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Among the many fashionable management terms, empowerment refers to a change strategy with the objective of improving both the individual’s and the organization’s ability to act. Reviews the various themes of empowerment with particular reference to articles published between 1994‐1996 in the journal Empowerment in Organizations. The main themes are: creating an empowerment culture; empowerment as a management strategy; training and development for empowered employees; empowered teams and implementation techniques and empowerment and organizational change in the hospitality industry.

This paper aims to address an important question of what makes companies succeed or not in their attempt to empower employees. As this study answers this question, the arguments suggest that coordination is essential to creation of employee empowerment climate in organizations.

This is conceptual paper rooted in extensive research on both – empowerment (culture, climate and organizational structure) and coordination (formal and informal).

To help managers to be effective in their roles, this study presents four insights to creating empowerment climate. The arguments conclude that coordination provides a vessel for successful realization of empowerment. Specifically, only informal coordination (vs formal) will fully realize empowerment’s benefits. Given that the topic of empowerment is highly germane to managers in today’s context of the increasing number of employees working remotely, this work presents an important and actionable advance for managers.

This study represents original research that has not been published and is not currently under review at any other journal.

This paper aims to examine the mediating role of job satisfaction in the relationship between psychological empowerment and employee engagement. There is also an investigation of the moderating effect of religiosity on psychological empowerment and job satisfaction as well as job satisfaction and employee engagement.

Data were obtained from 265 employees working in the service industry in Nigeria. The hypotheses were tested and analysed using structural equation modelling and bootstrapping procedure.

The results show that the direct relationship between psychological empowerment and employee engagement was partially mediated by job satisfaction. Intrinsic religiosity (IR) was found to have a moderating effect on job satisfaction and employee engagement. IR and extrinsic religiosity (ER) does not moderate the impact of psychological empowerment on job satisfaction and employee engagement. ER was found to have a negative insignificant moderating effect on job satisfaction and employee engagement.

A cross-sectional study reveals the relationship between variables at one point in a time. As such this study may not precisely predict the dominant pattern of the association over time. Future research can use longitudinal study to establish a dominant pattern of relationships.

This study informs human resource practitioners and scholars by demonstrating that religiosity and job satisfaction are important factors that should be considered in managing and keeping employees engaged.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is among the first atte`mpts to enrich the literature in the fields of psychological empowerment and employee engagement by highlighting organisational mechanisms that amplify the relationship.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how the excellent practice of public relations concerning strategic internal communication may help empower female employees to cope with workplace gender discrimination. It constructs and empirically tests a theoretical model that investigates the role of transparent internal communication on diversity and inclusion in shaping female employees' sense of empowerment, and that empowerment may affect how they cope with such problems in the workplace.

An online survey was conducted with 402 full-time female employees in large-sized organizations in the United States. Structural equation models were conducted to test the proposed measurement model and hypothesized model.

The findings of this study offer support for the proposed model that featuring transparent internal communication regarding workplace gender discrimination increases female employees' empowerment to tackle the problems, which in turn encourages them to adopt problem-focused coping and participate in collective coping behaviors.

Excellent internal communication not only facilitates organization-employee relationships as prior research widely demonstrated, but, according to the findings of this study, also creates a sense of empowerment among female employees, which encourage them to proactively address workplace gender discrimination issue.

Organizations should practice transparent communication regarding diversity and inclusion, ensuring employees receive sufficient information, clear guidelines, and opportunities to voice as well as aim to develop empowerment interventions that help employees address discrimination issues in the workplace.

To the best of the author's knowledge, this study is among the first empirical studies that present the importance of strategic internal communication, particularly transparent communication, in facilitating gender equality in the workplace.

On the basis of the hierarchical organizational structure, this study investigated how empowering leadership influences hotel employees' proactive work behavior through multiple cross-level mediation processes. This study also investigated whether psychological empowerment, positive psychological capital, job characteristics and job embeddedness can activate the linkage of the aforementioned trickle-down effects.

This study draws data from 826 international tourist hotel employees at different times with hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) analyses.

Multiple cross-level mediation analyses indicate that (1) psychological empowerment mediates the cross-level influences of empowering leadership on job characteristics and positive psychological capital; (2) positive psychological capital mediates the cross-level influences of empowering leadership on job embeddedness and proactive work behavior; and (3) job embeddedness mediates the cross-level influences of psychological empowerment and job characteristics on proactive work behavior.

In the post-pandemic era, the valuable trickle-down effects of empowering leadership could spill over into employees' positive beliefs of psychological empowerment, which ultimately benefit working responsibility and organizational operations.

The results support and suggest that maximizing the benefits of empowering leadership could eventually foster proactivity and performance in the workplace under hospitality and tourism settings.

This study aims to examine how empowerment is perceived by individuals employed on construction projects. In contrast with previous research which has predominantly been conducted from a management perspective, this paper deals with employee perceptions of empowerment.

A qualitative approach was adopted for this study employing in‐depth interviews on four major construction projects.

