Gerry, the concierge at a luxury hotel, leaves work and takes a flight to personally return a briefcase left behind by a guest.
Louise, the salesperson at an exclusive jeweller, gives a client a £1000 discount on a £5000 diamond bracelet.
Responding to a client request, Frank, a salesman, spends several hundred pounds to restock a shop with cartons of potato crisps.
What do these vignettes have in common? Irresponsibility or empowerment?
The concept of empowerment says that power should be distributed throughout an organisation, not concentrated at the top. This translates into staff discretion, encouraging and rewarding employees to exercise initiative and imagination.
There is a growing consensus that traditional "command-and-control" hierarchies are not suited to today's competitive environments or the requirement to satisfy increasingly demanding customer expectations.
The leading edge now comes from empowerment - creating a workforce that is given the latitude to come up with new ideas and to act promptly on them. To its proponents, the attraction of empowerment does not rest on any ideal of worker democracy or participation. Rather, empowerment is deemed to bring tangible benefits.
Empowered staff are considered to be more committed to their work. This is because they are making the decisions about what to do - "taking ownership", rather than just carrying out management dictat.
In addition, those who work at the front line, especially in services, are in a better position to gauge customer needs and benefits. Moreover, empowered staff have the discretion to deal with customers promptly and helpfully, without having to check with a superior.
For instance, a hotel receptionist who allows a guest a free late checkout if the room is not needed anyway, or an employee who handles a customer complaint about a delayed dry cleaning order by delivering the cleaning to the customer as soon as it is ready, free of charge.
These examples illustrate another claimed advantage of empowerment. When front-line staff deal well with customers, not only do they stitch in customer loyalty, but satisfied customers thereby become advocates for the company.
So much for the espoused benefits of empowerment. But the three vignettes at the outset portray some of the costs and inherent contradictions of empowerment.
In addition to giveaways and bad decisions, costs can include investment in selection and training, and higher labour costs for staff expected to be committed and informed, and to use their empowerment wisely.
Moreover, the opposite to what empowerment is meant to do can result ensue when staff take it upon themselves to give certain customers favourable treatment over others, who become annoyed,
Is the notion of empowerment a contradiction in terms and/or just a con?
One of the paradoxes of empowerment is that power usually remains with the empowerer. Can one be truly empowered if those who delegated the power can take it back at their whim? There is also the dilemma that arises when responsibility is not linked to authority.
Often, situations of empowerment entail an offloading of responsibility, without accompanying power. Thus, people are held accountable and blamed for failures which they did not have the wherewithal to influence one way or the other.
The reverse position is power without responsibility, often found in "self-managed teams". These may be given genuine discretion to act, but, when things go wrong, does every member of the team get held to account? In practice, no one tends to be liable - a dangerous vacuum of responsibility. Gerry, Louise and Frank are other examples of power without responsibility, where lines have not been drawn.
Harvard professor Dr Chris Argyris has written about empowerment as "the emperor's new clothes". He claims that senior management lauds empowerment while arranging work so it maintains ultimate control, through totally predetermined work regimes.
An example is call centres where the very technology that facilitates employees' work can also be used to monitor them. Real empowerment necessitates trust. This essential ingredient cannot be mandated. It must exist already.
The concept raises ethical questions. It is ironic that empowerment is advocated at a period in industrial history when bureaucracy is breaking down in favour of flatter, leaner and even "virtual" organisations that outsource many of their inputs through shifting network relationships.
This means that just when organisational commitment to the employee has diminished, the employee is expected to exhibit enhanced commitment to the organisation, and to embrace the responsibility that goes with empowerment. There is continuous pressure on employees not merely to work for monetary rewards, but to "give their all" out of a sense of commitment to the espoused values of the company, often developed by external consultants in a proclaimed mission statement.
Moreover, employees are expected to be interacting, learning and changing, in teams and networks. These demands can be stressful, especially in workplaces that offer no ongoing relationships, no safe haven, no personal space.
