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An intriguing paper by Malone (1997) showed that empowerment is ‘a response to fundamental changes in the economics of decision making that are enabled by new technologies’ (p. 141). The argument advanced in this paper is that empowerment (and decentralisation) is actually an efficient way of operating in modern organisations where communication costs are minimal. Malone (1997) argues that as communication costs fall, firms can improve competitiveness by allowing their employees to ‘combine the best information available with their own knowledge, energy and creativity’ in order to foster and facilitate innovation (p. 142).

Management researchers do not generally perceive empowerment as a ‘response to new developments’ (Malone, 1997) but as an approach to get the most out of their employees. Several researchers have highlighted the need for new management styles that promote employee involvement, employee autonomy, workforce participation and the development of self managing work teams (Paul et al., 2000). The general consensus seem to be that employee empowerment turns to contribute significantly towards improving the commitment of the workforce, improving well being at the workplace, improving employee motivation and therefore improving the performance of employees (Paul et al., 2000; Cohen et al., 2007)

Empowerment has particularly been successful in hospital management through primary nursing. The nursing case (discussed in the lectures) illustrates the role of empowerment in improving the quality of patient care and the levels of job satisfaction for nurses. As indicated in this case, this contributes towards reducing worker turnover rates and levels of stress.

One way of achieving employee empowerment is through the institution of training and development programs within the institution. Researchers in the management literature have established empirical links between employee empowerment through training and development and performance (See Koch and McGrath, 1996 and Jacobs and Washington, 2003). Empowerment can be expected to improve employee motivation as they feel more valued within the work place. Kominis and Emmanuel (2007) showed that as motivation increases effort exerted increases and this will turn to improve performance. Denton (1994) used the case of Ford Motor Company to illustrate how employee empowerment translates to corporate empowerment. Empowerment turns to humanize the work place. As employees are empowered they feel a sense of belonging, community and ownership and strive to protect the image of their company through their dealings. The result for Ford was the creation of a lasting legacy.

Participative work redesign programs are empowerment programs in the wider sense. These are essentially programs which set out to involve employees in the planning and scheduling of their work. Like other empowerment programs, participative work redesign programs have been shown to improve motivation and commitment, increase employee output, reduce employee turnover and reduce absenteeism (Pearson and Chatterjee, 1984).

In Kanter’s (1977) structural theory of power in organisations, Kanter argues that to allow for empowerment employees must be given the right resources, provided with suf本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。