MASTER THESIS
Conditions for effective empowerment: an employee’s perspective
A case study at a gas infrastructure company
BY I.DOUMA
Ilona Douma 2137968
Aquamarijnstraat 681, 9743 PS Groningen 0623858985
MSc Human Resource Management
Date of submitting: July 9th, 2012
University of Groningen, Faculty of Economics and Business Course: Master Thesis 2011/2012
Supervisor/ university Drs. J. van Polen
Second assessor Dr. K.S. Prins
Supervisor/ field of study Mr. I. Yska – Gasunie N.V.
Conditions for effective empowerment: an employee’s perspective A case study at a gas infrastructure company
ABSTRACT
Purpose – This paper describes a case study at Gasunie, a gas infrastructure company. The organization has embarked on a change program, including the introduction of employee empowerment, which they now want to evaluate. In this paper, employee empowerment is studied from an employee’s perspective to find out to what extent empowerment is perceived by employees and which conditions influences this perception, to finally find out what is necessary to further increase empowerment.
Design/methodology/approach – The perception of empowerment is studied by using two approaches: the organizational climate approach and the psychological approach of
empowerment. By using semi-structured interviews (n=11), the perceptions, feelings and beliefs of employees about empowerment are studied. The participants are financial controllers of Gasunie.
Findings – Employees working at regional Gasunie offices do perceive empowerment according to the organizational climate approach and the psychological approach. Employees working at the Gasunie headquarters are highly motivated (psychological approach) but do not perceive empowerment. At Gasunie, the following conditions for empowerment are missing: challenging goals for employees, teamwork, recognition and feedback, and a coaching style of leadership. It is recommended to change the management style towards a more participative style and that the missing conditions are implemented.
Originality/value – So far, little research on empowerment has been conducted from an employee’s perspective. This study however, points out the relevance of this point of view, because it shows employees do not always perceive empowerment, even though it is ‘formally’ instituted by the organization.
TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT………... 2 1. INTRODUCTION………...5 2. LITERATURE FRAMEWORK………....7 2.1 Empowerment perception..………...7
2.1.1Organizational climate empowerment perception………....8
2.1.2 Psychological empowerment perception……….…….10
2.2 Conditions for effective empowerment...……… 13
2.3 Conceptual model....……… 14 3. METHODOLOGY……… 15 3.1 Research context ……….. 15 3.2 Participants……….. 15 3.3 Procedure………..16 3.4 Measurement……… 16
3.4.1 Organizational climate empowerment perception……… 16
3.4.2 Psychological empowerment perception………. 17
3.4.3 Existing and missing conditions………...17
3.4.4 Measurement method justification………. 18
3.5 Data analyzing………. 18
4. FINDINGS ………. 19
4.1 First general empowerment impression empowerment perception………19
4.2 Organizational climate approach……….. 20
4.2.1 Information sharing………. 20
4.2.2 Creating autonomy through boundaries……… 21
4.2.3 (Team) accountability……….. 21
4.2.4. Summarized findings organizational climate approach………. 21
4.3 Psychological approach……….. 22 4.3.1 Meaningfulness………. 22 4.3.2 Competence………... 22 4.3.3 Self-determination……….23 4.3.4 Impact……… 23 4.3.5 Shared-felt accountability……… 24
4.3.6 Summarized findings psychological approach……….. 24
4.4 Critical and missing conditions………...24
4.4.1 Changes in work……… 24
4.4.2 Empowerment conditions………. 25
4.4.3 Conclusion: influence of empowerment conditions on Empowerment elements………29
5. DISCUSSION………. 31
5.1 Discussion of results……….31
5.1.1 Perceived empowerment……….. 31
5.1.2 Conditions for effective empowerment………... 32
5.1.3 Conclusion………. 33
5.1.4 Recommendations………. 34
5.2 Strengths and limitations……… 36
5.3 Implications for further research………... 38
5.4 Conditions for effective empowerment: an employee’s perspective……...38
1. INTRODUCTION
Recently Gasunie, a European gas infrastructure company, has embarked on a comprehensive change programme, including the introduction of employee empowerment. The company, founded in 1963, is the first independent gas transport provider with a cross-border network in Europe. The main strategy is to continue to maintain the strong position in the North
European market as an independent supplier of gas transport services. To continue this strategy, the company paid a lot of attention to the external developments in recent years, but this resulted in less attention for the internal structure. In order to keep up with the
developments in the external environment, Gasunie has decided to change the internal organization to remain ‘dedicated to the businesses’ and to become ‘fit for the future’1. They changed the organizational structure, and this resulted among others in the decentralisation of the positions of financial unit controllers (controllers). Before the organizational change, the controllers were situated in a staff position and delivered their services towards their
customers (employees in different units who need financial information) in the line organization. This resulted in time consuming decisions, because the decisions had to go through different stages and so lead to loss of effectiveness. Therefore, in the new
organizational structure, the positions of the controllers are decentralized towards a position in the line organization, close to their customers. They are moved from corporate control
towards a control position in the line organization. The intermediate stages are removed; they got the immediate power to make quick decisions. This is a component of empowerment (Leach, Wall, & Jackson, 2003). In the management literature, the idea of decentralization and delegation of decision-making power is central to the empowerment notion (Burke, 1986; House, in press; Kanter, 1983: Conger & Kanungo, 1988). Of these aspects, it appears that Gasunie increased employee empowerment, but they want to evaluate the degree of employee empowerment.
