Empowerment the Concept of Empowerment Is Not

Empowerment

The concept of empowerment is not a new one, but it seems that within the last two decades it has become a buzz word. Thinking about empowerment goes back to people who were denied any type of rights whether that be to decide how they were going to live, work, eat, or make any decision regarding their own lives. It does not matter what era of history is perused there are incidents of leaders empowering people to become better.

Martin Luther was a Catholic monk who decided that the church was conducting religious business the wrong way. He wanted fame, but he also wanted the individual citizens of Germany to be able to see that they were responsible for the relationship they had with God. Of course, Luther had a rough time of it. He was arrested, excommunicated, treated as an outlaw, but he was the guiding spirit behind the beginning of the reformation movement. His work in empowerment was for a group of people who had been cruelly ruled by a tyrannical church for over a thousand years. Empowerment in history usually involved a reformer who was willing to sacrifice him or herself to the end of giving common people more of their individual rights.

Another instance of empowerment were the voyages of a man who was seeking a prize. In his book "Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of his Time," Dava Sobel (1996) outlines the pursuit of a reliable method to determine lines of longitude. His idea was not one of empowerment per se, but that is how the expedition ended. Sailors before this time knew what the lines of latitude were, but they could not determine lines of longitude, and this meant that they were not able to determine their East-West bearing. This meant that "many thousands of sailors were lost" before John Harrison discovered a proper means for doing this. The empowerment part comes in the sailors ability. They were able to solve the problem of position which had plagued them prior to Harrison's design for a reliable chronometer. This example may seem a stretch, but actually it is not. People are empowered by self-actualization (Merriam-Webster, 2011) as were the sailors who received the new chronometers. The different definitions will show how the concept of empowerment can be used in many different ways.

Definitions

Empowerment is not a new concept, but it has generally been used most in the business world in its most recent incarnations. To that end, the definition from the "Business Directory" (2011) says that empowerment is;

"Management practice of sharing information, rewards, and power with employees so that they can take initiative and make decisions to solve problems and improve service and performance. It is based concept of giving employees the skills, resources, authority, opportunity, motivation, as well holding them responsible and accountable for outcomes of their actions."

The concept is that management has to give of its own accepted authority to subordinates. People do not necessarily empower themselves as much as they are given a portion of the power which management already enjoys. This definition is more about delegation than being personally empowered.

The official American word source, the "Merriam-Webster Dictionary" (2011), terms it thus, "to give official authority or legal power to or to promote the self-actualization or influence of." Empowerment then, by definition, cannot be taken. It is the giving of responsibility to another individual who is then held accountable for how they use that responsibility. Therefore, empowerment can be seen as a possible negative by these definitions. A boss may be setting the employee up to fail, and just "gives them enough rope to hang themselves" through the empowerment.

Chamberlin (1997) decided to determine a definition for empowerment which could be universally used for the mental health clients that her agency served. Since the people (patients/clients/consumers) she served had very little real power, Chamberlin wanted to understand, both from the clients and from the staff, what empowerment looked like. They say the concept as having the following dimensions;

"Having decision-making power; having access to information and resources; having a range of options from which to make choices; assertiveness; a feeling that the individual can make a difference; learning to think critically; learning the conditioning; seeing things differently; learning about and expressing anger; feeling part of a group; understanding that people have rights; effecting change in one's life and one's community; learning skills that the individual defines as important; changing others' perceptions of one's competency and capacity to act; coming out of the closet; growth and change that is never ending and self-initiated; and, increasing one's positive self-image and overcoming stigma" (Chamberlin, 1997).

This definition seems to be all-inclusive. It can be used for both the patient and the nurse. Sometimes patients feel that they have no power to act outside of what the medical professionals tell them, but, in reality, they have all of the power to act or not to. The nurse has less power because he or she does come under the authority of the hospital and the orders that are given, but they do have the power of "assertiveness" which they should exercise in deference to the patient's wishes.

