| This study examines front line textile employees' experiences with empowerment at work. A model of the empowerment experience is developed detailing antecedents, moderators, and outcomes of perceptions of empowerment. First, I hypothesize that the implementation of high performance work environment variables suggested by Lawler, Mohrman, and Ledford (1995) (power distribution, information sharing, rewards, and knowledge) will be positively related to front line textile employees' perceptions of empowerment. Additional direct effects hypothesized include a positive relationship between both transformational leadership (Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Moorman, and Fetter, 1990) and organizational culture (Schein, 1992) and perceptions of empowerment. Proactive personality (Bateman and Crant, 1993) is proposed as a moderator of the relationship between antecedents and perceptions of empowerment. Finally, I hypothesize that perceptions of empowerment are significant predictors of performance, organizational commitment, and spillover of skills from work to employees' nonwork lives.;These hypotheses were tested with a two phase field study of four textile plants located in the Southeastern United States. Interview were conducted with 92 managers and employees in the first phase to refine the preliminary model. In the second phase, 617 front line employees completed a survey developed to test the model.;Results suggest that high performance work environment variables, transformational leadership, and organizational culture are all significantly related to front line employees' perceptions of empowerment. Additionally, proactive personality was found to have both a direct effect on perceptions of empowerment and a moderating effect on selected relationships between the antecedents and perceptions of empowerment. These results suggest that employees interpret their work environments differently. Perceptions of empowerment were found to significantly effect performance, organizational commitment, and spillover. Perceptions of empowerment at work appear to shape front line employees' behavior and attitudes at work as well as in their lives. |