Like Gasunie, organizations and their organizational structures evolve over time to operate more cost-effective, move closer to customers and become more efficient (Ahearne, 2005). One important aspect to adapt the internal structure and culture of the organization towards outside pressures is to introduce employee empowerment (Forrester, 2000). In contrast with traditional management practices, empowerment creates more flexibility and freedom to make decisions relating to their work for the workforce (Greasley, Bryman, Dainty, Price, Soetanto,
1
King, 2004). If empowerment is implemented successfully, it will result in potential benefits. The potential benefits of empowerment can be divided into benefits for the organization and benefits for the individual. Most research focused on organizational benefits. Empowerment leads, according to Lawler, Mohram & Ledford (1992) to increased efficiency and
performance. Besides, organizations experienced improvements in flexibility, cost control and quality (Blanchard et al., 1997). Summarized, these are the more ‘economic benefits’
(Greasley et al., 2004). The individual benefits can be summarized as a greater sense of job satisfaction, motivation and organizational loyalty (Mullins & Peacock, 1991) because employees feel more involved in the organization. Although the flexibility and freedom of decision making and potential benefits of empowerment can help organizations to adapt to changing environments, companies often run into problems with implementation of empowerment (Quinn & Spreitzer, 1997). There is evidence in literature (Baird & Wang, 2010) that implementation of empowerment practices are not always as prevalent as expected and empowerment does not always achieve the desired state as indented (Collins, 1994; Foster-Fishman and Keys, 1997; Cunningham and Hyman, 1999). Much attention in the research literature of empowerment is paid towards the managerial practices of
empowerment, for example if the empower-tools, like information, power, knowledge and rewards (Kanter, 1977) are provided. But even if these practices are provided to employees, they can still feel disempowered (Spreitzer, 2007). Therefore it is important to find out if the nature of empowerment is perceived by employees (Spreitzer, 2007), because it is plausible that there are different opinions about the meaning and the success of employee
empowerment between employees and management (Greasley et al., 2004). Psoinos & Smitson (2002, p.140) recognized this too:
“. . . if we really mean empowerment we should not be assessing from the outside we should be allowing the individuals to self-assess and see what the requirements are of them [. . .] but they actually make the assessment of whether they are there or not because they own it (HR Manager, electronics manufacturer).”
Concluding, in this case study Gasunie wants to evaluate the degree of employee
empowerment, to identify if the empower practices they introduced are also perceived as empowerment by employees. The research information should give input for goals of (possible) further empowerment in the organization to keep developing and being able to adapt to the external environment. They especially want to know which empowerment conditions influence the perception of empowerment, to know which conditions they have created already (and need to be kept) and which conditions are not yet perceived (but should be created). In this way they get know how they can structure their internal organization in such a way to further increase empowerment.
General research question: What is necessary for Gasunie employees to perceive empowerment and which empowerment conditions influence this perception?
Following this introduction, a literature framework will present the relevant theory for this study and based on this, different sub questions are formulated. Thereafter the methodology section will describe the research context, participants and measurements used. The results of this study are presented under the heading ‘findings’ and in the discussion section the findings will be discussed and limitations and directions for further research are provided.
2. LITERATURE FRAMEWORK
In this literature framework the relevant literature for answering the general research question is provided. On basis of the literature, and to help answering the general research question, sub questions are composed. The sub questions should provide the information which can be used for deriving and interpreting answers to finally answer the real research question.
2.1 Empowerment perception
Nowadays, employee empowerment is a popular and common used term. In research
literature at lot is to found about employee empowerment and there are as many definitions of it. The roots of employee empowerment are known under the heading ‘employee
distinguished. Each perspective plays an important role in the development of the theory of empowerment (Spreitzer, 2007). Ahearne, Marthieu & Rapp (2005) define the first approach as the ‘organizational context approach’ and this means “a practice or set of practices
involving the delegation of responsibility down the hierarchy so as to give employees increased decision-making authority in respect to their primary work tasks” (Leach, Wall & Jackson, 2003 p.28). Others call it ‘the structural approach to empowerment’ (Biron & Bamberger, 2010) or ‘organizational climate approach’(Blanchard, Carlos, Randolph, 1997). The second approach is the ‘psychological approach’ and consists of four dimensions of psychological state based on employee’s perceptions of (a) meaningfulness, (b) competence, (c) self-determination, and (d) impact (Spreitzer, 1995, 1996; Thomas & Velthouse, 1990). Both approaches distinguish from each other on three key elements:
- Referent: according to Liden and Arad (1996) the organizational approach is a more macro perspective and the psychological approach a micro perspective. Seibert, Silver and Randolph (2004) confirm this by saying that empowerment climate refers to a work environment, while psychological empowerment refers to an individual’s internal psychological state.
- Focus: the empowerment climate approach has a more descriptive focus, while the psychological approach has a more evaluative and subjective focus (Seibert et al., 2004).
- Content: the empowerment climate approach assesses organizational structures and practices, while the psychological approach assesses psychological states (Seibert et al., 2004).
Research of Seibert and colleagues (2004) confirms that both approaches are different
constructs; they demonstrated this via factor analysis. The following discussion should give a more in-dept view of these two approaches.
2.1.1 Organizational climate empowerment perception
The organizational climate approach is a managerial-initiated, socio-structural phenomenon (Conger & Kanungo, 1988). Climate in this sense has been defined as a set of shared
To come to a common definition of empowerment climate, Seibert and colleagues (2004, p.334) define it as “a shared perception regarding the extent to which an organization makes use of structures, policies, and practices supporting employee empowerment”. It is about employee participation through increased access to information, support, opportunity, and resources throughout the organizational chain of command (Spreitzer, 2007). The essence is about the sharing of power. This does not mean managers or the top of the organization should give lower employees all kinds of power, but it is about ‘relevant power’ (Spreitzer, 2007). For lower level employees, this means not making decisions about firm strategy but about how to perform their own job. Blanchard, Carlos, & Randolph (1997)and Randolph (1995), conceptualized the definition of the organizational climate approach as, the perceived meaning of organizational structures, and practices related to (a) information sharing, (b) creating autonomy through boundaries, and (c) (team) accountability.
(a) Information sharing: this involves providing potentially sensitive information on costs, productivity, quality, and financial performance to employees throughout an
organization (Seibert et al., 2004). Blanchard en colleagues (1997) mention this as the first key to empowerment because it shows individuals the situation in bright
expression, it is the start of organization wide trust, it breaks through the traditional hierarchical thinking, it helps to be and feel more responsible and it encourages employees to act as an owner of the organization.
(b) Creating autonomy through boundaries: refers to organizational structures and practices that encourage autonomous action, including the development of a clear vision, and clarity regarding goals, work procedures, and areas of responsibility (Seibert et al., 2004). Blanchard and colleagues (1997) argue a vision only comes to life if the employees feel their contribution can make a difference. Therefore
autonomy through boundaries helps to translate the vision in work goals and
procedures. Besides, if the values of the organization are clear, decision making will be easier. Therefore, although after successful empowerment less structure is
necessary, during implementing more structure is needed (Randolph, 1995). (c) (Team) accountability: involves the perception that teams are the locus of
should not be mixed up with shared-felt-accountability, because that is a more psychological approach (Wallace, Johnson, Mathe & Paul, 2011).
Although information sharing is a first step, all three elements should be present in a dynamic interaction to create effective empowerment (Blanchard et al., 1997).
Sub question 1: Which organizational climate empowerment elements are perceived as effective empowerment in the case of Gasunie?
