Topic: Chapter 8: Empowerment and Participation
Subject: Ed. 206 (Human Behavior in Organization)
Chapter Objectives:
To understand:
• The nature of Empowerment
• The idea of Participation
• The participative Process
• Prerequisites for Participation
• Benefits of Participation
• Types of Participative Programs
• Limitations of Participation
THE NATURE OF EMPOWERMENT AND PARTICIPATION
Empowerment is any process that that provides greater autonomy to employees through the sharing of relevant information and the provision of control over factors affecting job performance. Empowerment helps remove the conditions that cause powerlessness while enhancing employee feelings of self- efficacy. Empowerment authorizes employees to cope with situations and enables them to take control of problems as they arise. Five broad approaches to empowerment have been suggested:
1. Helping employees achieve job mastery.
2. Allowing more control.
3. Providing successful role models.
4. Using social reinforcement and persuasion.
5. Giving emotional support.
Managers have many tools available to them to attack the powerlessness problem. Some of these tools such as mutual goal setting, job feedback, modeling and contingent reward systems.
What is Participation
Participation is a mental and emotional involvement of people in group situations that encourages them to contribute to group goals and share responsibility for them. There are three important ideas in this definition- involvement, contribution and responsibility.
Involvement- this means meaningful involvement rather than muscular activity. A person who participates is ego- involved instead of merely task- involved.
Motivation to Contribute- this motivates people to contribute. They are empowered to release their own resources of initiative and creativity toward the objectives of the organization. Participation especially improves motivation by helping employees understand and clarify their paths towards goals. According to path- goal model of leadership, the improved understanding of path- goal relationships produces heightened sense of responsibility for goal attainment. The result is improved motivation.
Acceptance of Responsibility- this is a social process by which people become self- involved in an organization and want to see it work successfully. Participation helps them to become good organizational citizens rather than non- responsible, machinelike performers. The idea of getting the group toward teamwork is a key in developing it into successful work unit.
Why is Participation is Popular
Participative process expedites goals by placing more responsibility at lower levels of the organization and by speeding up the approval process. Participative practices may also provide power opportunities earlier to minority workers in an increasingly diverse workforce, since such workers need not wait until reaching higher organizational levels before being allowed to contribute meaningfully.
Participation also seems to help satisfy the awakening employee need for meaning and fulfillment at work. Meaningful participation can help satisfy those needs.
Benefits of Participation
Participation typically brings higher output and a better quality of output. In certain types of operations the quality improvement alone is worth the time invested in participation. Employees often make suggestions for both the quality and quantity improvements.
Participation tends to improve motivation because employees feel more accepted and involved in the situation. Their self- esteem, job satisfaction and cooperation with management also may improve.. The results often are reduced conflict and stress, more commitment to goals and better acceptance to change. Turnover and absences maybe reduced because employees feel that they have a better place to work and that they are being more successful in their jobs. The act of participation establishes better communication as people mutually discuss work problems. Management tends to provide workers with increased information about the organization’s finance and operations, and this sharing of information allows employees to make better- quality suggestions.
How Participation Works
The Participative Process
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situation |
Outcomes |
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participative programs |
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Involvement |
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* Organization: |
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* mental |
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Higher output |
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*Emotional |
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Better quality |
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Creativity |
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Innovation |
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*Employees |
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Acceptance |
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Self- efficacy |
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Less stress |
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Satisfaction |
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It indicates that in many situations participative programs result in mental and emotional involvement that produces generally favorable outcomes for both the employees and the organization. Participating employees are generally more satisfied with their work and their supervisor, and their self- efficacy rises as a result of their new found empowerment.
The Impact of Managerial Power
Leader- member exchange- it is the process of sharing between the managers and employees. This model suggests that their leaders and their followers develop a somewhat unique reciprocal relationship, with the leader selectively delegating, informing, consulting, mentoring, praising and rewarding each employee. In exchange, each subordinate contributes various degrees of task performance, loyalty and respect to manager. The quality of the relationships varies depending on the balance of the exchanges made, with some employees attaining favored status and others perceiving some unfairness in their treatment. Managerial perceptions are important, too.
