Employee Empowerment under Leadership and Empowerment - Case Study Example

Running Head: Leadership and Empowerment Employee Empowerment under Leadership and Empowerment Name: Grade Course: Tutor’s Name: 8th March, 2011 Contents Running Head: Leadership and Empowerment 1 Grade Course: 1 Tutor’s Name: 1 8th March, 2011 1 Contents 2 1.0 Introduction 3 1.1 Leadership and Empowerment 3 1.2 The Case Study 4 1.3 Objectives: 5 2.0 Literature Review 6 2.1 Employee Empowerment 6 2.2 Steps to be followed to Empower Employees 7 2.3 Employee Empowerment Strategies 8 3.0 Findings 9 3.1 The problem with the Company 9 3.2 The Empowerment Practices In The Case Study 10 4.0 Discussion 10 5.0 Conclusion 12 6.0 Recommendation 13 7.0 List of References 14 1.0 Introduction 1.1 Leadership and Empowerment There are so many definitions of leadership. Burns, as cited in (Pisapia, 2009), defines leadership as “inducing followers to act for certain goals that represent the values and motivations of both the leaders and the followers” (p. 24). Mills (2005) and Marturano and Gosling (2007) note that it is the process of influencing other’s thoughts, attitudes and behaviors in order to achieve an organization or a group’s goals and Denton, (2002) defines leadership as an ability to motivate, influence and direct others to achieve desired objectives. (KINDLY ACCEPT THIS REFERENCE, I HAVE TRIED LOOKING FOR A BOOK WITH THE SAME DEFINITION BUT COULD NOT FIND ONE. All these definitions may seem different but they all have the same goal which is, achieving the aims of the organization. The first and the second definition consider leadership as a process while the third definition considers it ability. All of them consider it a way of influencing people to achieve the objectives of the organization or group. When defining leadership, it is always compared with management since in most cases, the managers are the leaders. Northouse also indicates that there are so many conceptualizations to leadership (2009). These conceptualizations are; leadership as a process, leadership as involving common goals, leadership as involving influence and leadership as occurring in groups (Northouse, 2009). (ADDED) According to Leitner, the leaders create the organization strategy while the managers ensure that the strategy is implemented according to the guidance of the leader (2007). The leader sets the vision, guides the subordinates through coaching, training, mentoring and development to ensure the goals are met while the manager ensures that vision missions are accomplished (Leitner, 2007).(CORRECTED THE REFERENCE). This may be related to the different types of leadership styles that exist for example the democratic, lassies fairre, autocratic and so on. The leader is the decision maker, but he chooses a method of making such decisions. The leader develops the strategy and the manager ensures the company or organization achieves the aims through the strategy. There are so many strategies in business management and in any kind of leadership. It all depends on what the organization wants to achieve. A non-profit organization for example aiming at assisting hunger stricken populations like in Africa would have to develop strategies that help it achieve its missions, but the leader guides the way such aims should be achieved. Such strategies cannot be the same as an organization aiming at increasing its market share to other unexploited countries. It means therefore that there are several strategies some of which can be newly developed. Among the already developed and proven to be effective in accomplishing certain organizational aims is empowerment. In many cases, empowerment is used to increase the productivity of employees. This in turn influences the performance of the organization which is linked to the aim of the organization. This is a discussion paper about leadership and empowerment and the aim is to identify the theoretical concepts underneath employee empowerment and show how employee empowerment can be achieved in a specific organization. The discussion paper is in a form of a report which gives the following sections: Literature review giving all the information required for the analysis of the organization’s employee empowerment strategies, findings, discussion, conclusion and recommendations. 1.2 The Case Study This case study has been developed for purposes of discussion. Part of the information used to develop the case study has been retrieved from the TCB website and so referenced as TCB, 2011. A cloth designing company had problems with its employees. Most of them complained of low pay with intentions to look for other companies to work for. The company’s manager had a very strict way of leading the employees and so the employees always complained. Although his management system and leadership strategy worked very well for some time, the company’s performance started dropping. He sought professional advice from a consultant company and was advised to empower his employees. This manager (give him a name Johnson) decides that in order to empower his employees, he has to improve their professionalism. By doing this he believes they will be able to do their work properly with little difficulty hence be empowered to work to full capacity. This duty he gave to a company specialized in leadership coaching. The company did the following. 