2.1.2 Psychological empowerment perception
Hackman & Oldham (1980) show in their job design literature that to the degree that jobs are restructured to afford employees greater autonomy, the employees are likely to generate enhanced attitudes, effort and motivation. Literature of Becker and Huselid (1998) about high involvement work systems, shows employee well-being may be enhanced if employees are given greater direct control over how to perform their work (Biron & Bamberger, 2010). In psychology literature, autonomy and involvement are derived from the need to have a certain level of power and control. These needs are met when individuals perceive they have power or they can adequately cope with events, situations or people they confront (Conger & Kanungo, 1988). If the perceived level of power is not met or they are not able to cope with the environment, the power needs are frustrated. This illustrates that power refers to an intrinsic need for self determination or a belief in self-efficacy (Conger & Kanungo, 1988). Self determination is about “the investigation of people's inherent growth tendencies and innate psychological needs that are the basis for their self-motivation and personality integration, as well as for the conditions that foster those positive processes” (Ryan & Deci, 2000, p.68). Belief in self-efficacy is about “dealing primarily with cognitive perceptions of competence” (Bandura, 1997; Hughes, Galbraith & White, 2011, p.278). The belief of Conger & Kanungo (1988) is about any managerial strategy or technique that strengthens this self-determination need or self-efficacy belief of employees will make them feel more powerful. Thomas & Velthouse (1990) built on this work of Conger & Kanungo, and argue that power also means energy and this ‘energizing’ usage of power captures the motivational part of empower efforts. They define the psychological approach as increased intrinsic task
(a) Meaningfulness: is the value of a task goal or purpose, judged in relation to an individual’s own ideals or standards (Thomas and Velthouse, 1990; Spreizer, 1995, 1996). It is about the individual’s intrinsic caring about a given task (Thomas & Velthouse, 1990). A high degree of meaningfulness results in involvement,
commitment and concentrating of energy ( Kanter, 1968; Sjoberg, Olsson & Salay, 1983 in Thomas & Velthouse, 1990, p673), and a low level of meaningfulness results in apathy, feeling detached and unrelated to significant events (May, 1969 in Thomas & Velthouse, 1990, p.673)
(b) Competence: is an individual’s belief in his/her capability to perform task activities skillfully (Gist, 1987). This is related to the concept of Bandura (1977) about self-efficacy. High self-efficacy results in high effort, initiating behaviors and persistence in the face of obstacles. In contrast, low self-efficacy lead to the avoidance of
situations in which relevant skills are necessary and this result in prevention of building competencies and confronting fears (Bandura, 1977 in Thomas & Velthouse 1990, p.672).
(c) Self-determination (or choice): means autonomy in the initiation and continuation of work behaviours and processes (Bell and Staw, 1989). Deci & Ryan (1985) noted the central issue in self-determination is the experience of choice. Perceived choice (or self-determination) leads to more flexibility, self regulation, creativity, initiative and resiliency. If an individual is controlled by events, it will result in a decreased self-esteem and a negative emotional tone (Deci & Ryan, 1985 in Thomas & Velthouse, 1990, p.673).
(d) Impact: is the perception of the degree to which an individual can influence strategic, administrative or operating outcomes at work (Ashforth, 1989). Perceived impact has a variety of labels in literature, including locus of control (Rotter, 1966 in Thomas & Velthouse, 1990 p.672) and learned helplessness (Abrahamson, Seligman & Teasdale, 1978 in Thomas & Velthouse, 1990, p.672) which are converse of impact. Abramson, Seligman & Teasdale (1978) made a distinction in learned helplessness between universal helplessness and personal helplessness. Universal helplessness (including locus of control) occurs when the impact can be seen as unlikely, regardless of
the four cognitions together give a ‘nearly or sufficient set of cognitions’ for understanding psychological empowerment (Thomas & Velthouse, 1990). This means the four psychological empowerment elements together almost cover the scope to research the motivational element of empowerment, but recent research of Wallace and colleagues (2011), demonstrated that the element of shared felt accountability should be added to the psychological approach, because their results showed that “in the absence of accountability, empowerment does not provide positive benefits”(Wallace and colleagues, 2011, p.846). Therefore (e) shared felt
accountability is added.
(e) Shared felt accountability: “a collective expectation in which decisions and behaviors are subject to evaluation and justification by a salient organizational agent(s)” (Hall, Frink, Ferris, Hochwarter, Kacmar, & Bowen, 2003; Wallace et al., 2011, p.843). It is a kind of behavioral check on the right application of resources and effort. High shared felt accountability should lead to more familiarity with evaluative standards for
decisions and behaviors, reducing conflict and leads to enhanced performance (Davis, Mero & Goodman, 2007; Fandt, 1991; Mero, Guidice & Brownlee, 2007 in Wallace et al., 2011 p.843). In contrast, low shared felt accountability lead, due to a lack of evaluative standards, to increased confusion, conflict and anxiety and this relates negatively to performance (Wallace et al., 2004).
Especially the psychological approach to empowerment is important to examine for the individual’s perception of empowerment within an organisational context, because this plays a vital role in the way empowerment is perceived by employees (Spreitzer, 2007).
Sub question 2: Which psychological empowerment elements are perceived as effective empowerment in the case of Gasunie?
2.2. Conditions for effective empowerment
According to Conger and Kanungo (1988, p.474), “the need to empower subordinates becomes critical when subordinates feel powerless”. Therefore it is necessary to locate the (missing) conditions in organizations that raise a sense of powerlessness among lower level employees (Conger & Kanungo, 1988). According to Juhl and colleagues (1997) conditions for empowerment at the individual level can be derived from the theory of motivation (Litwin & Stringer, 1968; Herzberg et al., 1959). These conditions influence the empowerment perception. Based on theory, they summarized the most important factors:
• Knowledge of goals;
• Knowledge of customer demands; • Challenging goals;
• Education and Training; • Teamwork;
• Recognition; • Informal feedback.
The level of empowerment can be described as a function of the empowerment conditions. The conditions are related and according to Juhl and colleagues (1997) employee
empowerment is only effective if all conditions are present. Together they measure the perception of influence of an individual employee. Martin (1994) in Honold (1997, p.206) researched empowerment conditions and argues that conditions can either facilitate or impede empowerment. In this study, the focus is on the employee’s perspective and according to Juhl and colleagues (1997) above conditions help to reach the level of effective empowerment, although it needs to become clear if the conditions facilitate or impede empowerment; in what way does it influence the empowerment elements. However not al of these conditions are of equal relevance for every organization. Juhl and colleagues (1997) state that the degree of the conditions of empowerment is not always the same, and therefore in the particular situation of Gasunie, it is important to find out which conditions are (in particular) relevant and present and which are probably missing. Especially important is the relation between these conditions and the empowerment elements; how do these conditions influence the perception of
Sub question 3: How do different empowerment conditions influence the perception of empowerment at Gasunie?