Two Views of Power
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Autocratic View |
Participative View |
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Power |
Power |
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• is fixed amount |
• is a variable amount |
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• comes from the authority structure. |
• comes from people through both official and unofficial channels. |
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• is applied by management. |
• is applied by shared ideas and activities in a group. |
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• flows downward. |
• focus in all directions. |
Prerequisites for Participation
1. Adequate time to participate.
2. Potential benefits greater than costs.
3. Relevance to employee interests.
4. Adequate employee abilities to deal with the subjects.
5. Mutual ability to communicate.
6. No feeling of threat to either party.
7. Restriction to the areas of job freedom.
Contingency Factors
Several contingency factors influence the success of participative programs. These may found in the environment, the organization, its leadership, the nature of tasks performed, or the employees.
Differing Employee Needs for Participation
The difference between an employees’ desired and actual participation gives a measure of the potential effectiveness of participation, assuming the employee has t he ability to contribute. When employees want more participation, than they have, they are “participatively deprived” and there is under participation. In the opposite situation, when they have are more participation than they want, they are “participatively saturated” and there is over participation.
Responsibilities of Employees and Manager
Expectations for Employees
• Be fully responsible for their actions and their consequences.
• Operate within the relevant organizational policies.
• Be contributing team members.
• Respect and seek to use the perspectives of others.
• Be dependable and ethical in their empowered actions.
• Demonstrate responsible self- leadership.
Expectations for Managers
• Identifying the issues to be addressed.
• Specifying the level of involvement desired.
• Providing relevant information and training.
• Allocating fair rewards.
Programs for Participation
Suggestion Programs- are formal plans to invite individual employees to recommend work improvements. In most companies the employee whose suggestions results in a cost savings may receive a monetary award in proportion to the first yeas savings.
Quality Emphasis
For many years, union and non- union firms have organized groups of workers and their managers into committees to consider and solve job problems. These groups are called work committees, labor- management committees, work improvement task forces, or involvement teams. They have broad usefulness for improving productivity and communications because most of the employees can be involved. Popular approaches for this purpose are quality circles and total quality management.
Quality Circles
Are voluntary groups that receive training in statistical techniques and problem- solving skills and then meet to produce ideas for improving productivity and working conditions. They expanded rapidly as an involvement technique in the U.S. and Europe after achieving widespread success and popularity in Japan.
The quality approach helps employees feel that they have influence on their organization even if not all their recommendations are accepted by their higher management. It provides opportunities for personal growth, achievement and recognition.
Guidelines to be successful quality circles:
1. Use them for measurable, short term problems.
2. Obtain continuous support from top management.
3. Apply the groups’ skills to problems within the circle’s work area.
4. Train supervisors in facilitation skills.
5. View quality circles as one starting point for other more participative approaches to be used in the future.
Total Quality Management
This approach gets every employee involved in the process of searching for continuous improvements in their operations. This management approach constitutes a formal program with direct participation of all employees. Almost any issue is subject to exploration and the process is a continuing one of long duration. Consequently TQM holds promise as a program in participative management.
Self- Managing Teams
Amore formal version of the group- decision approach and is sometimes called semi- autonomous work groups or sociotechnical teams. These are natural work groups that are given in a large degree of decision- making autonomy; they are expected to control their own behavior and results. A key feature is a diminished role of a manager as a team members learn to acquire new skills.
Employee Ownership Plan
A firm emerges when employees provide the capital purchase control of an existing operation. The stimulus often comes from threatened closings of marginally profitable plants, where workers see little hope of other employment in a devastated local economy. Better management heightened morale and improved productivity.
The use of ownership plans continues to expand,
