Empowerment in Organizations

Emerald Article: Training, empowerment, and creating a culture for change Leon A. Kappelman, Thomas C. Richards

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To cite this document: Leon A. Kappelman, Thomas C. Richards, (1996),"Training, empowerment, and creating a culture for change", Empowerment in Organizations, Vol. 4 Iss: 3 pp. 26 - 29 Permanent link to this document: http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/09684899610126650 Downloaded on: 03-04-2012 Citations: This document has been cited by 1 other documents To copy this document: permissions@emeraldinsight.com This document has been downloaded 4409 times.

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Training, empowerment, and creating a culture for change

Leon A. Kappelman and Thomas C. Richards

Introduction
During the past decade we have witnessed a multitude of change programs aimed at transforming organizational structures and processes to enhance productivity, effectiveness, and competitiveness. These change efforts have largely fallen short of the mark because most organizations fail to account effectively for the human element in these change projects. One solution is early employee participation in the change process. For participation to pay off, it must be combined with meaningful information and real influence. Real influence is what employee empowerment is all about. Employee empowerment, by providing workers with opportunities to influence decisions, promotes worker motivation and reduces worker resistance toward organizational changes. Employee empowerment is important to the organizational change process because empowerment fulfills the individuals need for a sense of control. This is a particularly critical need during a time of organizational change because the larger forces of change are usually beyond the individual employees control. Hardly anyone likes to feel like they are being pushed around. Empowerment itself is a difficult and demanding organizational change. Moreover, like many change efforts, an incremental and gradual implementation strategy is recommended on the road to full empowerment. The role of training in this process cannot be overemphasized since training is how the skills and knowledge necessary for effective empowerment are acquired. Moreover, training is recognized as important to the success of most organizational change efforts. Training helps in preparing the organization for change, in accomplishing the change itself, and in making the change a permanent part of the organization. Furthermore, it is generally accepted that motivation and other attitudes can influence training outcomes, and that the outcomes of training are not only knowledge and understanding, but also emotions and attitudes. The question is where do we begin? We examine during this study an innovative first step one organization took on the road to employee empowerment. Although this first step was small, it resulted in large benefits to 26

The authors Leon A. Kappelman is Associate Professor and Thomas C. Richards is Professor in the Business Computer Information Systems Department, College of Business Administration, University of North Texas, Denton, Texas, USA. Abstract Examines an innovative rst step which one organization took on the road to employee empowerment. States that, although this rst step was a small one, it resulted in large benets to the organization. Reveals that this eld study was conducted during the information system conversion phase of a larger organizational change, at 52 recently-acquired branches of a $40-billion interstate bank. Discovers that the payoffs were surprisingly large when employees are given a small empowering opportunity just before their training. Indicates that empowered employees are more able to adapt to change and less likely to resist it, and their need for control is being met through their empowerment, rather than by their resistance. Finds that even in small quantities, empowerment can be a large contributor to success. Also believes that small, low-cost empowerments with large payoffs can almost always be found.

Empowerment in Organizations Volume 4 Number 3 1996 pp. 2629 MCB University Press ISSN 0968-4891

Training, empowerment, and creating a culture for change

Empowerment in Organizations Volume 4 Number 3 1996 2629

Leon A. Kappelman and Thomas C. Richards

the organization. This early, although small empowerment seemed to set the tone at the beginning of the change process, and thereby avoided much of the resistance so common when change efforts are shoved down employees throats. In fact, it actually resulted in increased employee motivation regarding the change program. Moreover, because this early empowerment was provided in conjunction with training, this new-found motivation in turn enhanced training outcomes. As we analyzed our findings regarding the notable results of this small employee empowerment, we were reminded of the song lyric little things mean a lot.

The study and its findings

We conducted a field study, during the information system conversion phase of a larger organizational change, at 52 recently-acquired branches of a $40-billion interstate bank. This system had been operational for more than five years at over 600 existing branches in five states. This information system was already a proven success in that it met the banks technical and organizational requirements. This allowed us to conduct our study without concern for problems caused by the qualities of the object being changed, and to focus on the characteristics and effects of the change process. Because of its importance to customer service and marketing, this information system was a key technological component of this organizations larger total quality management program. The system provided real-time integration of all customer activities so complete service could be provided from any branch or service center. A questionnaire was presented approximately two weeks before cut over to the new system. Five weeks after the changeover of the information system, the primary research questionnaires were distributed. The entire population of 512 branch employees was polled. A total of 146 usable questionnaires were returned. We measured two behavioral and three attitudinal variables for each employee. Behaviors are visible activities in which employees participate and attitudes are 27

invisible psychological states of employees. The behaviors measured were training and empowerment. Training was simply the fact that an employee went to training sessions. All employees participated in these training activities. Empowerment was the fact that some managers permitted their employees to schedule their own training (since certain deadlines were met), and thereby, to have a small degree of control during the change process. Not all employees were so empowered. The three attitudes measured were motivation-aboutthe-change, training-satisfaction, and satisfaction-with-the change. All of the data were collected by self-reports when the employees filled out the questionnaires. Figure 1 depicts the relationship among these five variables. When examining the correlations among these five variables (as shown in Table I), we found that when workers were empowered they were 88 per cent more motivated, 146 per cent more satisfied with their training, and 99 per cent more satisfied with the organizational change as a whole. We also studied the effect of training and empowerment on the employees satisfactionwith training, motivation toward the change, and overall satisfaction with the change. A simultaneous analysis of the contribution of the two behaviors to changes in each of the three attitudes individually revealed that empowerment explained 440 per cent more about the variation in levels of motivation, 623 per cent more of the changes in training satisfaction, and 375 per cent more of the variation in overall satisfaction (calculated in terms of the standardized beta coefficients from each multiple regression analysis as shown in Table II).
Figure 1 Relationships among employee training, empowerment, motivation, and satisfaction during an organizational change Worker empowerment in training (behavioral) Worker participation in training (behavioral)

