Employee perceptions of empowerment, self-efficacy, job satisfaction and organizational culture

This paper is an examination of the possible relationship of employee perceptions of their own empowerment to their perceptions of self-efficacy, company culture and job satisfaction in an historically autocratic manufacturing company attempting to implement Total Quality Management. A survey instrument was administered to two groups. The treated group included two sub-groups; those employees selected by their peers to take part in activities that managers regarded as Employee Empowerment Opportunities and those that self-selected to take part in training classes. The untreated group was also divided into two sub-groups; those employees who had interacted with the members of the empower activities group, and those who had not. Members of the untreated group were selected at random from the untreated population. Data from the four groups was analyzed separately until or unless lack of statistically significant differences justified the groups as sufficiently similar. It should be noted that a severe economic downturn and rumors throughout the plant occurred during the month-long administration of the survey.;Both the treated and untreated groups perceived themselves as highly committed, willing to make suggestions related to their jobs, and wanting supervisors to take their suggestions. The treated group exposed to Employee Empowerment Opportunities regarded themselves as empowered only for the specific activity in which they were engaged. The experience did not translate into changing their perception of the company culture, nor in greater job satisfaction. In fact, this group indicated lower job satisfaction than the untreated group. The lower job satisfaction results for the treated groups may well indicate that the contrasting experiences of the empowerment activities and the turbulence of subsequent events had a negative effect.