Empowerment

Draft

Definition

• Empowerment is strongly correlated with task motivation. Therefore one can claim that in order to engage teachers in pedagogical reform one must give them some control over their own work and influence in the reform process. It also means that "fake empowerment" strategies will lead to bad oucomes (see the Baruch empowerment model.)

See also: teacher empowerment.

General models of empowerment

According to Baruch (1998), Thomas and Velthouse (1990) define empowerment by the existence of four components:

• Choice - providing employees with genuine job enrichment and opportunities to have not only their voice heard, but giving them real power for control and influence over work processes.
• Competence - enabling the people to be confident in their capacity to make these choices. Enhancing their self efficacy as a pre-condition to make decisions and stand for them.
• Meaningfulness - valuing the work being done by the empowered people.
• Impact - letting the people have actual influence over what is going on in the organization, ensuring their decisions make a difference.

References

• Baruch, Yehuda (1998). Career Development International, Volume 3, Number 2, pp. 82-87. HTML retrieved 14:21, 3 June 2006 (MEST).

• Conger, J.A., Kanungo, R.N. (1988), "The empowerment process: integrating theory and practice", Academy of Management Review, Vol. 13 No.3, pp.471-82.

• Malone, T.W. (1997), "Is empowerment just a fad? Control, decision making and IT", Sloan Management Review, pp.23-35.

• Mondros, J. B., & Wilson, S. M. (1994). Organizing for power and

empowerment. New York,NY: Columbia University Press.

• Thomas, K.W., Velthouse, B.A. (1990), "Cognitive elements of empowerment: an 'interpretative' model of intrinsic task motivation", Academy of Management Review, Vol. 15 pp.666-81.