Worker motivation about OC (attitude)

Satisfied with training (attitude)

Overall satisfied with OC (attitude)

Key OC = Organizational change

Training, empowerment, and creating a culture for change

Empowerment in Organizations Volume 4 Number 3 1996 2629

Leon A. Kappelman and Thomas C. Richards

Table I Means, standard deviations and correlation coefcients

Mean 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Empowerment Training Motivated about change Satised with training Satised with change * p < 0.10 ** p < 0.05 *** p < 0.01 **** p < 0.001 1.88 2.86 87.40 33.63 4.11

SD 1.98 2.09 9.89 5.45 0.60

0.25*** 0.25*** 0.30**** 0.15* 0.24*** 0.10 0.14* 0.07

0.30*** 0.24*** 0.14* 0.15* 0.10 0.07 0.22*** 0.34**** 0.22*** 0.46**** 0.34**** 0.46****

Notes:

Table II Standardized regression coefcients (betas) and signicance tests (p-values)

Independent variables Empowerment Train Notes:

Dependent variables Satised with Satised with Motivation training change Beta p< Beta p< 0.31*** 0.0003 0.07 0.4 0.24** 0.0063 0.04 0.66 0.15* 0.0925 0.04 0.67

* p < 0.10 ** p < 0.01 *** p < 0.001

Conclusions and implications for management

Training provided an opportunity to empower and motivate employees. Empowering workers in this small way (i.e., schedule your training sessions) during the actual implementation of the organizational change provided workers with a small degree of control over what was essentially a change process over which they had no control. Providing workers with this small amount of control also provided an opportunity to demonstrate managements commitment to empowerment. Such early demonstrations are likely to breed early worker buy-in to the change, thereby reducing employee resistance, and increasing the chances of program success. Moreover, in this situation, it was a sensible, low-cost, low-risk, rst step on the road of employee empowerment. While our study examined the experience of one organization during the information system conversion phase of a larger organizational change, we believe that our ndings have 28

implications regarding the success of most organizational changes that affect and/or rely on employees. The results support the concept that empowerment is critical to the success of organizational change efforts. We found that by giving workers the opportunity to schedule their own training, they were empowered. Moreover, this empowerment resulted in large increases in employee motivation toward to the change, in their satisfaction with the training they received, and in their overall satisfaction with the change. Also important are the economic implications of these ndings. Motivated employees are more productive employees and satised workers more productive workers. Organizational research shows there are positive relationships between employee satisfaction and such productivity measures as performance, turnover, and absenteeism. Moreover, even small improvements in employee attitudes like motivation and satisfaction, can produce meaningful economic benets. The logical consequence of this is to extend the model depicted in Figure 1 to include the success of the organizational change and improvements in productivity and protability. Several additional conclusions are apparent from this study that have profound implications for managers who are concerned with the successful implementation of organizational changes and training programs: (1) In order to manage people, it is essential to consider their psychological dimensions. We found that providing employees with an empowering experience in conjunction with their training, signicantly improved the outcomes of that training, as well as increasing their motivation and satisfaction with

Training, empowerment, and creating a culture for change

Empowerment in Organizations Volume 4 Number 3 1996 2629

Leon A. Kappelman and Thomas C. Richards

the change. This occurred because this empowering experience provided employees with a need-meeting sense of control during a time of organizational change. (2) If training investments are to pay off, the entire training experience must be considered. We must consider not the content, but the entire context. In this study, training alone provided little measurable benet in terms of employee attitudes and explained almost nothing about their attitudes toward the success of the change effort. Training and empowerment, however, provided a great deal more statistical insight into these outcomes. (3) Even when limited, empowerment can have big payoffs. Most employees will never have the empowering opportunity of contributing to the early design and planning activities in the organizational change process, but almost every employee will be trained. This study clearly shows that giving employees a small empowering experience can have a profound effect on that employees motivation and satisfaction with the organizational change itself. It is possible that the benets of any empowerment are mediated by factors such as the type of work the

employee performs, the culture of the organization, as well as other inuences. The impact of any such change should always be measured, rather than merely assuming that the payoffs exist. In some organizational change programs, such as continuous quality improvement, empowerment is a critical component of the program. Our ndings provide a suggested mechanism for demonstrating the organizations commitment to empowerment early in the implementation of an organizational change. Empowerment is also an important component of the process of successful organizational change. Our ndings show that even in small quantities, empowerment can be a large contributor to success. We also believe that small, low-cost empowerments with large payoffs can almost always be found. Empowered employees are more able to adapt to change and less likely to resist it, because their need for control is being met through their empowerment, rather than by their resistance. In these times of continuous changes in the world around us, an organization which fosters empowered employees is an organization ready to handle change, planned or not. The ability to cope with change, is a survival skill no organization can do without.

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