The assignment will critically apprise the notion that empowerment only appears to give employees greater control and, in reality remains dominated and restricted by management. The report will further illustrate the answers with references to contemporary organisational contexts.
Empowerment is the practice of enabling or authorizing an individual to think, behaves, take action, and control work and decision making in self-governing ways. It is the state of feeling self-empowered to be in charge of one's own destiny. Employee involvement and employee participation are often used to mean employee empowerment. (Human Resources 2010)
Business dictionary (2010) defines empowerment as the practice of management to share information, rewards and power with employees, so that they feel involve in the decisions of the company.
According to CIPD (2010:Uknown) the participation of employees within the organisation is defined “as the process of employee involvement, that is designed to provide the employee with the opportunity to influence and where appropriate take part in decision making on matters that affects them”.
Farnham (1997) states there are four choices of employee relationship for managers. Employee participation is on of the four choices mentioned by the author. The author however, states that “the employee has the right to question and influence the decision of the organisation” (Farnham 1997).
Mullins (1999) defines empowerment as the freedom given to employees, to have autonomy and self-control over their work and to take on the responsibility of making decision within the organisation. Green (1998) however, states that when and employee has empowerment, he/she is given the freedom of space to make more decisions, to the point where those decisions could affect the whole company. The author then states that there are advantages that come with