Literature Review

There has been much written about the concept of empowerment besides just simple, or complex, definitions of the concept. A literature review of how empowerment is treated in the literature is a necessary addition to any discussion of the construct.

Many times the concept has been used in accordance with some population (such as women, patients, etc.) who had been denied certain types of power in the past, or empowerment can be a personal journey through which a person goes (Sadan, 2004). Paula San Pedro (2006) has concluded from her research, and that of the FRIDE group, that empowerment "can be regarded from a rhetorical and a theoretical perspective as an efficient tool for conflict prevention and peace building in the broad sense." These definitions correlate to the ones mentioned above, but give an even broader perspective of empowerment.

Whether it is a personal choice or something that is given from someone who has authority, empowerment has many facets. Giving employees the means to improve themselves, improves the business processes (Okes & Westcott, 2001). This seems to be the central focus of empowerment from the research (Okes & Westcott, 2001; Gebert, et al., 2006; Dickson & Lorenz, 2009). Organizations want to have employees that take ownership of their individual processes (Gebert, et al., 2006), and they want those employees to feel that enough debt to the company that they remain there (Dickson & Lorenz, 2009).

One researcher bemoaned a practice that some managers and companies are apparently involved in. The employee is supposedly empowered to do a job, but the manager really is just trying to make the employee feel more important while not giving them any actual extra authority. This false empowerment may never register with the employee. The employer may falsely make their employees feel that they have some power within the organization, to possibly bolster flagging morale or increasing attrition, but they take a risk in this action (Haun, 2010). This false sense of empowerment will only make the employees less responsive in the long run. Also, the manager that uses this tactic will not truly be able to give the reins to an employee when the need arises because the manager will never have discovered whether the employee can truly make independent decisions (Haun, 2010).

This brings up another issue that has gotten much traction in the literature; how does one measure empowerment? San Pedro (2006) says "the main obstacles are the variety of definitions of the term and the ambiguity surrounding it; its intangible nature; the need to measure it in a given context; the difficulties of process evaluation and the lack of data over an extended period of time." All of these factors make it difficult to quantify the actual efficacy of an empowering gesture. Kaminski (2003) suggests that the people can demonstrate the empowerment that they are given through the future actions that they take, and the stories they develop. Depending on the method and goal of the empowering gesture, the outcome may not be easily recognizable.

Attributes

From the definitions of the concept it attributes can be found, but there is also a thread throughout the literature which shows how empowerment is viewed and what it should include. From these source the attributes of empowerment are: "inner awareness, enabled potential and outcome directed activities" (Cochran, 2008); assertiveness, understanding that others have rights (Chamberlin, 1997); and the ability to act in order to attain goals (Sadan, 2004)." There are more possibilit8ies depending on the way one defines empowerment, but these few are the basis for any others that can be determined. Walker & Avant (2005) call attributes "a list of characteristics that appear over and over again," and these are seen throughout the literature no matter what the context of the empowerment.

Cases

Model

There are many possible models for empowerment, but many times in the literature the different articles are discussing either the empowerment of women, minorities, or patients of some type. The following case is one in which women minorities were instructed to discuss the way they were personally, corporately and managerially empowered to perform, their union jobs better. This is a good model case because it has many of the dimensions of empowerment within it. The method the researcher (Kaminski, 2003) used was to discuss with the women how they developed leadership skills through the use of stories. The researcher would begin telling them about a prominent woman, such as Madeline Albright, who had succeeded and gained a position of great leadership. The subjects would then finish the story talking about their own experiences. These women understood the concepts of empowerment because they had lived them. Even if they at first did not demonstrate all of the attributes of someone who was empowered, by their experience they had become the embodiment of the experience.

Borderline

The second type of cases discussed in the literature are those which display most of the attributes of leadership, but not all of them. Sadan (2004) talks about a case in which a group of minority workers were given new responsibilities by their manager, but they were closely monitored to make sure that they did the job properly. This was seen as a starting point for the workers in which they would eventually be given full control over the jobs and be completely empowered, but they needed to be trusted first (Sadan, 2004).

