International Review of Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 1991, Vol. 6 - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0471928194 ISBN 13: 9780471928195

Publisher: Wiley, 1991

Synopsis

Composed of a series of annual volumes, it offers state-of-the-art reviews in the field of industrial and organizational psychology. Topics include psychological aspects of major organizational restructuring; methodological issues in personnel selection research; health, well-being and working women; measuring performance; the role of industrial and organizational psychology in developing countries and more. A sizable list of key references is also provided.

About this title

About the Author

Cary L. Cooper, CBE is Distinguished Professor of Organizational Psychology and Health and Pro Vice Chancellor at Lancaster University. He is the author of over 100 books, has written over 400 scholarly articles for academic journals, and is a frequent contributor to national newspapers, TV and radio. Cary is the Editor on the international journal 'Stress and Health' and President of the British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy.

Ivan T. Robertson is founder and former Managing Director of Robertson Cooper Ltd., and Professor at the University of Leeds, Fellow Member at The British Psychological Society and Professor at The University of Manchester.

From the Back Cover

This is the sixteenth in the most prestigious series of annual volumes in the field of industrial and organizational psychology. The series provides authoritative and integrative reviews of the key literature of industrial psychology and organizational behaviour. The chapters are written by established experts and the topics are carefully chosen to reflect the major concerns in the research literature and in current practice.
This sixteenth volume continues to provide coverage of emergent issues such as: Age and Work Behaviour; Organizational Attraction and Job Choice; The Psychology of Strategic Management, Vacations and Other Respites; Cross-Cultural Industrial/Organisational Psychology; International Uses of Selection Methods; Domestic and International Relocation for Work; Understanding the Assessment Centre Process. Each chapter offers a comprehensive and critical survey of a chosen topic, and each is supported by a valuable bibliography. For advanced students and managers this remains the most authoritative and current guide to developments and established knowledge in the field of industrial and organizatonal psychology.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

International Review of Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 1991

By Hoel Cooper

John Wiley & Sons

Copyright © 1991 Hoel Cooper
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9780471928195

Chapter One

EMPOWERMENT AND PERFORMANCE

Toby D. Wall, Stephen J. Wood, and Desmond J. Leach Institute of Work Psychology, University of Sheffield, UK

INTRODUCTION

In the last decade the notion of empowerment has become popular in I/O psychology and management circles. Its currency among practitioners can be illustrated by the view of a CEO who stated that 'No vision, no strategy can be achieved without able and empowered employees' (cited in Argyris, 1998, p. 98). Concurrently, a survey based on a representative sample of 564 UK manufacturing companies (Waterson, Clegg, Bolden, Pepper, Warr, & Wall, 1999) showed that, although only 23% reported using empowerment extensively, 72% had adopted empowerment initiatives to at least some degree, had done so within the last few years, and had planned to develop them further.

Similar rates of adoption have been reported in Japan, Australia and Switzerland (Clegg, Wall, Pepper, Stride, Woods, Morrison et al., 2002), and in the USA (Lawler, Mohrman, & Ledford, 1998). Evidence of the continued increase in the use of empowerment in the UK comes from a study by Wood, Stride, Wall, and Clegg (2003). They followed up on the companies in Waterson et al.'s (1999) manufacturing sample four years later, and found that the proportion using empowerment extensively had nearly doubled. They also found more use of empowerment in service organizations than in manufacturing ones. Hardy and Lieba-O'Sullivan's (1998) verdict that 'the popularity of this latest approach led some writers to hail the 1990s as the "empowerment era" (p. 452) extends into the new millennium.

Fenton-O'Creevy (1995) notes that 'prior to its adoption as a management term, the word empowerment was most often used in such fields as politics, social work, feminist theory, and Third World aid ... to mean providing individuals (usually disadvantaged) with the tools and resources to further their own interests' (p. 155). Within I/O psychology and management, empowerment typically has a more restricted meaning. It is used to denote the enhancement of employees' autonomy in their work, or increased involvement and influence in decision-making more generally, within the wider agenda and interests of the organization. Thus it loses the emphasis on empowerment furthering employees' own interests, though many assume they value greater empowerment. In other words empowerment involves 'moving decision-making authority down the (traditional) organizational hierarchy' (Menon, 2001, p. 156). Empowerment is a generic construct that can encompass a family of different initiatives, and can apply at all levels within the organization from shop floor to middle and relatively senior management (see also Robbins, Crino, & Fedendall, 2002).

Four main perspectives on empowerment are evident, each of which has its own distinctive literature. One is that of psychological empowerment (e.g., Conger & Kanungo, 1988; Thomas & Velthouse, 1990), where the emphasis is on individual cognitions of self-determination, competence, and related constructs. This is an experiential or subjective perspective, concerned with how empowered employees feel.