2.3 Conceptual model
To give an overview how the different parts of this study are related, figure 1 provides a conceptual model. Part of effective empowerment is the organizational climate perception (sub question 1) and the psychological perception (sub question 2); these are the dependent variables. The two empowerment approaches together measure to what extent the employees perceive effective empowerment. This perception of empowerment is influenced by the empowerment conditions, the independent variables. These related conditions facilitate or impede the perception of empowerment. In sub question 3 is researched if the existence or lack of empowerment conditions influences the empowerment perception.
3. METHODOLOGY
The purpose of this study is to evaluate the extent of which the employees (the controllers of Gasunie) feel empowered and how empowerment conditions influences this perception. This chapter describes the methodology to study this.
3.1 Research context
To gain insights in the perception of employee empowerment for the controllers at Gasunie, a qualitative study will be conducted. Psoinos and Smithson (2002) mention, with such an in-depth study, it is possible to get further insights about empowerment. Interviewing is the most widely used method in qualitative research (Bryman & Bell, 2007). Semi-structured
interviews allow focused, conversational, and two-way communication (Cohen, 2006). Because the opinions, feelings and perspectives of employees are subject of this research, with the use of semi-structured interviews it is possible to obtain this kind of information (Greasley et al., 2004).
3.2 Participants
As stated in the case description, empowerment practices have been introduced to the unit controllers of the financial department of Gasunie. This is the only group of considerable size (>5) where empowerment has been introduced, and therefore the controllers covered the sample of this study. The controllers group consisted of 32 employees. Gasunie has three business units and three facilitating units. Controllers from four out of six units were involved in this research sample. The two remaining units were not involved because one unit was not part of the change program (i.e. the German part of the company because empowerment is just introduced in the Netherlands) and one did not contain controllers (Appendix A: the red outlined boxes are part of the research scope). A sample size of eleven controllers was involved in this study; two controllers from each business unit and three and four from each facilitating unit (n=11). This was based on the fact more controllers were operating in the facilitating units than in business units. The total of eleven respondents reflected an appropriate sample size to adequately answer the research question (Marshall, 1996). A general rule for sample sizes for interviews is when the same stories, themes, issues, and topics are emerging from the interviewees, then a sufficient sample size has been reached (Boyce & Neale, 2006). After conducting eleven interviews this result was reached. In order
divided on basis of gender, tenure, age and position. On basis of this, eleven controllers were selected who reflected the total population. These participants provided more or less the same stories, although they sometimes had different opinions. In these cases however, the different opinions could be derived from different subgroups of controllers.
The sample size consisted of eight male respondents and three female respondents. Four respondents were between 30-39 years old, three within 40-49 and four within 50-59 years old. The tenure of the respondents is divided by 4 respondents within 1-10 years, 2
respondents within 11-20 years, one respondent within 21-30 years and four respondents >30 years. Table 1, 2 and 3 show this more clearly. Two respondents had a managerial position.
TABLE 1
TABLE 2 TABLE 3
3.3 Procedure
The selected participants were contacted to explain the aim of the research and to ask them if they were willing to participate. The interviews started with a short introduction which included the purpose of the research, the subjects covered in the interview, the time it would take, and it was mentioned the information was treated confidentially and in an anonymous way. All interviews were audio recorded and fully transcribed. The interviews took about an hour and a half. Interviews have been tested by doing an interview to check whether there was an ambiguity or confusion in the questions.
3.4 Measurements
The interview consisted of three parts in order to provide information for the different sub questions.
3.4.1 Organizational climate empowerment perception (dependent variable)
The first part, organizational climate approach, measured the perception of the organizational climate approach of empowerment, and consisted of statements about the level of information
Gender
Male Female 72,73% 27,27 %
Tenure (in years) ≤10 36,36% 11-20 18,18% 21-30 9,09% >30 36,36%
Age (in years)
sharing, autonomy through boundaries and accountability. Based on the ‘organizational climate measure’ of Blanchard and colleagues (1995), 6 items (2 of each category) are adopted and slightly changed towards a more employee’s perspective. According to the empowerment situation of Gasunie, the most relevant elements are adopted. Because the different questions of each element measure the same construct and in this study the focus is on the opinions and feelings of the employees of Gasunie, the most relevant statements for Gasunie are selected to discover the perception of employees. These different elements (Appendix B) were rated on a scale of 1 (completely disagreeing) to 7 (completely agreeing) by each participant. An example statement is: “People in our organization get information about the organization’s performance in a timely fashion”. After each section (information sharing, autonomy through boundaries and accountability) the interviewees were asked to explain on what their choice was based on by using open questions.
3.4.2 Psychological empowerment perception (dependent variable)
The second part consisted of the elements meaningfulness, competence, self-determination, impact and shared felt accountability. The participants responded to the first four elements by rating on a scale of 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree) on Spreitzers (1995)
psychological empowerment scale. For all 4 items, 2 of the 3 statements, most relevant to the empowerment situation of Gasunie, were used (Appendix B). An example statement is “The work I do is very important to me”. After each section (meaningfulness, competence, self-determination and impact) the interviewees were asked to explain on what their choice was based on by using open questions. The last element, shared felt accountability, was measured by a two-item scale that measured the employee’s level of shared felt accountability by Hochwarter, Kacmar, & Ferris, (2003) in Hochwarter and colleagues(2007, p231). The original scale consists of eight items, but for this research, the two items most relevant for the empowerment situation of Gasunie (Appendix B), will cover the scope. The items which were included are: “I am held very accountable for my actions at work” and “In the grand scheme of things, my efforts at work are very important”. The scale used a 5-point response format.
3.4.3 Existing and missing conditions (independent variables)
findings. Therefore in this study an almost similar approach was used. Part three of the
interview continued with asking the interviewees to comment on how the nature of their work has changed and how they felt about it. Arising from this, the interviews explored changes in work behaviour and their perceptions of the benefits and limitations of the empowerment initiative (Lasley, 1999). Questions about the conditions for empowerment according to Juhl and colleagues (1997) are also part of this section of interview questions. The participants had to comment on the different conditions (knowledge of goals, knowledge of customer
demands, challenging goals, education and training, teamwork, recognition, informal feedback) and had to tell if they perceive it important for empowerment and if the condition exists or is missing. Besides, own input from respondents about critical or missing conditions was provided.