1. Identified the Key areas for change (The main aim being to improve professionalism) 2. Developed a strategy to implement the change in which it worked with the senior management team to prepare the employees for change 3. Coached the employees on a team and individual basis to improve the vision setting, their man management and planning skills 4. Collected teams from all departments then gave their coaching which included handling change, improving the sales skills, succession planning, raising of expectations, staff development and improving after sales care. 5. A review was later conducted to determine the success of the implemented changes. 6. Some managers were selected and trained on how to ensure the implemented change continued and given the skills to implement new changes when necessary (TCB, 2011). (YES THEY CAN BE NUMBERED OR JUST LEFT THE WAY THEY WERE. IT DOES NOT MATTER, IT ALL DEPENDS ON HOW YOU WANT TO PRESENT YOUR WORK) 1.3 Objectives: 1. To determine strategies and models, if any, used in employee empowerment and relate it to the case study 2. To show the role of leadership in empowerment 3. Find out the benefits of the models and the differences 4. Find out the empowerment practices in the organization under study 5. To determine how a specific employee empowerment model fits an organization 6. Make recommendations (YES THEY CAN BE NUMBERED OR JUST LEFT THE WAY THEY WERE. IT DOES NOT MATTER, IT ALL DEPENDS ON HOW YOU WANT TO PRESENT YOUR WORK) 2.0 Literature Review 2.1 Employee Empowerment Employee empowerment has been considered to be a very powerful strategy. This is because it helps the employees work to their full capacities hence improving the performance of the organization depending on the aims (Prideaux, Moscardo & Laws, 2006). According to Dopson and Hayes, employee empowerment is the use of theories and practices that give employees the power to use more discretion and judgment in their work and to fully participate in decisions that affect their own working lives (2010). In simple terms, it can be referred to as giving one the power to confidently make decisions and perform tasks of the organization. This can be done though several ways. If one is a mechanic who trained in the 19th century for example, with little knowledge about the advanced technological methods used in his or her area of work, empowering such a person would involve giving knowledge and skills. Giving that person the power to perform his duty with confidence and taking control, hence performs duties to his or her full capacity. This ensures high quality services and even products for cases where production of goods is involved and efficiency. There are two main themes that are revealed when reviewing the literature on employee empowerment. These are; information sharing and empowerment program implementation. Empowerment programs implementation changes the management role from bureaucratic to coaching. Information sharing is an important sign of an organization with a culture that fosters empowerment (Woodside, 2007). Below is a description of how to implement an employee empowerment program and the various strategies that have been used. From the literature, it is evident that information sharing forms part of the strategies and is even one of the steps required for employee empowerment implementation. 2.2 Steps to be followed to Empower Employees Different organizations have different management and operational systems and so have unique steps towards empowering employees. There are however, basic steps that all companies have to follow. According to Maxwell these are in six phases and can be modified by any company to fit the needs. Phase 1: This is known as the leadership phase and it is where the need for change is recognized and communicated to the rest of the organization by the organization leader or a group of leaders. Communication must contain proposed new possibilities (2005). Phase 2: Is also known as the commitment phase and involves seeking support from members of the organization and key stakeholders to back the empowerment idea. Phase 3: Involves making information available to the members of the organization about the change. It is also known as the communication phase. Phase 4: It is the redesigning phase and involves changing employee roles depending on the skills and capability of the employees. After the employees have been given the information about the need for change, what is to be changed and how the change will be accomplished, they will realize the need to redesign the work roles. By this, the employees’ ability and time are optimized (Maxwell, 2005). Phase 5 (Reinforcement phase): Involves strengthening of the already established management systems. After the employees with the right skills and capabilities have been identified for the right jobs, the next step is strengthening their capability. This is done through training and development which means setting up training and development programs or just developing appropriate strategies for training and development (Maxwell, 2005). Phase 6 (renewal phase): This phase is meant to maintain continuous improvement. In any organization after the need for change has been identified, the necessary steps implemented to make the changes taken and the aims of making the changes achieved, employees get reluctant or even overconfident making the team to reach a sudden plateau with no further improvement. The renewal phase helps avoid or eliminate that (Maxwell, 2005). 