The Impact Of Organizational And Psychological Empowerment On Work Related Outcomes

An organization's employees are the key element to ensure the achievement of organizational goals.Organizations need motivated,resilient and committed employees who are willing to exert high level of efforts and who strive to achieve their objectives despite facing difficulties.One of the factors which can motivate an organizations workforce to increase their efforts towards the achievement of organizational goals is organizational empowerment.Over the last few decades,two different perspective of empowerment in organizational and business settings have emerged.The first concept called organizational empowerment is a set of managerial activities and practices carried out by the top management such as delegation of authority,decision making powers and involvement aimed at empowering the workforce.Whereas,the second concept of empowerment is called psychological empowerment.It refers to empowerment as an individual attitude and an intrinsic motivational state of feeling psychologically empowered.It is noteworthy that the organization management has the capability to change only its practices and activities to create an environment in the organization with high level of organizational empowerment.However,a question arises that do the efforts made by organization to empower their employees really result in psychologically empowering the employees or not.There may be other variables that influence the relationship between the efforts made by the organization to empower the employees and the psychologically perceived empowerment at individual level.The perceptions of psychological empowerment due to organizational empowerment efforts may be lower for those employees who have a lack of trust on the organization's top management practices and policies and who are skeptical and suspicious about what the organization's top management propagates and does.Thus,the existence of trust may strengthen,and the absence of trust may weaken the relationship between organizational empowerment and psychological empowerment.This moderating impact of organizational trust in the context under consideration was not explored by any previous research study.It has been argued that psychological empowerment enhances positive workrelated attitudes such as organizational commitment and job satisfaction.However,none of the previous studies had explored the relationship between the two forms empowerment and the work efforts of employees.Another interesting positive work attitude that may have possible connections with the concepts of empowerment is psychological hardiness.Those with high level of psychological hardiness remain positive and exert focused efforts to achieve their objectives.These very likely and important connections had also not been explored by any previous studies.An important organizational concept that could be influenced by empowerment,work effort and psychological hardiness is the career success of employees.Career success is important for both individual employees and organizations because the organizations can only be successful when its employees are successful in achieving their objectives of career progression.Not only human capital factors may contribute to career success but also individual differences in work related attitudes predict career success.Hence,the previously under examined concepts of work effort and psychological hardiness may also contribute to one's career success.Considering the interesting interaction of the above-mentioned factors that are assumed to have a major impact on the functioning of any organization through its employees,it becomes very useful to empirically examine the relationship of the constructs of organizational empowerment,psychological empowerment,organizational trust and their impact on job related attitudes.Hence,the purpose of this research study is to empirically find out the relationship of organizational empowerment with psychological empowerment and to see whether the level of perceived organizational trust moderates the relationship between organizational empowerment and psychological empowerment.Furthermore,this study analyzed the direct and indirect impact of organizational empowerment mediated through psychological empowerment on work related attitudes such as work effort and psychological hardiness.Moreover,this study analyzed whether these positive work attitudes mediate the relation between psychological hardiness and subjective career success of the employees or not.Research studies have argued that managerial practices are not easily transferred across cultural,and national boundaries.These cultural differences encouraged us to investigate organizational empowerment across cultures and see if there are any differences.Therefore,this study explored the crossculture differences between China and Pakistan with regards to the variables under consideration.The sample for this study consisted of 428 respondents from education sector,banking sector and manufacturing sector of China and Pakistan.Out of the 428 respondents 212 were Chinese respondents and 216 were Pakistani respondents.Structural equation modeling was used to empirically test the relationships among the variables of the study.The results showed that trust significantly moderated the positive relationship between organizational empowerment and psychological empowerment for both the respondents from China and Pakistan.It was found that psychological empowerment partially mediated the relationship between organizational empowerment and psychological hardiness and the relationship between organizational empowerment and work effort as well.It was further found that trust was also positively related with psychological hardiness and work efforts and the positive relationships of trust with these variables were also partially mediated by psychological empowerment.Though it was found that trust had no moderating effect on the direct relationship between organizational empowerment and psychological hardiness and the direct relationship between organizational empowerment and work effort for the sample of China.However,trust significantly moderated the indirect relationship between organizational empowerment and psychological hardiness and also the indirect relationship between organizational empowerment and work efforts mediated by psychological empowerment thus showing that conditional indirect effects existed for the sample of China.As for the sample of Pakistan,both the direct and indirect relationship between organizational empowerment and psychological hardiness were moderated by trust showing both direct moderating effects of trust and conditional indirect effects of organizational empowerment on psychological hardiness.The direct relationship of organizational empowerment with work efforts was not moderated by trust for the but the indirect relation was moderated showing conditional indirect effects of organizational empowerment on work efforts for the sample from Pakistan.Furthermore,the results showed that psychological hardiness and work efforts only partially mediated the relationship between psychological empowerment and career success for Chinese sample but fully mediated the relationship between psychological empowerment and career success for the sample of Pakistan.While exploring the differences between China and Pakistan,though no significant differences were found in the organizational empowerment polices of both the countries,however,the results showed that Chinese respondents on average had significantly higher level of trust on their organizations as compared to the Pakistani respondents.Logically following from the significantly higher level of trust,it was found that on average psychological empowerment and work efforts level of Chinese respondents were also significantly higher than Pakistani respondents.However,no significant differences were found with regards to psychological hardiness and career satisfaction level of Chinese and Pakistani employees.Finally,gender differences within each country were analyzed.No significant differences were found between males and females within the sample of China.However,the results showed that on average males scored higher on all the variables under consideration except trust for the sample of Pakistan.These findings significantly enhanced the theoretical knowledge in the domain of the relevant variables and have important practical underpinnings that are discussed in detail in the final chapters of the thesis.