude" and "influence" which both reflect the four dimensions that developed by Thomas and Velthouse (1990) and Spreitzer (1995).Hoppock (1935) introduced the concept of job satisfaction as employees" reactions or satisfaction physically and mentally toward the environment of work.Job satisfaction is defined by Locke (1976Locke ( : p. 1300) ) as "a pleasurable or positive emotional state resulting from one's job or job experiences", or an employee"s feelings and attitudes toward his/her job (Armstrong, 2003).It means also as an overall measurement of employees" working attitudes of reception, happiness, and pleasure in a job (Edward and Scullion, 1982).Job satisfaction is widely known as an employees" feeling toward their jobs, or employee's attitudes about different facets that related to the job (Robbins and Coulter, 1996;Armstrong, 2003).Furthermore, Armstrong (2003) explained that job satisfaction can be happened when employees have positive attitudes and feelings about their job, while job dissatisfaction can be happened when employees have negative attitudes and feelings about their job.Smith et al. (1969) confirmed that job satisfaction is the result of job"s distinctive nature and other worker"s feelings towards comparative jobs, comparative colleagues, work experiences, and competent levels.

Job Satisfaction
The antecedents of job satisfaction can be categorised into two groups, namely: job environment factors, and individual factors.The both groups of job satisfaction antecedents work together, and therefore job satisfaction is determined by a combination of job environment factors and individual factors (Spector, 1985).While, Armstrong (2003) suggested other factors that led to job satisfaction such as intrinsic factors, individuals" work abilities, extrinsic factors, supervision"s quality, and social relationships in work.With reference to Locke (1976) and Spector (1997), the facets of job satisfaction were classified into four groups: rewards such as fringe benefits or pay, other people such as co-workers or supervisors, the organisation itself, and the nature of work itself.
Herzberg"s theory of job satisfaction and motivation at work consists of motivating factors and hygiene factors.Motivating factors include work itself, achievement, recognition, autonomy, responsibility and advancement; these motivating factors led to job satisfaction.Hygiene factors include salary, benefits, interpersonal relations, working conditions, supervision, company policies and management, and job security.The acceptable level of hygiene factors prevented job dissatisfaction, but the unacceptable level of these factors led to job dissatisfaction (Herzberg et al., 1959).It was found that hygiene factors were more common and dominant in the hospitality industry than in other industries, this can be refereed to some employees who are working in the hospitality industry start their jobs with low expectations of being able to satisfy their high needs (Mullins, 1998).Chitiris (1988) confirmed also that employees in the hospitality industry were more concerned with hygiene factors than motivating factors.

Empowerment and Job Satisfaction
Empowerment can have an important positive impacts on organisational performance, when it implemented successfully by reaching the organisation"s desired goals and expectations, and outcomes of employee such as motivation and job satisfaction.Thus, empowerment can play a significant role in enhancing job satisfaction.It provides a mechanism by which individuals and teams have the responsibilities for making decisions (Ford and Fottler, 1995), these responsibilities are considered as a positive means to enhance employees" creativity and productivity.Thus, the previous studies have highlighted the significant relationship between empowerment and job satisfaction (e.g.Fulford and Enz, 1995;Spreitzer, 1996;Hancer and George, 2003;Hechanova et al., 2006;Dickson and Lorenz, 2009;Patah et al., 2009;Gazzoli et al., 2010;Pelit et al., 2011).When employees perceived they are empowered and that lead them to have more positive emotional states and their overall attachment to the environment of work (Fulford and Enz, 1995).When empowerment is implemented properly at workplace, it can be effective in improving job satisfaction, performance and productivity (Sashkin, 1984), and therefore empowerment may contribute to enhance job satisfaction (Fulford and Enz, 1995).These results confirmed the importance of empowerment in enhancing job satisfaction (Heskett et al., 1994).
In the hospitality industry, Hechanova et al. (2006) argued that psychological empowerment has a positive relationship withjob satisfaction.Patah et al. (2009) showed also that psychological empowerment is positively and significantly related to receptionists" job satisfaction by using three dimensions of psychological empowerment (influence, meaningfulness and competence).Dickson and Lorenz (2009) confirmed that empowerment has a positive relationship with job satisfaction.Similar results were argued by Gazzoli et al. (2010), they found that restaurant staff empowerment has a significant influence on job satisfaction.More recently, Pelit et al. (2011) found that both behavioural empowerment and psychological empowerment have significant influence on job satisfaction in hotels, but the influence of whole empowerment is much greater when is combining both behavioural empowerment and psychological empowerment together.