Related Case

This type of case is one in which some of the attributes of a concept are present, but not most (Walker & Avant, 2005). Throughout the literature such cases existed. Since empowerment is the giving of official or legal power (Merriam-Webster, 2011), many times firms would give either temporary authority or they would give a person some authority, but not take it all of the way to full authority. This could be seen many times in the legal aspect. The manager would retain the last say in a decision that had been made because he or she still had the threat of legal retribution if the decision was wrong. Actually, the manager would delegate some authority, but not all of it, to protect the worker from consequences that their inexperience might generate.

Contrary

One author in particular (Haun, 2010) talked about contrary examples. Walker and Avant (2005) defined a contrary case as one that did not "at all" resemble the concept. He talked about "a manager who wanted to be more collaborative about a decision that had already been made. Or an executive who wanted to bring in employees to help make decisions about health care plans we had already chosen" (Haun, 2010). These types of cases are those in which a manager plays at empowering the employees, but in actuality, doe no such thing. The people involved in this type of activity, if they find out about it, will actually exhibit more discontent than they would have beforehand.

Other authors also explained cases that were contrary to the concept of empowerment. Dickson and Lorenz (2009) discussed how a manager can empower temporary or part-time employees. One of the ways that they could actually do this was through the use of praise and notice. The employees would be given praise for the work they had done and encouraged to work at a higher level. However, some of the managers would use this type of style, but then talk down the employee to permanent employees and other management. This led to the opposite effect when it got back to the employees. Job satisfaction plummeted in these cases because the employee realized that their input was not valued.

Invented

This is the type of case that is outside the readers experience (Walker & Avant, 2005). This occurred in one of the articles regarding women who worked for a union and were asked to tell their stories. It is difficult to identify with this case, and some of the women had difficulty with the concept of empowerment also. They may have experienced it before, but they were not familiar with what it was. Union employees are generally not given much empowerment because they are required to strictly adhere to a set of rules. Some of the stories that they were asked to respond to were made up also, but the women were asked to furnish the ending for them which proved difficult at times. However, the author of the study what effect instance of empowerment had on the women even if they did not realize what it was (Kaminski, 2003).

Illegitimate Case

According to Walker & Avant (2005) an illegitimate case is one in which the word is used improperly or taken out of context. Since the concept of empowerment is so well-known and researched today it was difficult to find a case in which it was used incorrectly. However, there are some misusages of the word. People take the term power to mean that it can be used simply to as power. The term is meant to convey the giving of power either to oneself or someone else no matter what the context. Also, this is meant in more of a figurative way. The power given is not physical power, but authority. However, there were some cases in which the word was used to mean physical power. Such as when a weight lifter is empowered by the use of weights. What was they meant by this was the actual muscle growth that was realized by the lifting of heavy weights. But, this is not what the term was coined to mean.

Antecedents to Empowerment

Many things must occur prior to an empowering event to occur. The table must be set so that the company, manager, individual is ready to act. In the case of a company, they must see that there is a region of their company that allows them to use a certain group of employees in a way that will build them up and allow them to either grow or fail. A manager may see an employee who is showing some leadership potential, but needs a slight push to be ready to accept that responsibility. The individual has to see a need to make a change. The individual then may go through a process of trial and error, questioning how they can make the change, and then determining an action plan. The antecedents for an empowering action are generally that there is a change that needs to be made, and someone is already been noticed who is best fitted to make that change. In the case of the manager empowering an employee, they may already be too busy, and they take advantage of the opportunity to give a worthy employee a chance to excel. An individual may have a teacher, coworker, boss who helps empowers them to change or they take initiative for something that they want to get better at. Then empowerment happens.

Consequences

The consequences to an individual action can either be good or bad depending on the outcome. In the case of empowerment though, the consequences are generally good. An employee can see that they are valued for the first time (Kaminski, 2004) and take that initiative and be further empowered to make more positive changes in their lives. A mental health patient may be given some independence or latitude for the first time in their lives and take that as a means to further improve their lives and gain more independence.