The empowerment–organizational performance link in local governments
| Published date | 04 February 2019 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/PR-09-2017-0273 |
| Date | 04 February 2019 |
| Pages | 118-140 |
| Author | Beatriz García-Juan,Ana B. Escrig-Tena,Vicente Roca-Puig |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour,Global HRM |
The empowerment–organizational
performance link in
local governments
Beatriz García-Juan, Ana B. Escrig-Tena and
Vicente Roca-Puig
Department of Business Administration and Marketing,
Universitat Jaume I, Castellón de la Plana, Spain
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the understanding of how to raise organizational
performance in public sector organizations through human resource management. Specifically, this paper
aims to investigate the link between structural empowerment and organizational performance, and the
mediating role of the psychological empowerment of employees.
Design/methodology/approach –The authors apply multilevel structural equation modeling using a
sample of 103 local governments’managers and 461 employees from Spain.
Findings –The results show that structural empowerment is positively associated with organizational
performance. Surprisingly, this relationship is not mediated by psychological empowerment, although it is a
powerful antecedent of organizational performance.
Originality/value –In the context of new public management, structural empowermentemerges as a useful
component of human resource management for improving organizational performance in public sector
organizations. Nevertheless, scant research has combined structural empowerment practices and employees’
feelings of empowerment, which would create a global view to shed light on their role to increase
organizational performance. Therefore, this paper examines the mediating function of psychological
empowerment (individual level) in the structural empowerment–organizational performance link
(organizational level) in the context of public sector organizations.
Keywords Quantitative, Psychological empowerment, Public administration, Organizational performance,
Structural empowerment, Multilevel design
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
New public management (NPM) (Fernandez and Moldogaziev, 2013) has highlighted the
relevance of empowerment for public sector organizations due to its promotion of
more decentralized organizations (Hansen and Høst, 2012). This decentralization
has also brought about changes in the way organizations manage people by
heightening the importance of the human factor in public organizations (Giménez and
Prior, 2007; Stanton and Manning, 2013). Within this context, employee empowerment is
harnessed to make changes that improve the services provided (Nicholson-Crotty
et al., 2017; Pitts, 2005).
Although numerous studies have reported positive effects of implementing practices to
manage empowerment (see Maynard et al., 2012), the concept remains difficult to explain
(Matthews et al., 2003). This situation has led scholars to study empowerment from
different perspectives (Dimitriades and Maroudas, 2007), predominantly the structural
and the psychological approaches. The structural perspective understands empowerment
as a set of practices and structures that enable the transfer of power and authority from
higher levels in the organization to lower levels, increasing access to information and
resources (Bowen and Lawler, 1992). This is the “macro”approach to empowerment
(Dewettinck and van Ameijde, 2011). The psychological perspective, in contrast, regards
empowerment as a psychological state, as employees’attitudes in reaction to managerial
practices (Conger and Kanungo, 1988; Spreitzer, 1995; Thomas and Velthouse, 1990).
Personnel Review
Vol. 48 No. 1, 2019
pp. 118-140
© Emerald PublishingLimited
0048-3486
DOI 10.1108/PR-09-2017-0273
Received 15 September 2017
Revised 16 March 2018
8 May 2018
Accepted 4 June 2018
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0048-3486.htm
118
PR
48,1
This perspective considers empowerment at the individual employee level and represents
the “micro”approach to empowerment (Dewettinck and van Ameijde, 2011).
While there is a growing body of research on the structural empowerment–performance
link, usually showing a positive relationship (e.g. Seibert et al., 2004), few studies have
considered indirect or mediating effects of work-related attitudes (Fernandez and Moldogaziev,
2013). In thisline, Boxall et al. (2011) state that although the black box of general HR practices
(which includes structural empowerment) has attracted increasing research attention in recent
years (e.g.Aryee et al., 2012), more investigation is needed to advance our understanding of the
mediating variables intervening in the HR practices–performance relationship. Furthermore, it
is advisable to examine sub-dimensions of HRM or specific HR practices, such as
structural empowerment (e.g. Patterson et al., 2004; Van De Voorde et al., 2012), since different
HR practices can be associated with different employee and organizational outcomes
(Jiang et al., 2012). Thus, by examining structural empowerment in its own right, its
consequences can be determined more accurately (Van De Voorde et al., 2016). Within the
specific empowerment field, numerous scholars (e.g. Dewettinck and van Ameijde, 2011;
Fernandez and Moldogaziev, 2013; Maynard et al., 2012) advocate integrating the structural
and psychological approaches to gain a broader understanding of the empowerment process.
However, “virtually no research has combined structural and psychological approaches to
develop an integrative approach”(Cho and Faerman, 2010, p. 130). This paper focuses on the
local government context to conceptually develop and empirically test a model proposing that
structural empowerment directly affects organizational performance, and that this effect is
mediated by employees’psychological empowerment.
This study makes four contributions to the literature. First, by including psychological
empowerment as an intervening variable, we advance knowledge of the black box between
structural empowerment and organizational performance by exploring more deeply the role
of individual cognitive and psychological variables in this link. Although some scholars
have considered structural empowerment as an antecedent of psychological empowerment
(e.g. Laschinger et al., 2001; Seibert et al., 2004), and others have demonstrated that
structural empowerment affects organizational performance (e.g. Birdi et al., 2008;
Fernandez and Moldogaziev, 2013; Patterson et al., 2004), these are partial frames, since they
examine only one part of the reality. There is a gap in the scholarship combining the two
parts that the present study attempts to fill by adopting a global view to analyze three
variables simultaneously: structural empowerment, psychological empowerment, and
organizational performance.
The second contribution is the use of a multilevel approach to integrate the individual
and organizational levels. Studies centered on the individual level (e.g. Spreitzer, 1996),
originating from the field of psychology, set out to demonstrate the influence of certain
behaviors and attitudes workers hold about their work performance, but neglect the
organizational context in which these processes take place. Studies with a focus on the
organization (e .g. Birdi et al., 2008; Patterson et al., 2004), grounded on economic
approaches, explore the influence of empowerment on organizational outcomes, without
taking into account the essential role of employees as a critical organizational
resource to explain this relationship. Integrating the two perspectives could help advance
the field of human resource management (Ostroff and Bowen, 2000), especially if
multilevel mediation models are used, which according to Peccei and Van De Voorde
(2016), not only further extend and refine single-level models but also represent a
significant departure from them.
To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to address psychological
empowerment with a 2–1–2 design, so the paper is innovative in this field of knowledge.
By studying the bottom-up relationship between psychological empowerment and
organizational performance we help to extend knowledge about cross-level (1–2) links in
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Empowerment–
organizational
performance link
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