Theoretical Framework
Figure 1 illustrates the study"s theoretical framework.The independent variables were structural empowerment, psychological empowerment and empowerment, while the dependent variable was job satisfaction.

Hypotheses
Based on the literature review highlighted above, the following hypotheses were proposed: H1: Structural empowerment has a positive and significant influence on job satisfaction.H2: Psychological empowerment has a positive and significant influence on job satisfaction.H3: Merging structural and psychological empowerment has a higher level of influence on job satisfaction than structural and psychological empowerment taken individually.

Measurement
To measure the scales of this study, Spreitzer"s (1995) scale was used to measure psychological empowerment, Hayes" (1994) scale was used to measure structural empowerment, and Spector"s (1985) scale was used to measure job satisfaction.Four dimensions of psychological empowerment were assessed: impact (3 items), self-determination (3 items), competence (3 items) and meaning (3 items).Structural empowerment was assessed as one dimensional construct with (14 items), and finally nine dimension of job satisfaction were assessed: benefits (4 items), promotion (4 items), pay (4 items), contingent rewards (4 items), nature of work (4 items), supervision (4 items), communication (4 items), co-workers (4 items) and operating conditions (4 items).A five-point Likert scale was used in this study to measure all items (where 1= strongly disagree and 5= strongly agree).Demographic questions were also included in the second part of the questionnaire such as gender, age, education, working department and experience.In order to have the right translation for the study"s items, all items in the questionnaire were translated from English to Arabic using a back translation procedure.

Structural
Empowerment Empowerment Psychological Empowerment H3

Sample and Procedure
The data were collected from a sample of employees who are working in five-star hotels in Jordan.The sample size amounted to a total of 332 employees.The questionnaires were distributed and collected by the researchers, using a face-face approach.Of 332 distributed, 186 were usable and valid questionnaires for data coding.The gathered questionnaires represent 56 percent of the total questionnaires distributed earlier.Data were analysed by using SPSS throughout several analyses such as descriptive analysis, exploratory factor analysis, correlation analysis, and multiple regression analysis.

Sample Characteristics
Data were analysed by using descriptive analysis in order to describe the study"s sample.Table 1 shows that 92% of respondents were male and only 8 % were female.These numbers are close to the hotel workforce statistics in Jordan, where males constitute 90% of the industry workforce and females just 10% (Jordanian Ministry of Tourism, 2016).36% of respondents were 25 years of age and under, 30 % were between 26 and 35, 22% were between 36 and 45, and 12% were 46 or over.The education reported by respondents showed 67 % had completed secondary school, 10 % were two year college graduates, 22% had a bachelor degree, and 1% had a graduate degree.By department, 20 % were working in the rooms division department, 23 % in food and beverage, and other departments accounted for 57%.Finally, 20 percent of the respondents reported working in five-star hotels in Jordan for less than 1 year, 35% between 2 and 4 years, and 25 % between 5 and 7 years, 20 % reported working longer than 8 years.All aspects of this demographic profile reflect the known composition of the workforce in the Jordanian hospitality industry.