2.3 Employee Empowerment Strategies There are several strategies that have been developed and used to empower employees. Bass and Riggio state that there are three ways through which employees can be empowered. These are; through participation, through involvement and through commitment (2006). Empowering through participation means using forms of empowerment that empower employees to share information for decision making purposes or even to make decisions previously made by their superiors. Empowering through involvement requires the use of forms of empowerment that involve the employees’ service operation aspects. These forms focus mostly on the performance outcome and consider no participation in decision making. The last one which is empowering employees through commitment means using forms that develop commitment practices and ensuring customer satisfaction (Bass & Riggio, 2006). Fox has a different model of employee empowerment (the apprenticeship model). Under this model there is one level of empowerment and three levels of competency. The three levels of competency are; apprentice level, journeyperson level and master level. Apprentice level: These are the unskilled group of employees. In this model they are as important as the other employees of different competency levels and conduct duties that are important to the effective working of the organization but require no specific skills (Fox, 1998). Journey persons are those with specialized skills for a specific job and are required to have all or most of the skills. Masters level: This level of competency provides overall guidance to the organization. The group or any employee belonging to this level provides the vision, decides on which jobs he or she should do and develops strategies on how the jobs can be done. They supervise the journeypersons work and ensure the development of the next generation leaders through continued guidance (Fox, 1998). One empowerment level is the process of ensuring that every employee does his or her work according to the skills they have and even make decisions in such positions. It means therefore that is an employee is at an apprentice level, he or she has to recognize the duties of that level of skills and continue learning and training to have the necessary skills. The basic concept here is to consider everyone valuable irrespective of the level. Every skill is important and has to be well developed for the benefit of the organization. Other strategies are such as expressing confidence in the employees and establishing high performance expectations for them as suggested by Burke (Ugboro, 2006), creating opportunities for them to participate in decision making and giving them independence from bureaucratic constraints as suggested by Block, setting inspiring and challenging performance objectives as suggested by Benis and Nanus (1985) and the use of employee selection and training programs at the organizational level as suggested by House (1988)and Mclelland (1975). The later are programs designed to provide technical skills required by the organization. Mclelland and House suggestion also include development of a self determination and collaboration encouraging culture (Ugboro, 2006). (This information was obtained from Ugboro, 2006. I did not read real sources. Just one source had everything. I am not sure how you would want this changed). Employee empowerment can also be achieved through performance based reward systems, autonomy and control providing enriched jobs, career advancement opportunities, task identity and task meaningfulness which are strategies suggested by Oldham (1976), Hackman and Oldham (1975), Strauss (1977) and Kanter (1979) cited in Ugboro, 2006, page 238. This information was obtained from Ugboro, 2006. I did not read real sources. Just one source had everything. I am not sure how you would want this changed). 3.0 Findings 3.1 The problem with the Company From the case study, it is clear that the problem is with the leadership and management style. The management does not recognize the efforts of the employees and even if it did, it gives very little effort to improving such appreciation. Another problem in the case study is lack of identification of the major problem. The employees are complaining of low pay and there is a strict way of dealing with them which they do not like. The company given the contract to empower the employees decides to improve professionalism. Improving professionalism is a way of empowering the employees by improving their knowledge and capability to handle their jobs but it comes after identification of the right problem being the need for professionalism. 3.2 The Empowerment Practices In The Case Study These are; 1. Coaching of the employees to give them handling change, improving the sales skills, succession planning, raising of expectations, staff development and improving after sales care skills 2. Coaching on vision setting, man management and planning skills 3. Training of managers to enable continuation of improvement (YES THEY CAN BE NUMBERED BUT IT IS STILL OKAY NOT NUMBERING THEM) 4.0 Discussion From the above findings, it is clear that very little change can be achieved through the selected strategy of empowering employees. The guidelines to implementing an employee empowerment program require 6 phases. The first being identification of the problem. The question here may be who identifies the problem? In any organization, the leader should identify the problem or even the manager. In most cases, the top managers are the leaders since they are the ones that provide visions and guidance to the organization. In the above case, the manager shows no signs of being a good leader. He cannot recognize the problem with the employees. Empowering employees is meant to improve productivity and the advisor who recommended employee empowerment just gave an option to improving productivity. Empowering employees does not mean improving their skills only. According to the above