Directorate of distance education master of business administration

Conditions Necessary for Empowerment 
 
The conditions that are necessary for empowerment and gaining 
credibility and acceptance at various levels in the organization are 
active participation by lower level employees in the management of the 
affairs of an organization, encouragement to innovations, transparent 
information sharing, less formalization of workplace, installation of 
upward performance appraisals, creating tasks that provide intrinsic 
feedback, encouragement to self-management of individuals and self-

---

180
managing teams and uniform standards of accountability. A wide variety 
of firms have undertaken interventions such as quality circles, cross-
functional teams, employee stock options, autonomous work groups and 
quality of work life councils in order to empower employees. The leader 
or chief functionary of the organizations needs to assume the roles of a 
stimulator, supporter, guide and an enabler of employees serving under 
him in order to empower them. 
 
While the minimum prerequisite for empowerment is sharing 
of information about an organization’s plans for the near future and 
the details required to the completion of job, an organization would 
also have to reduce resource-dependency on the part of the people 
to be empowered, towards their bosses. The maximum extent of 
empowerment is found when workers become directors and become 
capable of codetermination.  Empowerment is normally associated with 
the practice of delegation at individual level and decentralization and 
flexibility in the organization in general. In short, empowerment has to 
cover the bases of supremacy such as information, personal charisma, 
reward and coercive potential, expertise and position. Empowering the 
workers in progressive doses, would keep their interests and initiatives 
alive, sustain their resourcefulness and independence, and promote 
foresight, profit-orientation, optimism and versatility, besides instilling 
a significant sense of responsibility in them. 
 
Empowerment consists of five stages. The first stage is the 
diagnosis. It involves identifying the existing conditions in the 
organization that lead to feelings of powerlessness among employees. 
Some of the conditions thus identified could be centralized resources, 
authoritarian styles of leadership, rewards with low incentive value 
and poor communication. The next stage is to introduce empowering 
strategies like participative management, merit-pay systems and job 
enrichment. The third stage is to remove conditions of powerlessness 
and provide self-efficacy information to make the employees feel 
confident, self-assured and hopeful of success. The fourth stage is when 
a feeling of empowerment is generated. The fifth and final stage towards 
empowerment involves deriving performance as a beneficial outcome of 
better empowerment.  

---

181