Validity and Reliability
The study"s scales were originally developed in a western culture and successfully showed good validity and reliability in different contexts.Since this study was conducted in a non-western culture, it was necessary to examine the validity for those scales.To do so, an exploratory factor analysis -principal components analysis with Varimax rotation -was used to show the significant factor loadings for this study.As shown above, the result of the factor analysis reveals a single factor with an Eigenvalue exceeding 1.The one factor solution is consistent with previous studies which considered structural empowerment as a one-dimensional construct.The only difference between this study and previous studies was the number of items that have been used to form the measure.Item loadings on this component ranged from 0.60 to 0.70 and all the items loadings were above 0.60.Furthermore, the obtained Cronbach Alpha shows that the extracted dimension has clearly exceeded the minimum recommended value (α = 0.70), which is acceptable for exploratory research (Hair et al., 2010).As shown above, somewhat contrary to expectations, and deviating from the initial four dimensions, the factor analysis presented a dual-dimensional structure for psychological empowerment.The extracted dimensions are however consistent with other studies that used Spreitzer"s scale in the hospitality industry (e.g.Kim and George, 2005).The first dimension, "influence", is made up of two of the initial self-determination and one of the impact items.Item loadings on this dimension ranged from 0.71 to 0.84.The study found that the meaning and competence dimensions also merged to a single factor.The combined factor was named "attitude".Item loadings were all above 0.70.Furthermore, the obtained Cronbach alpha show that both dimensions "attitude" and "influence" have clearly exceeded the minimum recommended value (α = 0.70).These two dimensions are therefore maintained.As shown above, with somewhat unexpected results, and deviating from the initial nine dimensions, the factor analysis presented a dual-dimensional structure for job satisfaction.The extracted dimensions are named in this study as operational working system and reward system respectively.The first dimension, "operational working system", is made up of five of the initial factors, being nature of work, operating conditions, co-workers, supervision and communication.Item loadings on this dimension ranged from 0.46 to 0.73.The second dimension, "rewarding system", is made up of three of the initial factors, being pay, fringe benefits and contingent rewards.Item loadings on this dimension ranged from 0.46 to 0.76.Furthermore, the obtained Cronbach"s alphas show that the extracted dimensions have clearly met the minimum recommended value (α = 0.70).These two dimensions are therefore maintained.

Descriptive Statistics
Having established the validity and the reliability of the scales, descriptive analysis is another statistical test that was performed for the extracted dimensions and overall scales.From Table 5, it is necessary to note that all the scales of this research were computed by the means" scores of its sub-scales.Therefore, the structural empowerment scale as a one-dimensional scale was computed by summing up its 6 items.The mean score is 3.37 with standard deviation (S.D) at 0.544.This means the employees believe highly that they were given the autonomy and the authority to act independently, which illustrates in other words that the employees were highly structurally empowered.With regards to psychological empowerment, an overall empowerment score was computed by summing up the two sub-scales.The mean score is 3.63 with S.D at 0.673.
This shows that the employees hold all the cognitions of psychological empowerment effectively, on one hand, meaning and competence (attitude) and on the other hand, self-determination and impact (influence).In other words, most of the employees have high levels of confidence in their values, beliefs, and on how well they will perform their goals and tasks and also have high level of trust in their abilities and choices in influencing, initiating and regulating their own work.Regarding job satisfaction, an overall job satisfaction score was computed by the means" scores of the two sub-scales.The mean score is 3.51 with S.D at 0.524.This indicates that the employees in five-star hotels in Jordan were slightly satisfied with their jobs.

