Psychological empowerment
Marta Llorente-Alonso, Gabriela Topa, Cristina García-Ael
This paper aims to provide an overview of current research into Psychological Empowerment Theory within the field of Work and Organizational Psychology. Specifically, we present here a review of literature on Spreitzer’s empowerment theory (1995), discussing the different results obtained in the most recent meta-analyses on empowerment and exploring the moderating factors that intervene in the relationship between psychological empowerment and its antecedents and consequents. We also identify possible future avenues of research into empowerment and its related factors. The literature review reveals that psychological empowerment is an important motivational factor that acts as a predictor of attitudinal factors and organizational outcomes. Recent studies have found that certain individual, social and organizational factors precede greater worker empowerment; and in turn, the subjective perception of psychological empowerment leads to an improvement in both outcomes and affective and attitudinal factors among members of the organization. Moreover, other factors, such as the profession or cultural origin of the participants in the studies, have been found to affect psychological empowerment scores. Consequently, organizational managers must consider all the variables involved in the process of empowering workers, since each may impact the way in which a worker can be empowered.
Keywords
Psychological Empowerment, Antecedents, Consequents, Moderating Factors, Organizational Outcomes.
