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Using a statistical model, this study examined the correlates and consequences of psychological empowerment among a group of 612 technically skilled, professional, and managerial hospital employees (129 men and 483 women). Whereas individual as well as group and organizational characteristics influenced feelings of empowerment, group and organizational variables accounted for more variance in empowerment than did the individual variables. Empowerment perceptions increased with organizational rank and with leader approachability, group effectiveness, and worth of group. Individuals with more tenure in the organization felt more empowered; however, men and women, and Whites and non-Whites reported no significant differences in feelings of empowerment. Empowerment perceptions also were associated with increased job satisfaction and work productivity/effectiveness, as well as a decreased propensity to leave the organization.
Empowerment in the workplace has received increased attention among scholars and practitioners (Donovan, 1994), and belief in the advantage of empowering workers appears to be shared by workers as well as managers. Empowerment has been shown to affect managerial and organizational effectiveness (Spreitzer, 1995), and it is presently recognized as one means by which managers can effectively manage today's organizations, which are characterized by a greater variety of influence channels, a growing reliance on horizontal structures and peer networks, a blurred distinction between managers and workers, and a diminished attachment of employees to organizations (Kanter, 1989; Pfeffer, 1994).
Critical reviews of the literature, however, have identified several deficiencies in the research on empowerment. Until recently, few studies examined the construct directly, whereas others were based largely on impressionistic findings or on empirical data using nonvalidated measures. Moreover, few studies examined whether empowerment perceptions were influenced by characteristics of the work group or context (e.g., intragroup trust and leader approachability) (Thomas & Velthouse, 1990; Zimmerman, 1990). Last, although most scholars today agree that feelings of empowerment are affected by a variety of individual, interpersonal, and positional variables, researchers often investigate one or two of these influences separately or in isolation from the others.
The present study suggests a model that incorporates both antecedents and outcomes of feeling empowered and reports an empirical test of the model in a hospital setting, using a valid and reliable multidimensional measure of psychological empowerment developed by Spreitzer (1995). We chose the health care industry to test...