Empowerment as a tool for increasing followers contribution

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Empowerment

Cameron & Whetten (2011, p443) defines empowerment as “…providing freedom for people to do successfully what they want to do, rather than getting them to do what you want them to do”. The word power has different meanings, it can be authority, capacity or it can also have the meaning of energy (Thomas & Velthouse, 1990). Employee empowerment could be explained as ´the giving of power´ where one person is sharing the power and control with someone who has less power (Wilson, 2010). Participation and employee involvemen are two common terms within leadership and follower perspectives where empowerment takes it even further, by being a way of developing conditions at the workplace where power is shared and circulated (Wilson, 2010). Research about empowerment has indicated positive development for individuals as well as organizations (Amundsen & Martinsen, 2015). A work environment where empowerment is used in, is where employees make their own goals, decisions, receive rewards and accomplish results (Cameron & Whetten, 2011).
Bartol & Zhang (2010) describes how important empowerment is to make followers feel confident about their capabilities and performance. Amundsen & Martinsen (2015) continues in the same track as they speak of empowerment and its link to psychological leadership.
Amundsen & Martinsen (2015) describe how empowerment has a link to intrinsictask motivation, and that can be linked with how people (in this context, the follower) learn to lead themselves in order to keep motivated and accomplish tasks more effectively. An intrinsic motivation can be explained as to what extent a person is motivated and puts effort into finish a task for the sake of the task itself. In other words, it is the difference between what a person can do and will do (Bartol et.al, 2010). In this way it could be said that intrinsic motivation would be a “pull” of the task rather than the “push” from the leadership which in turn would give the follower a sense of meaningfulness toward performing the task (Thomas et al, 1990).
Strategically speaking, empowerment is an intrinsic way of motivating followers (Amundsen & Martinsen, 2015). In the ever growing competitiveness among businesses in today’s society, empowerment has become “…the key to unlocking the potential of a successful workforce in an era of chaotic change and escalating competitive conditions” (Cameron & Whetten, 2001, p 445). Wilson (2010) also mentions motivation and involvement and states that ´high involvement´ occurs when the employee with lowest involvement get a sense of involvement at the workplace, since the information on performance is shared and where followers have both the skills and power to act and go beyond their positions and get rewarded for it (Wilson, 2010).
An empowering leadership style will lead to a state of psychological empowerment among followers (Bartol et al, 2010). Psychological empowerment can be said to be an experienced psychological state of cognitions or heightening feelings of employee’s self-efficacy (Bartol et al, 2010). Within psychological empowerment there are four elements that needs to be fulfilled in order for psychological empowerment climate to increase (Bartol et al., 2010).
These elements are meaningfulness, competence, self-determination and impact. The increase in performance depends on the fulfilment of these elements for the followers (Wallace & Johnson, 2011). In other words, followers that feel that they have the capability to perform in a way that can have an impact on the organization are motivated to do so. Em7 powerment and the state of psychological empowerment climate seems to provide this feeling (Allen, Chen, Kanfer, Kirkman, 2007).
Risks with using empowerment is something that need to be taken into account. Some of the issues faced when using this type of tool is that as followers get empowered, they can take wrong decisions when facing new problems. (Wilson, 2010) Also, do the accountability of the decisions taken create insecurity for the followers in the bottom of the hierarchy, thus making them feel less positive towards empowerment? This since they usually are less likely to feel the positive effects of empowerment (Wilson, 2010). On the other hand this is usually the opposite when it comes to followers higher up in the hierarchy, as they usually feel more inspired by empowerment since they also experience the positive effects by using it. (Wilson, 2010). It can be time consuming and expensive to implement empowerment and it is not unusual to face resistance from the middle managers since they can feel that their prerogatives is threatened (Wilson, 2010).

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Motivation

The term motivation is a theoretical construction related to understand people’s behavior based on characteristics such as willingness and volition (Cameron & Whetten, 2011). Theories covering motivation are most often built on assumptions that motivation is based on needs. This means that if there is a need, one will get motivated to fulfill the need (Wilson,2010). Motivation and more specifically human behavior are complex. According to Wilson (2010), motivation is where a human, as a rational person, will weigh up the extra effort for the greater reward, whether or not the reward is worth it. Motivational factors and job satisfaction are closely related since they affect each other. In order to be successful, it is important for companies to be able to motivate subordinates to contribute to company growth. Therefore, to be able to motivate subordinates and understand what motivates them is of great importance for leaders (Cameron & Whetten, 2011).

1 Introduction
1.1 Background
1.2 Problem
1.3 Purpose
1.4 Definitions
1.5 Delimitations
2 Theoretical Framework
2.1 Followers
2.2 Empowerment
2.3 Motivation
2.4 Job satisfaction
2.5 Herzberg’s theory
2.6 Maslow’s hierarchy of need
2.7 Summary of theoretical framework
3 METHOD & DATA
3.1 Methodology
3.2 Method
3.3 Interviews
3.4 Data Analysis
3.5 Quality of Study
3.6 Summary of Method & Data
4 Empirical findings
5 Analysi
6 Discussion
7 Conclusion
8 References
9 Appendices