3.4.4 Measurement method justification
The measurement method used in this research consists of two steps. First the respondents rated the statement questions about the empowerment elements. On basis of that, open questions were asked to research the feelings and opinions of respondents. Both took place in the same interview (an example is provided in Appendix C). This is not a common used method. But in order to objectify the answers of the open questions and to compare the opinions of different respondents, this method makes it easier to compare the different outcomes of the interviews and it gives every respondent the same starting point of thinking about the different elements of empowerment.
In this study, it turned out the open questions based on statements questions sometimes influenced the way of thinking or the perception about a topic, and therefore also the way of filling in the measurement scale. Therefore all respondents were asked to rethink the position on the measurement scale after responding to the open questions, to overcome a disconnection between the position on the scale of the statement and answers on open questions.
3.5 Data analyzing
analyzed together, but if the Cronbach’s alpha was to low, the statements were analyzed separately. This resulted in mean scores per empowerment elements (whether or not divided in the statements). This should give a first impression about the general feelings of
empowerment and it is the starting point for interpreting the findings of the open questions. The open questions of the respondents were analyzed using ordering, labelling and finding causalities. First, after the interviews were fully transcribed, the text was ordered on basis of relevance. All aspects which were not of interest for this study were filtered out. Second, the answers were labelled on basis of relevant words or sentences. Per subject and causality the text got a label, for example ‘recognizing acting as a self directed team’. The third step was finding causalities; finding relations between the level of perception of empowerment and empowerment conditions, and finding out if differences or similarities existed between different groups in the organization (Baarda and colleagues, 2009).
4. FINDINGS
In this chapter the results of the interviews are presented. At first, the mean scores of the statement-questions are presented, to give a first impression about the general perception of the empowerment elements. Thereafter the findings of the open questions about the
organizational climate approach are outlined. The findings are presented in the same order of subthemes as described in the literature chapter. This is followed by the findings of the psychological approach, which is presented in the same way. Finally the findings about the conditions for empowerment and their influence on the empowerment elements will be outlined.
4.1 First general impression empowerment perception
4.2 Organizational climate empowerment perception
The findings about the organizational climate approach (dependent variable) can be divided in the three elements of the theory of Blanchard, Carlos, & Randolph (1997): information
sharing, autonomy through boundaries and (team) accountability. These findings should give an answer to the first sub question: Which organizational climate empowerment elements are perceived as effective empowerment in the case of Gasunie?
4.2.1 Information sharing
The general remark of respondents is they receive a lot of information about the performance of the organization, although they have to extract the information themselves, for example from the intranet. The information is clear to them, but they doubt if they receive and can attract this information in a timely fashion. Some respondents mentioned, because of the nature of the controller function, they need to collect a great deal of information in order to make sound decisions. The following remark of a respondent supports this vision:
can ask my customers, and they are willing to explain it (…) so I have to collect it myself, but because of that I can do my tasks”
4.2.2 Creating autonomy though boundaries
The general remark of respondents is the new organizational structure, policy and procedures did not change their work substantially. They only feel they have to do more work since the change program was implemented, for example making more reports for different units. Besides, more procedures are created. The respondents are physically situated in a department together with their customers. This change led to more involvement; they feel part of the group. None of the respondents wants to rollback this part of the change program, as the next opinion will show:
“…being part of the unit, creates a more ‘unit-feeling’. They involve me during consultation and meetings, which is a good thing.”
4.2.3 (Team) accountability
Three groups can be distinguished to show these findings. The first group consists of the controllers who are working at the headquarters, comprising six respondents. They do not see or feel teams are responsible or accountable, neither higher management is trying to
implement this. They still feel highly dependent on top management.
“All decisions are made by the management team. There are a lot of projects teams within Gasunie, but before they can make decisions they have to reflect and reconcile it with higher level management. Besides everybody in the organisation who is involved has to say something about it, before decisions can be made or steps can be taken.”
The second group consists of controllers with a managerial position. This are two
respondents. The one argued that teams have full responsibility themselves and the other argued with the change program they tried to bring responsibilities lower in the organization, but at the same time introduced a lot of procedures which limit this freedom. The last group are the controllers working at regional locations, comprising three respondents. They operate independent and act as self-directed teams.
4.2.4 Summarized findings organizational climate approach
Sub question 1 should give answer to the question: Which organizational climate
self-directed teams by (top) management, which scores low. The answers on the open
questions confirm this. Compared to their situation before the introduction of empowerment, the respondents do not see a lot of differences. ‘Information sharing’ and ‘autonomy through boundaries’ are empowerment elements which are partly perceived, ‘(team) accountability’ is nearly perceived.
4.3 Psychological approach
After inspecting the mean scores of the statements, it becomes clear that the respondents score high on the psychological approach (dependent variable). The explanation of these scores about the psychological approach can be divided in the four elements of the theory of Thomas & Velthouse (1990): meaningfulness, competence, self-determination, and impact, and the element of Wallace and colleagues (2011): shared felt accountability. These findings should give an answer to sub question 2: Which psychological empowerment elements are perceived as effective empowerment in the case of Gasunie?
4.3.1 Meaningfulness
All the respondents confirmed that the work they do is important for them. However, they place their answers in a wider context, because they also enjoy having a private life and having a family.
“I enjoy my work, and I enjoy going to work every day. If you loose that feeling, work becomes less important.”
“Work is important, but not the most important aspect in my live. My opinion is that we work to live
and not the other way round. Colleagues are also important, and my family at home too.”
They also agreed their tasks are personally meaningful to them, but this is something that has not changed since the introduction of empowerment and the overall change program.
4.3.2 Competence
Sometimes new or unexpected situations come up, which are difficult to handle, but I am not afraid to handle them (…) in my opinion this is personal development. I certainly do not avoid such situations.” 4.3.3 Self- determination
Statements about autonomy, independence and freedom provided slightly different
perceptions. Three groups can be separated to show these findings. The first group are the controllers who are working at the headquarters, comprising six respondents. These controllers have deadlines and standard financial reports which have to meet certain
qualifications. But within these pre-conditions, they can, in general, decide and set up their tasks themselves.
“Of course they say: ‘you have to think about that and I suggest you should talk with him’, but in the grand scheme of things I can decide how I collect my information and data to meet the deadlines and make the financial reports.”
