The Influence Of Psychological Empowerment On Job Performance Among Knowledge Workers

In the 21st century, knowledge workers, as the key role to control, manage and use other resources within the company, undoubtedly become the most important asset which reflects the company's competitive advantages. So how to manage them effectively and improve their job performance continuously has become a critical issue of human resources development and management. Usually knowledge workers are not satisfied with only extrinsic motivation, such' as salaries and benefits. They also hope to get some sense of achievement through more creative or challenging tasks, which require the company to provide more internal incentives. As an important internal incentive force, psychological empowerment has attracted much attention from the theoretical circle. However, it is still a question worth exploring that whether psychological empowerment can influence the job performance of knowledge workers.Currently, both domestic and abroad related research mainly concentrated on the influence of psychological empowerment on working attitude, while the study between psychological and working outcome is very few and the conclusions of these studies are not consistent. Research about the influence of psychological empowerment on the job performance can not only verify the validity of psychological empowerment, but also can provide a new perspective to improve the job performance of knowledge workers. Therefore, this paper adopts the method of literature analysis, questionnaire, etc. to study the composing dimensionality of psychological empowerment & performance, and the knowledge worker's psychological empowerment on vital demographic variable. Besides, it also makes use of corresponding statistical analyzing methods to discuss how psychological empowerment predicts the job performance of knowledge workers.Based on present theories about psychological empowerment and performance, this paper builds up a model which describes how the psychological empowerment affects the job performance of knowledge workers. Through the questionnaire data from 127 knowledge workers, this paper makes use of analysis of variance, correlation analysis and regression analysis to analyze the data, and get the following conclusions: (1) Psychological empowerment are composed by four dimensions, namely meaning, self efficacy, self-determination and impact; while job performance are consisted with three dimensions, task performance, working dedication and interpersonal promotion, and the later two dimensions are main factors of contextual performance; (2) Psychological empowerment is significant variable which affects job performance of knowledge workers; (3) Knowledge worker's self efficacy, self-determination and impact make notable influence on his task performance, while knowledge worker's meaning, self-determination and impact make notable influence on his contextual performance; (4) Demographic variables markedly affect knowledge worker's psychological empowerment differently.