The findings from the study indicate that there can be a gap between the employee experience and the management rhetoric. Health and Safety issues were often cited by the employees as a major barrier to empowerment. The strict Health and Safety regulations under which construction employees operate limit their freedom to influence the work that they undertake. A further factor that was found to have a strong influence on the diffusion of empowerment was the role of the employees’ immediate supervisor.

The data are based on case studies that illuminate our understanding of empowerment in relation to construction projects. This area of research would benefit from alternative research approaches that could establish the generalizability of the findings reported.

This article explores the notion that, as empowerment is a perception, management cannot easily regulate employees’ empowerment. This emphasises the importance of exploring employee perspectives when examining employee empowerment and its impact on workplace relations.

This paper aims to analyze current practices, discuss empowerment from the theoretical perspectives on power in organizations and suggest an empowerment model based on the type of organizational culture and the role of human resource development (HRD).

By reviewing the classic viewpoint of power, Lukes’ three-dimensional power and Foucault’s disciplinary power, we discuss power and empowerment in organizational contexts.

Power in organizations can be conceptualized based on the classic view, Foucault and critical view and Lukes’ three-dimensional power. We found that true employee empowerment is related to the third dimension of power. The role of HRD for empowerment can be categorized into enhancing motivation and commitment in terms of psychological empowerment and bringing real power to employees. The proposed empowerment model assumes that organizational culture influences the dimensions of empowerment and the role of HRD for supporting empowerment.

HRD needs to critically assess the meaning of power in particular contexts (Morrell and Wilkinson, 2002) before planning and implementing specific training and development interventions for performance improvement and/or organization development interventions for innovation.

This study attempts to review, analyze and discuss issues regarding employee empowerment from HRD perspectives. Implications for the roles of HRD and the empowerment model are proposed.

The purpose of this paper is to address current knowledge gaps in off-site sub-element fabrication efficiency factors, by identifying an explicit relationship between productivity and employee empowerment.

The research is based on two engineering fabrication-yard case studies that investigate both qualitatively (via analysis of semi-structured interviews that incorporate a five-point Likert scale, with fabrication-product stakeholders), and also quantitatively (via assessment using SPSS statistical analyses to determine significance and trends in the data-set) the relationship between empowerment and productivity.

The results reveal a positive linear relationship in off-site construction between “employee empowerment factors” and, explicitly fabrication-yard “productivity-levels”. An especially strong and significant positive correlation is found to exist in resource development, worker involvement, process improvement, and task recognition as they refer to off-site construction productivity.

Most academic studies of off-site construction remain largely anecdotal and lack an empirical objective study; as a result, this (fabrication-yard) case-study research provides a useful approach to measure empirically the link between employee empowerment and productivity of off-site construction.

Employee empowerment in the construction industry has long been a focus of analyses; however, there remains a lack of consensus and very few studies into the direct relationship between employee empowerment on the one-hand, and productivity in off-site construction on the other-hand. It is argued here that the on-going new research undertaken in the present study will go beyond subjective opinion towards objective measurement of actual performance in off-site construction.

This paper aims to clarify the meaning of empowerment concept and determine its role in the HRM‐performance linkage.

A survey of 211 customer‐contact employees at 30 upscale hotels in Lithuania was conducted to study organisational empowerment, as a bundle of HRM activities, and its association with employee attitudes and behaviour.

A distinction was made between organisational empowerment, as a bundle of HRM activities, and psychological empowerment, as an employee work‐related attitude, and their role in the HRM‐performance linkage was defined. Organisational empowerment was positively related to psychological empowerment, job satisfaction, and affective commitment. Psychological empowerment and affective commitment were found to mediate the impact of organisational empowerment on customer‐oriented behaviour.

Data were collected in a single industry in Lithuania; therefore, further research in other services needs to be conducted to make generalisations on the applicability of the proposed empowerment‐performance model to other industries.

In the upscale hotel context, where employee turnover reduction and service quality improvement are critical, organisational empowerment can enhance employee job satisfaction, commitment, psychological empowerment and customer‐oriented behaviour.

The paper provides empirical evidence of the positive effect of employee perceived HRM practices (organisational empowerment) on HR‐related performance outcomes ‐ employee attitudes (psychological empowerment, job satisfaction, affective commitment) and customer‐oriented behaviour. Besides the role of empowerment in the HRM‐performance linkage is defined and empirically tested.

This paper aims to test four potential predictors of the behavior of empowered employees during the delivery of service to customers.

A questionnaire measuring employees' perceptions of training, performance‐related rewards, customer‐oriented culture, empowering management style, and empowered behavior was filled out by 356 frontline employees of 16 luxury hotels in seven European countries. These statistical analyses removed common‐method bias.

Results of regression analyses at the department level showed that two means of control – customer‐oriented culture and empowering management style – correlated significantly with empowered behavior.

The survey tool would benefit from further refinement. Creative replications of the survey in different service or hotel settings may benefit service managers, consultants as well as consumers, ultimately.

A direct implication of this study's findings is that in luxury hotel service settings, enhancement to employee empowerment may be achieved through careful management and organizational development. If done well, service enhancements may be within reach.

In prior research, employee empowerment has been identified as an important means to increase customer satisfaction. The present study contributes to a greater and more specific understanding of how employee empowerment can be attained in luxury European hotels.