The second group consists of controllers with a managerial position, this are two respondents. These managers report they can act independently and they receive a lot of freedom about how to arrange their tasks, to who they want to delegate tasks and the time span of these tasks. The last group consists of the controllers working at regional locations, three respondents. These respondents receive a lot of freedom. They act as self-directed teams, and as teams they have to arrange their own tasks. The following argument will make this more clear:
“Our process is unique and here at our location we know the best how to perform. I can call it management by exception, because as long as we deliver good results, they do not step into our process. Of course we have a manager at the headquarters, who is always willing to help, but I can do a lot myself.”
4.3.4 Impact
This element has been scored lowest, as can been seen in the mean-results. It is frequently mentioned by respondents without a managerial position, that because of the many procedures and rules, it is difficult to change something within. Broadly speaking, they do not think they can influence strategic or administrative outcomes at their department. The respondents with a managerial position do feel more impact from what happens at their department. Although they mention that Gasunie has a control-culture, which prevent renewal:
mistakes can not happen. I understand it from a historical perspective and everything should be save, but it leads to a rigid and inflexible organisation.”
4.3.5 Shared-felt accountability
All respondents agreed that they feel their effort at work is important. As can be seen in the mean scores, the respondents rated the statements about this element very high. They feel they are held accountable for their work and they feel this as justified. Small remark is,
respondents declare that if they make mistakes they get feedback, but good things are just taken for granted.
4.3.6 Summarized findings psychological approach
Sub question 2 should give an answer to: Which psychological empowerment elements are perceived as effective empowerment in the case of Gasunie? After inspecting the mean scores, it becomes clear, except for the element impact, respondents score about a 6 on the 7-point scale and almost 5 on a 5-7-point scale. Answers of respondents on the open questions confirmed this; respondents do perceive the elements meaningfulness, competence, self determination and shared-felt accountability, but do less perceive the element ‘impact’.
4.4 Existing and missing conditions
At first, the findings about how the nature of the work of the respondents has changed will be presented, including the findings about changes in work behaviour and related subjects according to the interview questions of Lasley (1999). Thereafter, the missing and critical conditions for empowerment (independent variables) within Gasunie are presented based on the different elements (knowledge of goals, knowledge of customer demands, challenging goals, education and training, teamwork, recognition, informal feedback) of Juhl and colleagues (1997). Of major importance are the findings about the influence of these
empowerment conditions on the perception of empowerment. Together these findings should give an answer to sub question 3: How do different empowerment conditions influence the perception of empowerment at Gasunie?
4.4.1 Changes in work
questions immediately, they can do their work more efficiently, as the following opinion shows:
“The only change is that I am physically moved towards the department I work for (…) I perceive it as something positive that I can hear what is happening all the time and I can pick up signals earlier. It makes my work easier”
Three respondents reacted their task responsibilities are broadened. For two respondents, this is a small change, but they appreciated these changes because they feel more involved within the whole organization. For the third, a respondent with managerial tasks, the responsibilities were broadened from being an advisor for the management board, to become responsible for the realisation of these advises.
4.4.2 Empowerment conditions
Below the findings are presented per condition (independent variable)of Juhl and colleagues (1997).
Knowledge of goals
Respondents recognize this within Gasunie. A lot of information is on hand via intranet, work meetings at their department, and town hall meetings of the board of directors. They keep informed about the goals of the organization. In their opinion this is important for
empowerment.
Respondents know what Gasunie stands for and what the company goals are. They know what they work for, the higher purpose. The work they do is meaningful to them, as can been seen in the findings of the psychological approach. They feel part of Gasunie en argue that their job has added value to Gasunie. Knowledge of the Gasunie goals helps them to feel part of the company and to feel meaningful as an employee of Gasunie.
“I feel responsible for Gasunie and my job is part of Gasunie. I am proud when Gasunie achieves her goals, and that motivates me (…) I contributed to that; that is important for me.”
Knowledge of customer demands
In general this is something respondents recognize within Gasunie. They are aware of what their customers want and vice versa. They also think this is important for empowerment.
Because the respondents are aware of what their customers want, they can specify their products and deliver services which fit the demand of their customers. In this way they can deliver the demanded services and products and this result in a feeling of being competent for the job. “Even when new tasks come up, I can handle it”, is a comment given by respondents that illustrates this. It seems the condition ‘knowledge of customer demands’ influences the perception of competence, an element of the psychological empowerment approach.
Challenging goals
Opinions about this element differ. Half of the respondents has and sees challenging goals within Gasunie. The other half does not see them or argue they have to create them
themselves. Another opinion is, when you are working in the regional locations or working part time, few challenging goals are present. They all think it is important for empowerment to have challenging goals.
Half of the respondents does not perceive challenging goals, and it seems this influences their perception about the organizational climate empowerment element ‘autonomy through
boundaries’, because they feel there are not much challenges and therefore they do not feel highly autonomous. The other half feels like they have to create the challenging goals
themselves. If they try to create challenging goals themselves, them comment it feels like they broaden their autonomy, is their comment.
Education and training
This is broadly recognized. Education and training, if relevant, is always possible within Gasunie. The respondents agree about the importance for empowerment, because you have to keep developing (yourself).
“I need to possess the essential skills and knowhow of my field, and if I or my manager thinks any knowhow is missing, I can always go on a training, and therefore I feel competent to do my job”
Therefore it seems the empowerment condition ‘education and training’ influences the psychological empowerment element ‘competence’.
Teamwork
Respondents do recognize this, but state there is a lot of room for improvement. At the moment different departments or units are showing a lack of effective teamwork, working at criss purposes; they all have their own interests and procedures. However, another opinion is that there is too much teamwork. This slows down processes; everybody has a say about something.
Working together with other employees from different organizational units is difficult
according to the respondents. They feel dependent on the procedures of their own department but also on those of other departments.
“(…) cooperating with different departments is not always easy. Everyone has their own role, and the different standards and procedures of the departments do not help to easily reach consensus. This prevents effective teamwork.”
Besides, if they want to change, to do something or to implement something, they always have to rely on other people who have a say about that topic too. This leads to not feeling autonomous; there are too much boundaries (the procedures) and other people with a say. It seems the lack of effective teamwork (empowerment condition) influence not feeling highly autonomous (a organizational climate empowerment element).
Recognition
A small group of respondents feels recognition, but most respondents do not perceive (a lot of) recognition for their tasks or activities. Respondents think this is a very important aspect for empowerment.
Informal feedback
Because respondents argued that informal feedback is related to recognition, and because this recognition is not perceived by most respondents (see above), they stated they do not perceive (a lot of) informal feedback within Gasunie either. They would like to see this happening more often, but they think this is not in line with the culture of Gasunie. For effective empowerment, they consider it important.
