Defining and Measuring Employee Empowerment

The study had three objectives: to define employee empowerment, to develop a measure of the concept, and to examine the measure’s validity. A working definition was specified and a 140-item measure developed. The measure was administered to 698 employees of a high technology company located in the Midwest. Responses were factor analyzed and an 8-factor solution was identified as best representing the concepts underlying the responses. A validity study examined the ability of the 8 dimensions to differentiate among 28 workgroups, identified independently either as more empowered or as less empowered. Two dimensions, fairness of the recognition system and decisions about work processes, clearly contributed to discriminating between the two types of groups. A third dimension, clarity of company goals, was a somewhat less clear contributor. Reasons why some dimensions discriminated more from less empowered groups whereas others did not are discussed.