Correlation Analysis
For further analysis of the relationships among the variables of the study, correlation analysis is performed.All the variables and their dimensions were subjected to this analysis.Correlation at this stage of the research gives an initial indicator of the relationships among the variables of the study.Table 6, shows the correlation output among the variables of the study.As shown in Table 6, a high correlation appears between "empowerment" and "job satisfaction" (r = 0.652).The "structural empowerment" variable shows a medium correlation with "job satisfaction" (r= 0.424).The "psychological empowerment" variable shows a medium correlation with "job satisfaction" (r= 0.510).At the dimensional level, it can be noticed from the table above that "psychological empowerment" and "structural empowerment" are highly correlated with "operational working system" (r= 0.573, r=0.536) respectively, while "psychological empowerment" and "structural empowerment" show also a moderate correlation with "rewarding system" (i.e.r= 0.271, r= 0.182) respectively.These findings confirmed that both extracted dimensions of empowerment are highly correlated one extracted dimension of job satisfaction "operational working system", and empowerment"s dimensions are moderately correlated with another extracted dimension of job satisfaction "rewarding system".

Testing Hypotheses
To test the hypotheses of this study, multiple regression analysis is performed to analyse and measure the relationship between a single dependent variable and several independent variables (Hair, et al., 2010).In other words, this measure provides an idea about how well the independent variable will contribute to the overall prediction.In this study, all the variables are metric and therefore divided into dependent and independent.Empowerment, psychological empowerment and structural empowerment worked as the independent variables and job satisfaction worked as the dependent variable.Testing hypotheses is presented as follows: H1: Structural empowerment has a positive and significant influence on job satisfaction.
In this research, structural empowerment is proposed to have a positive influence on job satisfaction.Table 7 shows the statistical results of the regression analysis.As shown in Table 7, the result of the regression analysis reveals that structural empowerment is a significant predictor of employee job satisfaction.At the dimensional level, it can be seen from Table 8 below that structural empowerment is moderately significant to the two dimensions of job satisfaction, but it was greater with operational working system.However, the strongest influence is between structural empowerment and satisfaction with the operational working system (β = 0.536 and P value <0.01).Finally, the overall model statistic in Table 7 (R 2 = 0.179, P = 0.000) supported the view that structural empowerment has a positive influence on job satisfaction.Hence, hypothesis one is accepted.Psychological empowerment is proposed to have a positive influence on job satisfaction.Table 9 shows the statistical results of the regression analysis.As shown in Table 9, the result of the regression analysis reveals that psychological empowerment is a significant predictor of job satisfaction.At the dimensional level, it can be seen from the Table 10 below that psychological empowerment is significant to both dimensions of job satisfaction.However, the strongest is between psychological empowerment and satisfaction with the operational working system (β = 0.573 and P value <0.01).Finally, the overall model statistic in Table 9 (R 2 = 0.26, P = 0.000) supports the view that psychological empowerment has a positive influence on job satisfaction.Hence, hypothesis two is accepted.H3: Merging structural and psychological empowerment has a higher level of influence on job satisfaction than structural and psychological empowerment taken individually.
Empowerment is proposed to have a positive influence on job satisfaction.Table 11 shows the statistical results as the regression analysis.As shown in Table 11, the result of the regression analysis reveals that empowerment which includes structural empowerment and psychological empowerment is more significant predictor of job satisfaction than structural empowerment and psychological empowerment taken individually.At the dimensional level, it can be seen from the Table 12 below that empowerment is highly significant to the two dimensions of job satisfaction.However, the strongest relationship is between empowerment and satisfaction with the operational working system (β = 0.625 and P value <0.01).Finally, the overall model statistic in Table 11 (R 2 = 0.425, P = 0.000) supports the view that empowerment has a positive influence on job satisfaction.Hence, hypothesis three is accepted.Based on the above results, Table 13 shows the results of hypotheses testing.
Table 13.The Results of Hypotheses Testing Hypothesis Result H1: Structural empowerment has a positive and significant influence on job satisfaction.acceptance H2: Psychological empowerment has a positive and significant influence on job satisfaction.acceptance H3: Merging structural and psychological empowerment has a higher level of influence on job satisfaction than structural and psychological empowerment taken individually. acceptance