And all this is happening when the differential pay between senior management and front line employees is widening. No wonder it has been observed that not all staff want to be empowered.
If someone is empowered, does that mean he or she has unlimited discretion? According to two US expert academics, Prof David Bowen and Prof Edward Lawlor, there are different levels of empowerment.
The highest level, high involvement, entails the distribution throughout the organisation of power, information, knowledge and rewards. This level is rarely found. It is difficult to effect because it demands a fundamental shift in the mindset, processes, culture and infrastructure of the organisation.
It also requires expensive training. For example, strategic decision making requires facility in reading and interpreting financial data.
The next level down is job involvement, whereby employees design their own work to best fulfil management targets. Workers do not decide what to do, only how to do it. Supervisors' traditional "direction" function becomes a "coach" role. Such an approach occurred at Rolls Royce, which abolished the position of foreman and replaced it with that of "coach-trainer".
Apparently, teams make their own decisions about work allocation.
RR changed the working practices of its shop-floor staff, abolishing overtime payments and instituting pensionable annual salaries. The company claims a resulting 60 per cent increase in output. Interestingly, a downside of the RR story is some disenchantment of those workers whose ideas are not used - an illustration that accurate expectations are important to make empowerment work.
The lowest level of empowerment is suggestion involvement. Employees are encouraged to make recommendations, which are not binding on management. This is but a small step up from the complete control, no empowerment approach, where management designs the system and employees execute it.
Examples are the McDonald's approach, or the Disney concept, where every character in the theme parks works according to a script, with only pre-specified variations allowed.
What levels of empowerment are found in Irish workplaces? Some answers are found in a series of surveys on worker participation carried out by the UCD Centre for Employee Relations and Organisational Performance (CEROP) in 1996/97, covering over 700 workplaces.
Some 80 per cent of these establishments introduced change, invoking direct employee involvement only in operational matters, like working time arrangements, working practices and identifying ways of achieving targets. Even these lower level employee interventions occurred in only a minority of unionised workplaces, but interestingly, in a majority of non-unionised workplaces.
However, in all cases, there was virtually no employee involvement in strategic issues such as new product introductions, setting targets, or acquisition/divestment plans. These remain the prerogative of management. The studies conclude that the practices found in Ireland are typical of the Anglo-American model.
Recognising the inherent contradictions and injustices of empowerment, Bowen and Lawlor suggested that the practice of empowerment be tailored to business strategy. The unempowered extreme is the assembly line, low-cost high-volume strategy, like McDonald's, with short customer transactions, simple routine processes, and predictability.
The empowered extreme, such as professional services, involves a differentiated customised service, longstanding client relationships, complex transactions and lack of predictability. Unfortunately, the two professors assert these extremes require different types of employees, assuming a simplistic view of human nature.
The "assembly line" type of person, not interested in enriched work, with low growth needs and weak interpersonal skills, is contrasted with the "differentiated" type, possessing high growth and personal achievement needs, interpersonal skills, etc.
But, it can be argued that these diametrically opposed human qualities are not fixed. Rather, they are the result of different work environments.
Others have recommended measures to make empowerment work properly and fairly. One proposal is that authority and responsibility be evenly matched. For example, the Ritz-Carlton has a clear vision on exceeding customer expectations, but equally clear guidelines. The cost of satisfying a disgruntled guest should not exceed $2,500.
Other recommendations revolve around offering proper monetary rewards for exercising increased responsibility. For example, Intel offers share options to all employees. It is also recognised that empowered staff should have the appropriate training, knowledge and skills to take effective action.
Like many management fads, empowerment throws up many caveats and complexities. Gerry, Louise and Frank, and their companies, might have benefited, had these issues been considered before releasing such a potent elixir.
Dr Eleanor O'Higgins is a lecturer in strategic management and Business ethics at the Graduate School, UCD