given definitions and even strategies of empowering employees in the literature review, employees should be given confidence to do their work, the employer should express confidence in them, they should be given the opportunity to participate in decision making, they should not be under any bureaucratic constraints and they should be trained to improve their skills. These strategies give options to be used where they are relevant. So if employees are not motivated, the only way to improve their productivity is through motivation. This requires identification of the source of demotivation. This is the exact problem in the case study above. The employees are demotivated and the source of demotivation, is their manager, who has failed to recognize their efforts, does not consider them of value and pays little income. The real problem was not identified. Empowerment means to give confidence, to give one the power to make decisions previously made by the manager, to give one the full capacity to perform a specific task. How can all these be given if there is no appreciation of efforts? How can all these achieved if the value given to the individual is low? And how can they be achieved if the targeted group is demotivated? It is evident that the right strategy was not selected for the employees’ empowerment even though each company has a specific strategy depending on its aims. Considering the aim of the manager (Johnson), which is to improve professionalism, the steps taken by the contracted company are right, but considering the problem within the company, the strategy is wrong. The right strategy should have been the use of performance based reward systems, career advancement opportunities and task identity and task meaningfulness (Ugboro, 2006). Additionally, expressing confidence in the employees could have been better. This would then be later improved by training and development. There are so many ways to motivate employees. One of them is through giving of rewards (Bruce, 2006). If there is need to empower the employees therefore, a performance based rewarding system should be developed. This will make the employees feel appreciated and of value to the company so that their services are rewarded. Providing career advancement opportunities is also another way of motivating the employees. It makes them feel needed by the company hence the feeling of appreciation for their efforts. Task identity and task meaningfulness means recognition of who performs which tasks best and the importance of the task to the company (Bruce, 2006). From the above information, there is a model of employee empowerment that requires only one level of empowerment but has three levels of competency. This model could also be used to empower the employees. The model makes every employee irrespective of the level, feel important to the company hence motivated. An additional fact is that motivation is another way of empowering employees, so by implementing motivational strategies, the manager or company will be empowering the employees already. Empowerment also motivates employees (Pride, Hughes & Kapoor, 2009) & Durai, 2010). Considering the empowerment of employees to improve professionalism, the right steps were taken. What needed to be changed was identified which was the production level. The idea was to change it by improving professionalism among employees and this was well communicated to the employees. There was no support needed at this time since for the manager to give the specialized company the contract, it has to have been approved. The contracted company however, when implementing its program, still sought support from the members of the organization. There was no need to redesign tasks since the aim was to empower through improving professionalism. Improving professionalism means improving the already identified skills for the right jobs. A review was later conducted to analyze the effectiveness of the coaching which represents phase five and phase six was accomplished by training managers who would ensure improved professionalism continued. 5.0 Conclusion The aim of the Company mentioned above is to empower the employees. There is no already formulated model of analysis of the appropriateness of an empowerment model in an organization. As indicated earlier, any empowerment strategy is dependent on the company and its aims. It is important therefore to just follow the basic steps on how to implement and employee empowerment program or system. The implementation strategy followed the right direction but dealt with the wrong issue. The main mistake therefore is not identifying the correct problem to be dealt with. Another problem is the manager. A good manager should have good leadership skills. A leader guides the organization, develops the strategies to be used in the organization and makes the major decisions on what direction the organization should take. Given such capability, the leader should be able to recognize which sections, departments or operations should be corrected, changed or improved in order to help the organization achieve its aims. The aims of the organization help guide the organization towards the direction it is indented to take. If an organization’s leader for example decides to expand the market share of the company as a way of growth, the aims set to help increase the market share will help the organization grow. Without a good leader, the organization has high risks of not achieving its aims and some of the aims may also not lead to success depending on other major stakeholders’ needs. 