The Relationship of Selected Empowerment Principles and Employee Self-Esteem

Abstract

Various management philosophies have been instituted in pursuit of man’s quest to create an ideal work environment that would improve an employee’s perspective of employment. Part of this perspective is a concept of improving work relationships through increased employee involvement in management decisions and functions. The concept of empowerment as a management philosophy came in the beginning of the 1990's; it was first applied to rural communities and farmlands. The favorable results led to its evolution and application in the corporate setting. Empowerment has many facets, only little information has been gathered in its effectiveness in improving work relationships and employee morale. The curiosity towards this new management philosophy led the researcher to investigate its role in improving the employee’s view of themselves as contributors to an organization’s success. The degree of involvement that employers offer is crucial in determining how ready it is to adopt empowerment. Numerous approaches to management failed to resolve the ardent desire of employees to feel contentment and assurance of their self-worth in an organization. Some approaches are so mechanistic that it fails to address the needs of employees to feel belongingness. Empowerment is distinct since it considers the employee as the main source of success in an organization, through its facets of autonomy and involvement, employees become confident of their respective roles. This then leads to a better performance in their jobs, which in the end benefits the organization. The role that empowerment plays in improving employee self-esteem is the main thrust of this research. Determining the relationship between these two is significant before recommending empowerment as the way to go for management in the future. Since empowerment is broad in perspective, only three principles have been tapped for this study. These are work delegation, work teams, and participative management. They will serve as the independent variables for this study; the dependent variable on the other hand is self-esteem. An objectives of this study is to determine the relationship of empowerment principles on employee self-esteem, as well as its effect and its dependence on the varying level of empowerment in the organization. This research is adaptive for any organization since it focuses on determining the level of empowerment within that organization and its relationship to employee self- esteem. The theoretical framework was based on the Job Characteristics Theory of Hackman and Oldham; it features the concept of autonomy and feedback, both inherent in the aforementioned empowerment principles for this study. The conceptual framework was a combination of thought devised by the researcher and features the levels in Plunkett and Fournier’s (1991) Participative Leadership Model. The descriptive type of research was employed and the statistical measurement of correlation (Spearman Rank order Correlation Coefficient) was utilized for this study. The correlation interpretation was based on Robert Koenker’s guide for correlation explanation. The data was gathered using purposive sampling to the employees of D & L Inc. The results reflected that all empowerment principles are highly correlated with employee self-esteem. The first pair of work delegation and self-esteem exhibited a -0.515 correlation coefficient that translates to a fair degree of inverse relationship. This means that as self-esteem increases, work delegation decreases. The explanation for this phenomenon is that as employees become convinced of their capabilities to do the work, the concept of delegating it to others diminishes since it will be easier to finish a task that one is capable of doing in the first place. Factors which were considered for work delegation include risk taking, trust in others, patience, expectations of others and the concept of having a condescending attitude. The second pair of work teams and self-esteem projected a correlation coefficient of 0.640, which translates to a moderate to marked linear relationship; this suggests that as work teams increase so do employee self-esteem. The factors which were considered for work teams include: opinion sharing, team spirit, problem anticipation, loyalty, confidence and trust, vision and addressing members need through goals and values. The third pair involved participative management and self-esteem, the correlation coefficient for this combination was 0.610, similar to the second pair, it is a moderate to marked linear relationship, which suggests that as one variable increases the other also increases. The factors that were considered for participative management include: employee consultation, mode of information dissemination, interactive management, valuing employee input, organizational goal setting technique, work procedure flexibility and a well established chain of command. The results suggest the high correlation between the empowerment principles and employee self-esteem. Since the three variables were met in the case of D & L Inc, it can be considered as an empowered organization that adopts empowerment principles. It also concluded that empowerment principles positively influenced employee self-esteem and that the varying levels of empowerment embodied in the conceptual framework influenced employee self-esteem in various intensities manifested in the correlation coefficient and the individual principle mean scores. Further studies can concentrate on identifying and testing other empowerment variables that might affect employee self-esteem. In the same way as investigating other variables that might affect employee self-esteem aside from the empowerment variables like compensation, promotion, etc. Other studies can also focus on other variables that can be influenced by empowerment variables like employee morale, work satisfaction and work performance.