Discussion
This study aimed to examine the influence of empowerment on job satisfaction in five-star hotels in Jordan.The results of the regression analysis in this study provide a support for the significant effect of structural empowerment on employee job satisfaction (R 2 = 0.179, p<0.000).The probable explanation of this result is that creating an employment environment (structural empowerment), where employees feel that they have the autonomy and authority to act independently and take control of their work, will lead them to be more satisfied in their job.These findings were consistent with previous empirical studies that showed that a significant relationship between structural empowerment and job satisfaction (e.g.Fulford and Enz, 1995;Dickson and Lorenz, 2009;Gazzoli et al., 2010;Pelit et al., 2011).This study also provides a support for the significant effect of psychological empowerment on employee job satisfaction (R 2 = 0.26, p<0.000).The explanation of this result is that when the employees have the confidence in their values and beliefs on how well they will perform their goals and tasks (attitude), and have the trust in their abilities and choices in influencing, initiating and regulating their own work (influence), they will be more positive and satisfied towards their work.The study"s findings were supported by previous studies, which confirmed a significant relationship between psychological empowerment and job satisfaction (e.g.Spreitzer, 1996;Hancer and George, 2003;Hechanova et al., 2006;Patah et al., 2009;Pelit et al., 2011).It is worth noting here that psychological empowerment was a more significant predictor of employee job satisfaction than structural empowerment.On one hand, this implies that implementing structural empowerment effectively will in turn lead automatically to the other elements of empowerment (psychological empowerment) and consequently lead to the achievement of employee job satisfaction, in addition, psychological empowerment is more related in the workplace to psychological issues (i.e.motivation) than practical issues on the other (i.e.decision making).
Most of the previous studies focused on either correlating the structural dimension of empowerment and job satisfaction (e.g.Fulford and Enz, 1995;Dickson and Lorenz, 2009;Gazzoli et al., 2010;and Pelit et al., 2011) or correlating the psychological dimension of empowerment and job satisfaction (e.g.Spreitzer, 1996Spreitzer, , 1997;;Hancer and George, 2003;Hechanova et al., 2006;Patah et al., 2009;Pelit et al., 2011) rather than focusing on the two dimensions of empowerment jointly.The study"s results argued that when structural empowerment and psychological empowerment are merged together as a whole, the influence of empowerment on job satisfaction achieves a higher level (R 2 = 0.425, p<0.000), which distinguishes this study from other studies were conducted.This result was supported by Pelit et al. (2011) who indicated that when both dimensions of empowerment (psychological and structural empowerment) are taken as a whole, the influence on job satisfaction yields a higher rate.This result implies that merging empowerment in the sequence of structural empowerment and then psychological empowerment will lead the employees at five-star hotels in Jordan to be more satisfied in their work.In other words, the ability that the employer has to structurally empower his/her employees would affect the employees" assessment of psychological empowerment.Thus, the ability the employer has to empower employees would affect the extent of employee"s value and belief on how well they will perform their goals or tasks, as well as employee"s ability and choice in influencing, initiating and regulating their own work.
Accordingly, employees will be more satisfied at their work.
The results presented above reflect theoretical contributions to knowledge and reveal several important implications for theory and research on empowerment and employee job satisfaction.The main contribution of this study is that although previous studies have tended to adopt and measure one of the two dimensions of empowerment either psychological empowerment or structural empowerment on Job satisfaction in a western context, this study is one of the first studies that attempts to adopt and measure the two main dimensions of empowerment (structural empowerment and psychological empowerment) on job satisfaction in a non-western context.In addition, the results indicated that the structural empowerment scale with one dimension, and psychological empowerment scale with two dimensions, as well as job satisfaction scale with two dimensions are valid and reliable among employees working in five-star hotels in Jordan.
It also showed that there is a significant relationship between employee structural empowerment and employee job satisfaction, as well between employee psychological empowerment and employee job satisfaction in five-star hotels in Jordan.The consistency of these results with previous empirical studies (e.g.Fulford and Enz, 1995;Spreitzer, 1996;Hancer and George, 2003;Hechanova et al., 2006;Dickson and Lorenz, 2009;Patah et al., 2009;Gazzoli et al., 2010;Pelit et al., 2011) gives more support for the validity of the translated scales, which can be used in future as valid measures in a non-western context.In this study, a number of managerial implications can be highlighted.First, it is important that managers understand the need to find different ways to implement structural empowerment that lead to higher levels of employee job satisfaction.This can be done by creating an environment where employees feel that they have the authority and autonomy to act independently, so they can feel more comfortable and satisfied in terms of their operational working system and reward system (job satisfaction) on one hand, and through management being able to rely on employees, through delegating and giving discretion regarding decision making over tasks, on the other.Second, it is also necessary for managers at all levels in hotels to recognise the significant benefits of employee empowerment on employee job satisfaction.Furthermore, it is essential to design different training, reward and development programmes, which lead to improving employees" feelings of job satisfaction.Third, it is also important for managers to recognise the complementary role of structural empowerment on psychological empowerment, as both of them have provided significant results in terms of job satisfaction.
Although this study has identified theoretical contributions to knowledge and revealed several important implications for research on empowerment and job satisfaction, some limitations have arisen which may require more attention when understanding the study"s findings.Dealing with them can draw and provide a clear direction for future research.Five-star-hotels in Jordan, concentrating on employees, were chosen for this study and for better generalisations of the study"s findings, this study suggests that testing and validating the research model of this study in other service contexts, such as restaurants, banks, hospitals, etc., both in Jordan and elsewhere, would be an interesting research area.Investigating this research model in other service contexts from both managerial and customer perspectives, rather than concentrating on the employee perspective, may expand our knowledge with regard to the link between empowerment and job satisfaction, and possibly requiring some modifications to the hypothesised model.This study has adopted structural empowerment and psychological empowerment for the purpose of discovering their effect on job satisfaction.Therefore, including other perspectives of empowerment such as leadership empowerment would be an interesting research area.More specifically, future research could include some of the antecedents of leadership empowerment behaviours such as delegation of authority, information sharing, self-directed, coaching, developing of people, participative decision making and accountability for outcomes.As this study examined the influence of psychological empowerment and structural empowerment on employee job satisfaction, future research could also identify the potential influence leadership empowerment on job satisfaction.