6.0 Recommendation The manager should have a fresh start on how to deal empower the employees. There may be a problem with the leadership style and so the leader should change that. A democratic leadership style would be appropriate. This style of leadership encourages participation of employees in decision making, makes them feel appreciated hence motivates them. It makes them feel empowered and can lead to improved skills and excellence in job performance (Daft, 2007). With the democratic leadership, the employees can be able to share their views on how they should be treated with the manager reducing cases of demotivation due to lack of appreciation. If such were the type of leadership that the manager had, the mistake of not identifying the correct problem could not have occurred. Since the problem in the above case study has been identified, the right way to deal with it would be to find a way of motivating the employees. Again this requires employee participation. There are several strategies that can be used to solve the problem above. These are: 1. Strategies allowing employee participation in decision making 2. Rewarding their efforts 3. Expressing confidence in the employees 4. Identifying their needs and meeting them (THEY CAN BE NUMBERED OR NOT. ALL ARE OKAY) As indicated earlier, there is no specific model or strategy for empowering the employees, but with all the information provided above, several or all can be used to empower them. The employees for example complain of low pay and lack of recognition of efforts. Rewarding employees alone could solve that problem and empower them to work to full capacity. There are different forms of rewarding employees and if increasing their salary can be the chosen method or form of appreciating their effort, the problem of low pay and lack of appreciation of efforts will have been solved. If a different method of appreciation is selected however, the issue of low pay will still have to be dealt with. One important factor to consider in this case by the manager is what he can do to motivate them. This requires knowledge of what the employees feel and so will require their involvement. 7.0 List of References Avey, J. B., Hughes, L. W., Norman, S. M., Luthans, K. W. (2008). Using Positivity, Transformational Leadership And Empowerment To Combat Employee Negativity. [Electronic Version]. Leadership & Organization Development Journal. 29 (2), 110 – 126. Bass, B. M. and Riggio, R. E. (2006). Transformational Leadership. (2nd Ed). [Electronic Version] London: Routledge. Bruce, A. (2006). How to Motivate Every Employee: 24 Proven Tactics to Spark Productivity in the Workplace. [Electronic Version] New York: McGraw-Hill Professional Daft, R.L. (2007). The Leadership Experience. (4th Ed). [Electronic Version] Boston: Cengage Learning. Denton, J. (2002). Organisational Learning And Effectiveness. [Electronic Version] London: Routledge Durai, P. (2010). Human Resource Management. [Electronic Version] New Delhi: Pearson Education India. Dopson, L. R. and Hayes, D. K. (2010). Food and Beverage Cost Control. (5th Ed). [Electronic Version] New Jersey: John Wiley and Sons. Dyson, K. (2009) Management Intelligence: Sense and Nonsense for the Successful Manager. [Electronic Version]. Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 30 (8), 781 – 782. Fox, J. (1998). Employee Empowerment: An Apprenticeship Model. Retrieved from: http://members.tripod.com/j_fox/thesis.html#the%20apprenticeship%20model Gill, A., Fitzgerald, S., Bhutani, S., Mand, H., Sharma, S. (2010). The Relationship Between Transformational Leadership And Employee Desire For Empowerment. [Electronic Version] International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 22 (2), 263 – 273. Leitner, A. (2007). Concept of Leadership and Management Within the Manufacturing Industry. [Electronic Version] Norderstedt: GRIN Verlag. Marturano, A and Gosling, J. (2007). Leadership: The Key Concepts. [Electronic Version] London: Routledge Maxwell, J. R. (2005). Management of Employee Empowerment. [Electronic Version] Journal of Organizational Culture, Communications and Conflict. Retrieved from: Mills, Q. D. (2005) Leadership; How to Lead, How to Live. [Electronic Version] New York: MindEdge Press. Northouse, P. G. (2009). Leadership: Theory and Practice. (5th Ed). [Electronic Version] London: SAGE. Pisapia, J. (2009). The Strategic Leader New Tactics for a Globalizing World. [Electronic Version] North California: IAP. Pride, W. M., Hughes, R. J. and Kapoor, J. R. (2009). Business. (10th Ed). [Electronic Version] Ohio: Cengage Learning. Prideaux, B., Moscardo, G. and Laws, E. (2006). Managing Tourism And Hospitality Services: Theory And International Applications. [Electronic Version] Cambridge, MA: CABI. The Coach Business (TCB). (2011). Leadership Coaching: Case Study - Luxury Tour Operator. Retrieved from: http://www.thecoachbusiness.com/case_studies/luxury_tour_operator.html Ugboro, I. O. (2006). Organizational Commitment, Job Redesign, Employee Empowerment and Intent to Quit Among Survivors of Restructuring and Downsizing. [Electronic Version] A Report. Institute of Applied and Behavioural Management. Retrieved from: http://www.ibam.com/pubs/jbam/articles/vol7/no3/JBAM_7_3_1_Organizational_Commitment.pdf Woodside, A. G. (2007). Tourism Management: Analysis, Behaviour And Strategy. [Electronic Version] Cambridge, MA: CABI. Zhang, X. and Bartol, K. M. (2010). Linking Empowering Leadership and Employee Creativity: The Influence of Psychological Empowerment, Intrinsic Motivation, and Creative Process Engagement. [Electronic Version]. The Academy of Management Journal (AMJ). 53 (1), 107 – 128. Read More