There are no findings which show the empowerment condition ‘informal feedback’ does influence the organizational climate and/or psychological empowerment elements.
Extra condition
Besides the elements from literature, respondents mentioned also other elements. An element mentioned as important for empowerment is an internal drive. Empowered employees should have the competency entrepreneurship and at the same time make pace in their work and processes. But a common heard argument is that respondents think a coaching style of
leadership is important to get the best out of the employees and to motivate them. They also
think ‘recognition and informal feedback’ are part of a coaching style of leadership. “If my
manager coaches me more, I will receive more feedback about doing my tasks”. The
respondents would appreciate this.
Respondents think if management coaches the employees to take own responsibilities, the employees can act as a self-directed team (part of ‘team accountability’ of the organizational climate empowerment element). Findings of the respondents working at regional locations support this idea. Managers of the regional locations coached the employees to take own responsibilities, and this finally resulted in employees who can work in self-directed teams. As long as those employees can do find out how to do things themselves, the manager does not interrupt or controls that process: “(…) As long as we deliver good results, they do not step into our process”.
Besides, respondents think a coaching style of leadership will limit the control aspect of managers, and therefore the respondents think they will perceive more ‘impact’
“It is al about trusting each other, we can make known if we see improvements or if we recognize processes that could go wrong; a kind of internal control. That feels like having impact”.
4.4.3. Conclusion: influence of empowerment conditions on empowerment elements The existence or the absence of empowerment conditions seems to have an influence on the perception of empowerment by the controllers of Gasunie. The existence of the empowerment conditions ‘knowledge of goals’, ‘knowledge of customer demands’ and ‘education and training’ has an influence on the perception of some of the psychological empowerment elements: namely ‘meaningfulness’ and ‘competence’. Besides, the lack of the conditions ‘challenging goals’, ‘teamwork’ and ‘recognition and feedback’ led to not perceiving the organizational climate empowerment element ‘autonomy through boundaries’. This implies a relationship between some of the empowerment conditions and the perception of some empowerment elements at Gasunie. An overview is provided in Table 5, which makes clear the existence of certain empowerment conditions lead to the perception of empowerment elements and opposite, the lack of empowerment conditions lead to not perceiving certain empowerment elements.
TABLE 5
Influence of empowerment condition on perception empowerment element
TABLE 6
Extra empowerment condition
In the Gasunie case it seems that different empowerment conditions facilitate or impede certain empowerment elements. If the conditions are present they have a positive influence on the perception of empowerment elements (so they facilitate empowerment). If the conditions are missing, it results in not perceiving the empowerment elements (so they impede
empowerment). This study did not prove a direct relation between the different empowerment conditions, but it did prove that all the different conditions should exist to positive influence (facilitate) the elements to perceive empowerment. The elements ‘self determination’ and ‘shared-felt accountability’ are perceived without the existence of empowerment conditions. ‘Information sharing’ is the only empowerment element which is not influenced by
empowerment conditions, neither perceived without. These findings resulted in a new conceptual model (Figure 2), specified for the current situation of Gasunie.
FIGURE 2
5. DISCUSSION
In the introduction was mentioned in order to adapt to outside pressures, the introduction of employee empowerment is necessary (Forrester, 2000). Gasunie has to adapt to the mentioned pressures and this was the reason they introduced empowerment as an element of their change program. But even if empowerment practices are provided to employees, they can still feel disempowered (Spreitzer, 2007). Therefore it is important to find out if the nature of empowerment is perceived by employees, as already mentioned in the introduction, and which empowerment conditions have an influence on this. This section will discuss the results of the perception of empowerment, it will give a conclusion and will provide
recommendations. Thereafter the strengths and limitations of this study will be discussed. This chapter will end with implications for further research.
5.1 Discussion of results
Respondents stated nothing really has changed in their work tasks, work activities or area of responsibilities, which is remarkable. Interesting is however, respondents do feel intrinsic motivated, as they scored high on the elements of the psychological approach of
empowerment.
5.1.1 Perceived empowerment
That no major changes are perceived can be seen in the findings about the organizational climate approach. This approach is about information sharing, autonomy through boundaries and team accountability. The respondents do not receive a lot of information because they have to collect it themselves, but this is part of the nature of their jobs. Instead of receiving autonomy, they just perceive a higher workload and more procedures. This can be declared by the argument of Randolph (1995), although after successful empowerment less structure is necessary, during implementation more structure is needed. Empowerment has been
The respondents working at the headquarters reacted positive to the psychological elements, but do not feel empowered. According to Argyris (1998), it can be possible that there are different levels of commitment within an organization. He states “employees have no trouble understanding the need to keep within bounds” (Argyris, 1998, p.100), therefore they can feel committed, but within the bounds of the organization they do not perceive empowerment (Argyris, 1998). The physical move of the respondents towards their customers led to a feeling of involvement, which could explain the higher results on the psychological approach. Opinions of respondents who argued within Gasunie there is a culture of ‘controlling is better than trusting’, indicates empowerment sounds good in theory, but managers trust their
command-and-control model best. This is also mentioned by Argyris (1998, p.99), who calls this phenomenon “The emperor's new clothes: we praise it loudly in public and ask ourselves privately why we can’t see it. There has been no transformation in the workforce”.
This controlling culture, which was mentioned by respondents, can be explained by the theory of Eccles (1993). He mentioned some circumstances prevent empowerment. Gasunie has a lot of stakeholders, like government, media, other related organizations, general public, staff, and has to act very discrete because of this, and needs at least tacit approval. Therefore Gasunie needs to be very consistent in the application of rules and this leads to rule-drift. That is the reason why empowerment is difficult to arrange (Eccles, 1993). The environment is not empowering; “this is not a milieu in which individuals can aspire to self-governance” (Argyris, 1998, p.102).
5.1.2 Conditions for effective empowerment
An explanation for not feeling empowered could be due to the lack of empowerment conditions of Juhl and colleagues (1997), which are necessary for empowerment. This is in line with the conceptual model of this study; there is a relation between the existence of empowerment conditions and the perception of empowerment. ‘Challenging goals’, ‘teamwork’, ‘recognition’ and ‘informal feedback’ are conditions which are not (highly or positive) recognized within Gasunie by respondents. These conditions are company-wide conditions, while empowerment is just introduced at one level of the whole organization. In principle, it is said everyone should participate to create empowerment in an organization (Agyris, 1998). In reality this is unrealistic; you can not allow all employees to participate in self-governance, although within Gasunie, there were 32 controllers and almost 1700
departments, and therefore it is not remarkable not increasing empowerment in the whole organization obstruct increasing empowerment at one level.