In contrast, the remaining three perspectives on empowerment are more directly rooted in the autonomy or influence afforded by the environment within which people work, and collectively are thus sometimes described as 'situational' or 'structural' forms of empowerment (see Spreitzer, 1995a). The second we shall call role empowerment to reflect the fact that it focuses on the delegation of added responsibility to individuals or groups for the execution and management of their own primary tasks. This is what London (1993) defines as 'ensuring the employee has the authority to do his or her job' (p. 57). Examples include job enrichment and self-managing work teams.

The third perspective, organizational empowerment, encompasses the involvement or representation of employees in decision-making within the wider enterprise. Examples include consultation and participation, styles of management fostering these, as well as representation on bodies such as management boards and through trade unions. Such practices have been rather neglected in the I/O literature in recent times, but they have been more prominent in the management and industrial relations fields.

The final perspective that we identify we call embedded empowerment. This refers to initiatives in which role or organizational empowerment is a core component within a wider framework. The topical example on which we will focus is work on human resource management (HRM). This is concerned with the effects of the HRM system as a whole, within which, role and organizational empowerment typically play a central role alongside other factors, such as investment in selection and training. Such systems are often labelled accordingly (e.g., 'high involvement management') (Wood, 1999).

In this chapter we critically review evidence relating to each of these four perspectives on empowerment as they bear upon performance at work. We use the term performance to denote the achievement of the primary economic task (e.g., output in manufacturing, volume in sales). We do not include broader considerations such as employee welfare or social and environmental responsibility, as represented within the more general 'balanced score card' approach (e.g., Daft, 1998). The focus on economic performance, however, means that the outcome differs according to the perspective on the empowerment in question. Thus for psychological and role empowerment, performance is typically concerned with job or team output; whereas for organizational and embedded empowerment the focus is on the performance of the organization as a whole in terms of such measures as productivity, profit, or return on assets. We conclude by attempting to integrate findings from the four perspectives on empowerment and to identify issues for future research and practice. First, however, to set the scene, we offer a brief history of empowerment research and an outline of the wider socio-political influences affecting interest in the topic.

EMPOWERMENT RESEARCH: A BRIEF HISTORY IN CONTEXT

It is only recently that the term empowerment has become popular, and arguments could be mounted about the distinctiveness of some contemporary approaches (such as psychological empowerment). However, as most commentators observe (e.g., Arnold, Arad, Rhoades, & Drasgow, 2000), interest in situational empowerment, and especially in role empowerment, has a long history. The study of psychology and management in work settings developed in the early part of the 20th century, against the backdrop of scientific management (Taylor, 1911). That approach focused on role disempowerment by promoting narrowly defined, low discretion jobs, and the concentration of decision-making in the upper reaches of the management hierarchy. Although scientific management brought immediate productivity benefits, there was concern about the longer term value, and particularly about the social and psychological costs of the resultant work simplification. During the 1920s criticism of the practice was voiced in political circles on both sides of the Atlantic (Rose, 1978). Consequently, much early investigation, such as that funded by the Industrial Fatigue Research Board in the UK, was devoted to investigating its effects on employee well-being (Wall & Martin, 1987). That research helped create and shape the field of study that was to become I/O psychology in the US and occupational psychology in the UK. It led to recommendations for broadening the range of tasks within jobs and, less noticeably at first, for devolving more authority to job holders. This gave rise to interest in role empowerment in the form of job redesign, as the antithesis of scientific management or work simplification.

The subsequent history of I/O psychology and related fields reveals persistent advocacy of empowerment, albeit in a variety of different forms and levels of analysis. As Wilkinson (1998) notes, elements of role empowerment are evident within the human relations movement prominent in the 1920s and 1930s, inspired by Elton Mayo's Hawthorne studies. Those studies involved field experiments on the effects of work conditions (e.g., hours of work and payment incentives) on performance (Roethlisberger & Dickson, 1939). Unexpectedly, the investigators found performance benefits not only when they improved work conditions but also when they subsequently reduced them. This led to the conclusion that the process of experimenting had empowered employees in that 'supervision was free and easy, the operatives were able to set their own work pace [and that it was] an increased involvement in the job [that] was reflected in a steady improvement in production' (Warr & Wall, 1975, p. 30). The human relations movement in turn encouraged a broadening of the perspective to include empowerment within work groups, leadership style, and wider oganizational structures. For example, that movement was soon followed by the development of socio-technical systems theory in the UK (e.g., Trist & Bamforth, 1951) that promoted role empowerment at the team level, through the advocacy of autonomous working groups (now variously called semi-autonomous, self-managing, or empowered groups or work teams (see Arnold et al., 2000, p. 249)). Commensurate with their respective cultures, the work group emphasis that emerged especially in the UK was paralleled by a continuation of the more individualistic approach in the US, where Herzberg (1966) advanced his two-factor, or motivation-hygiene, theory of work design. He coined the term 'job enrichment' to reflect its advocacy of increasing individual employee autonomy and responsibility. The same term was subsequently adopted by Hackman and Oldham (1976), whose Job Characteristics Model led to similar recommendations for job design.

