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Employee empowerment is a much discussed idea in organizational research and in the world of management practice. Some writers and business persons consider empowerment as an optimal strategy to obtain competitive advantage in the changing industrial scenario. Review of various studies and literature gives an idea about employee empowerment which means a process of transferring power, authority with responsibility and accountability to the employees by the managers. This paper explores the concept and definition of employee empowerment, its evolution, its relationship to sustainable competitive advantage and the steps to be taken to improve employee empowerment process. The outcome from the review indicates that some managers so often find it difficult to put empowerment into practice because of some factors like contaminated ego states of the managers, their autocratic approach, power addiction and others.
Employee Empowerment: Concept and Definition
Employee empowerment is the process of shifting authority and responsibility to employees at lower level in the organizational hierarchy. It is a transfer of power from the managers to their subordinates. It occurs that when a person works for some years he develops a thorough idea, knowledge, skill, ability over the job and gets everything into his grip. If such person is given overall charge of the work he does, with adequate authority and responsibility he can take decision on his own and can effectively and efficiently accomplish the job. It is the expectation of most human beings that they should have power, authority, recognition, status, responsibility; and when they get all these, they exert drives to utilize their full potential, energy, abilities and competences in an attempt to excel their performance. Empowerment programme is designed to delegate power, authority by managers to their subordinates and share responsibility with them. All this enhances status, recognition of empowered employees. Such employees prepare their mindset to perform, to win and to strive their best to go ahead to achieve individual goals, team goals and organizational goals.
Randolph (1995) asserts that employee empowerment is a transfer of power from the employer to the employees.
Newstrom and Davis (1998) define empowerment as any process that provides greater autonomy through the sharing of relevant information and the provision of control over factors affecting job performance.
Conger and Kanungo (1988) define...