More than lip service: linking the intensity of empowerment initiatives to individual well-being and performance

Abstract

We conceptualize empowerment initiatives as varying in terms of intensity – or the degree to which the intervention is rhetorical (aiming to influence employees' sense of control at work, what we refer to as surface empowerment) as opposed to actual (aiming to influence the actual degree of employee job authority, what we refer to as deep empowerment). We then test the effects of rhetorical vs. actual empowerment interventions on employee well-being and performance, as well as the degree to which self-efficacy mediates these effects on the basis of a simulation-based experiment. Results indicate that although both surface and deep empowerment initiatives have beneficial effects on individual well-being, only the latter results in performance increase. We also find that self-efficacy fully mediates the association between surface empowerment (as compared with non-empowerment) and well-being, but only partially mediates the association between deep empowerment (as compared with non-empowerment) and well-being.

Keywords:

• employee well-being
• empowerment
• performance
• self-efficacy

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to the following individuals for their comments on earlier versions of this article: Professor Ido Erev, Michael Sisselman, Professor Gretchen Spreitzer, Professor Ward Whitt, and two anonymous reviewers. The authors also wish to thank Mickey Horowitz-Rozen for her assistance in data collection.

Notes

1. Complete results for this analysis will be provided upon request from the first author.