Conclusion
This study has provided a significant new contribution to research on employee empowerment and job satisfaction.It has explored and verified outstanding findings that are related to the relationship between employee empowerment and job satisfaction.The results of this study have supported this relationship and bridged the gaps between the empowerment and job satisfaction literature and the empirical findings.The current study was conducted only in five-star hotels in Jordan, and as such the results are not claimed to be totally representative.They do however provide insights that can form the direction of future research into this important topic.It is the wish of the researchers that this contribution will be built upon by other researchers and practitioners, to shed further light on important aspects related to empowerment and job satisfaction in the hotel industry.

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.The Theoretical Framework Table 1 presents the demographic profile of the sample.

Table 2 .
Output of Factor Analysis for Structural Empowerment

Table 3 .
Output of Factor Analysis for Psychological Empowerment

Table 4 .
Output of Factor Analysis for Job Satisfaction

Table 5 .
Output of the Descriptive Analysis (N=186)

Table 6 .
Output of the Correlations between Variables

Table 7 .
Regression Model Statistics Dependent Variable: Job Satisfaction

Table 8 .
Regression Model Statistics Dependent Variable: Job Satisfaction H1: Psychological empowerment has a positive and significant influence on job satisfaction.

Table 9 .
Regression Model Statistics Dependent Variable: Job Satisfaction

Table 10 .
Regression Model Statistics Dependent Variable: Job Satisfaction

Table 11 .
Regression Model Statistics Dependent Variable: Job Satisfaction

Table 12 .
Regression Model Statistics Dependent Variable: Job Satisfaction