Most Worker Empowerment Programs Are Bogus
Programs to "empower" workers almost always fail because managers promise more than they can deliver.
So says Joanne Ciulla, professor of leadership and ethics in the University of Richmond's Jepson School of Leadership Studies.
"When empowering employees leaders must keep their promises," she says. "The best way to do this is to make promises they can keep."
That means being clear about how much power will be given to employees under the management system of the moment, whether it's total quality management (TQM) or something else. Unfortunately, she says, business leaders usually dish out too much hype about how democratic the workplace will be after the new empowerment takes place.
"An organization can always give employees more responsibility but employees feel betrayed when they discover they have been given less than the leadership's rhetoric implied."
Dr. Ciulla has written a paper entitled "Leadership and the Problem of Bogus Empowerment" recently published as a working paper of the Kellogg Leadership Studies Project. It will also be included in a collection of papers to be published in 1998 by Greenwood Press entitled The Leader's Heart: Essays on the Ethics of Leaders and Followers.
Bogus empowerment can be devastating to company morale, she says. When employees see management has lied to them they feel the company is showing a lack of respect for the dignity of the workers.
Empowerment, in general, is a term recognizing that workers do a better job when they have a say in the way they do their work, the redesign of their jobs and the introduction of technology in the workplace.
"Yet, over the past 20 years managers have been constantly amazed by this phenomenon, which tells us something about the respect they have had for their employees," Dr. Ciulla says.
Today, firms often lead employees to think they will have more power over their jobs than is really the case. They over-promise to get employees to buy into the program. In worst- case scenarios, workers wind up with more responsibility for their actions without adequate control over their actions, a situation Dr. Ciulla calls "cruel and stressful."
She adds that the desire for managers to run a smooth ship also hinders authentic empowerment.
"To empower people authentically, business leaders have to be ready to overthrow some of the aspects of niceness. The truth is not always pleasant. It can disrupt the harmony of an organization and introduce conflict. When you really empower people, you don't just empower them to agree with you."
She also believes that in today's team-oriented business environment, real empowerment includes protecting individualism because it is the source of creativity.
"Individualism has taken a beating in recent years," she says, "but teamwork without tolerance in opinion, gender, racial or cultural background is unacceptable."
And she offers two definitions for managers to consider.
"Authentic empowerment requires leaders to know what they are giving away and how they are changing the relationship between themselves and their followers. Bogus empowerment attempts to give employees or followers power without changing the moral relationship between leaders and followers."
Editors: If you would like to see a copy of her paper, please call Steve Infanti or Dick Jones at Dick Jones Communications.. If you would like to speak with Dr. Ciulla, please don't hesitate to contact her at 804-287-6083. [email protected] is her e-mail address. The University of Richmond's Jepson School of Leadership Studies is the first and still the only place where students can earn a bachelor's degree in leadership. Dick Jones Communications helps the University of Richmond with some of its public affairs work.
RSS