Date of Conferral

2015

Degree

Ph.D.

School

Management

Advisor

Lee Lee

Abstract

Although much is known about employee empowerment and work designs, numerous companies and management practitioners struggle to implement empowerment initiatives effectively because it is not known which approach best facilitates individual levels of psychological empowerment. Traditional job design theory focuses on the role of managers and portrays employees as passive grantees of empowerment. Employees may influence their own empowerment by taking an active role in work design. The primary purpose of this correlational study was to examine whether job crafting or idiosyncratic deals are more or less empowering than job design and how work locus of control influences these relationships. It was hypothesized that job crafting would be the strongest correlate with psychological empowerment. A quantitative cross-sectional survey was designed with measures adapted from existing instruments. A sample of 150 adults, drawn from various industries in the United States, completed a voluntary, online survey. Data analysis, which used Pearson correlations, revealed that job crafting had a stronger relationship with psychological empowerment than did idiosyncratic deals and management-driven job design for employees with high internal work locus of control. Findings from this study may help organizational leaders understand how employees with high internal tendencies are psychologically empowered when actively engaged in designing their own work. Employees may then feel empowered to advance the company's social agenda and make personalized contributions to the greater society, essentially becoming goodwill ambassadors for the organization.

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