There were parallel developments with respect to organizational empowerment. Pursuing the human relations theme of the role of leadership style, McGregor (1960) contrasted 'Theory X' (Taylorism) with 'Theory Y' (empowering) management approaches, recommending the latter as a means of enhancing performance. Likewise, Likert (1961), focusing on 'new patterns of management', compared System I, defined in terms of close control and lack of delegation, with systems II, III, and IV, representing progressively greater empowerment. The focus of empowerment had broadened from the work role of the employee or work group towards a more inclusive approach, and from enhanced autonomy and authority over the immediate work to include participative forms of leadership and management.

The interest in organizational empowerment gained further momentum in the 1960s, fuelled by national and international political initiatives. In the UK, for example, the tenor of the times was captured by the Report of the Royal Commission on Trade Unions and Employee Associations (Royal Commission, 1968), which states 'the right to representation in decisions affecting [work] is, or should be, the prerogative of every worker in a democratic society' (paragraph 212). Similarly, the Trades Union Congress (TUC) report to that Royal Commission recommended: 'provision should be made at each level in the management structure for ... representatives of the work people employed in these industries to participate in the formulation of policy and in the day to day operation of these industries' (TUC, 1966, p. 262). Within Western Europe more generally, the Draft Fifth Directive of the European Economic Community (EEC, now the European Union, EU) recommended a representative system at board level within companies. As Towers (1973) observed, 'Over the last few years powerful socio-cultural, political and industrial pressures have coalesced to articulate themselves into a widespread demand for greater participation and democratization' (p. 7). In Western Europe that was reflected in research on industrial democracy and participation (e.g., Emery & Thorsrud, 1969; Poole, 1986). In the US interest did not expand from role to organizational empowerment to the same extent, with attention to the latter largely restricted to more general notions of participative decision-making (e.g., Locke & Schweiger, 1979) and employee 'voice' (e.g., Freeman & Medoff, 1984).

Arguably, the period from around 1980 to the early 1990s saw a lull in the interest in empowerment. With the election of Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister in the UK, there was legislation to restrict organizational empowerment through trade unions, and 'managers' right to manage' became a slogan. In Europe, the Draft Fifth Directive was never enacted. There was a retreat from empowerment philosophies. As Wilkinson (1998) notes, 'The rhetoric of enterprise moved to the right in Western Europe and the USA' (p. 42).

Nonetheless, advocacy of empowerment did not disappear, especially within the popular management literature, and developments since have served to renew interest. As Wilkinson (1998) argues, Peters and Waterman's (1982) best-selling book, In Search of Excellence, 'was influential in laying the foundation for the modern empowerment movement' (p. 42), and promoted interest in empowerment as a core element of total quality management (Wilkinson, Marchington, Ackers, & Goodman, 1992). Empowerment is implicit in various concepts that were gaining ground in the 1980s, such as post-Fordism, flexible specialization, de-bureaucratization, delayering and decentralization, as reflected in prescriptive management approaches promoted by such writers as Drucker (1988) and Kanter (1989). Influential books making the case for an empowerment approach (e.g., Lawler, 1992; Pfeffer, 1994), together with new developments on psychological and embedded empowerment (the latter suggesting that HRM systems that include empowering practices are associated with superior organizational performance relative to more traditional personnel systems), have helped keep the issue on the policy and research agenda.

In addition to the above, two further factors are important in explaining why the topic of empowerment periodically resurfaces with renewed vigor. The first of these is the development of new technologies, and computer-based ones in particular, that raise questions about how empowered users should be. Although such technology was initially seen by some (e.g., Braverman, 1974) as posing a threat to empowerment at the job level, others saw a need to empower users in order to realize its full potential and achieve flexible production (e.g., Piore & Sabel, 1983; Susman & Chase, 1986). The second factor is that, by the 1990s, downturns in the economic climate made downsizing and delayering increasingly common.



Continues...

Excerpted from International Review of Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 1991by Hoel Cooper Copyright © 1991 by Hoel Cooper. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Edition details

• Publisher: Wiley
• Publication date: 1991
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0471928194
• ISBN 13: 9780471928195
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 412
• Editor: Cooper Cary, Robertson Ivan T.