The respondents also added an extra condition which they considered necessary for
empowerment: a coaching style of leadership. Ford & Fottler (1995) recognize this because they state that if empower practices are introduced, the degree of employee’s involvement and empowerment may increase as management becomes more comfortable with shared decision making and employees get more used or trained to make decisions (Ford & Fottler, 1995). Therefore this element is also important for empowerment within Gasunie.
5.1.3 Conclusion
The main research question of this research is: What is necessary for Gasunie employees to
perceive empowerment and which empowerment conditions influence this perception? In the
findings was presented Gasunie is an organization with a culture of control, in order to transport their gas safely. Therefore empowerment, which is the opposite of control, could be difficult to implement. But respondents within the regional locations do feel empowered. These regional locations can be taken as an example of how to set up work, how to create self-directed teams and how to give responsibilities to lower level employees. It is necessary to focus on the organizational climate empowerment elements. Because the perception of the psychological empowerment perception on its own did not provide an empowered feeling, it seems the perception of the organizational climate approach is necessary for perceiving empowerment. Besides, all conditions mentioned by Juhl and colleagues (1997) were considered important, but the conditions which are especially important to increase and further implement empowerment within Gasunie, are:
- Challenging goals for employees: keep creating goals and give impact to employees - Teamwork: create self-directed teams, avoid compartmentalization, do not cooperate
with everybody but keep it to those who are most involved
- Recognition & informal feedback: speak to each other about faults, about ambiguities but especially about what went good and what do you appreciate about that, this all on a regular basis.
5.1.4 Recommendations
In order to introduce changes in conditions of empowerment to realize effective
empowerment, the stages of organizational change according to Mintzberg & Westley (1992) can be followed. They describe four stages from a broad level towards a narrow level. These are: culture, structure, systems and people. This implies Gasunie needs to change their culture of control first, before it can change structure, systems and finally empower people.
Culture
Schein (1985) in Järvenpäa (2007, p.107) describes organizational culture as: “a net, which is woven around deep basic assumptions, beliefs, understanding, sense making and values shared by people of an organization”. Pool (2000, p.373) suggests that “organizational culture provides the foundation for an organization’s management system”. In order to change
towards a more coaching style of leadership instead of a controlling culture, the culture and related management system should be part of a change. Cultural change can be either top-down or bottom-up (Killman, Saxton & Serpa, 1986), but a feasible approach is to first implement culture change at the norm level (top-down approach), followed by implementing change at the deeper level, so change will be sustained. Finally a participative approach (bottom-up) can fine-tune the change to the circumstances of each work unit. A very
important aspect is corporate culture, ‘the missing link to moving forward in today's world’, has to be managed (Killman and colleagues, 1986). Due to the environment of Gasunie and the safety requirements within the organization, as described earlier, there is a sense of control necessary. A recent study of Huang (2012, p.327) shows participative management (which is merely the same as a coaching style of leadership as described by the respondents of this study) “has been considered an effective way to provide employees with a stronger sense of control and motivation”. This implies the employees can have the sense of control themselves, instead of being controlled. Therefore it is possible to change the culture and management style towards more participative and coaching and at the same time keep the control aspect, necessary for the organization. A way to do this is to implement a decentralised decision making structure, because the opposite, a centralised decision making structure prevent employees from seeing participative leadership as a way to develop more autonomy at work (Huang, 2012). A guideline for participative leadership is provided in Table 7, Appendix E.
Structure
about shifting the portfolio of strategic positions. During the change program of Gasunie, the company restructured their organizational structure and introduced a ‘business unit structure’ to respond quicker to changes in the external environment and to operate more efficient. With these changes, they already changed their business in such a way every unit can take own responsibilities and in this way it is also possible to bring these responsibilities to employees lower in hierarchy of that particular unit.
Systems
The next step is to redesign systems and procedures to set the conditions for effective empowerment. The first condition which is important for Gasunie: challenging goals for employees. To create these, three elements are of great importance according to Locke and Latham (2002). First, it is important that employees are committed to their goals. This can be reached by creating importance; it should be convincing that the goal is important. To assign such goals and to involve employees, it is important to allow subordinates to participate in setting these goals (Locke & Latham, 2002). Self-efficacy is also important for gaining commitment of employees (Locke & Latham, 2002). Self-efficacy is part of the competence element of the psychological approach, and this was rated well by respondents, which implies the desired stage of self-efficacy is already reached. Feedback is the second important
element. If people do not know how their performance is, it is difficult or impossible for them to adjust the level or direction of their effort or to match what the goal requires (Locke & Latham, 2002). The last important element is task complexity. “As the complexity of the task increases and higher level skills and strategies have yet to become automatized, goal effects are dependent on the ability to discover appropriate task strategies” (Locke & Latham, 2002, p.709).
The last condition is recognition and feedback. The individual feedback orientation of employees and managers depends on the feedback climate; a feedback culture. “A strong feedback culture is one where individuals continuously receive, solicit, and use formal and informal feedback to improve job performance” (London & Smither, 2002, p.84). To create a feedback culture three themes with related interventions and practices are of great importance. These are quality of feedback, importance of feedback in the organization, and support for using feedback (London & Smither, 2002). The practices and interventions can be founded in Table 8, Appendix E. The respondents of this study related feedback to recognition. This implies that if (positive) feedback will be improved, they also perceive more recognition.
People
Finally, at the most concrete level, Gasunie can change jobs or people. If the culture has changed and conditions important for empowerment are implemented, it is possible to empower employees. If the elements of the organizational climate approach, psychological approach and conditions for empowerment are adopted, employees would also perceive empowerment.
5.2 Strengths and limitations
There is limited knowledge about the employee’s perspective about empowerment, and especially research results are lacking. This study contributes to broaden the knowledge of the employee’s perspective: more is known about how employees perceive empowerment and which empowerment conditions are of major importance to actually perceive empowerment. By asking employees themselves about their visions and feelings, a broader view about the perception of empowerment is gained. Therefore this study shows just a management view of empowerment does not give a complete overview and this is a strength of this study. In combination with the use of multiple measures (organizational climate approach and psychological approach) this study gives a broad view about the employees’ perspective. Although in this study feelings, perceptions and visions about empowerment are discovered, the sample size of 11 respondents does not provide empirical evidence, and therefore results cannot be validated. But the fairly heterogeneous sample, in terms of tenure, gender and age, does give a good overview for Gasunie.
