Influence of Employee Empowerment on Job Satisfaction of Commercial State Corporations in Kenya

Abstract

The general objective of this study was to establish the influence of employee empowerment on job satisfaction in commercial state corporations within Kenya. The majority of Kenyan employees are absorbed by the public sector, and the Kenyan workforce is also increasingly seeking opportunities to work in the public sector. Due to this trend, it is of the essence to explore the degree to which employees' empowerment is influencing employee job satisfaction. The study's general objective was to establish the effects of employee empowerment on job satisfaction of commercial state corporations within Kenya. Specifically, the study sought to assess the influence of job design; to establish the influence of transformational leadership; to establish the influence of employee involvement and to establish the influence of knowledge-sharing practices on employee job satisfaction of commercial state corporations within Kenya. The Herzberg’s Two-Factor Theory, Structural Empowerment Theory, and Social Exchange Theory guided the study. The study employed the descriptive research design in collecting data from the field. The target population of this study consisted of 55 commercial state corporations within Kenya. The sample size was 48 commercial state corporations. The main research instrument for data collection was a questionnaire. The applicability of the questionnaire to the proposed study was ascertained through a pilot study including 10 respondents from the study’s target population. A frequency analysis of this dataset revealed an 83.33% response rate, which is satisfactory. Conversely, the multiple regression analysis revealed a strong positive linkage between employee job satisfaction and employee empowerment. Importantly, only job design was found to have a significant influence on employee job satisfaction of Commercial State Corporations within Kenya. Its null hypothesis was rejected at a 0.95 confidence level (α<0.05). Besides the degree of influence that the sub-variables of employee empowerment had on employee job satisfaction varied. Job design had the highest level of influence (β =0.909), followed by Knowledge-sharing practices (β =0.385), Transformational leadership (β =0.149), and lastly, employee involvement (β =0.008). The study thus concluded that employee empowerment had a significant relationship with employee job satisfaction in commercial state corporations within Kenya. In particular, the study revealed that job design was the most dominant employee empowerment tool at commercial state corporations within Kenya. The study recommends that these organizations ought to increasingly consider employee empowerment policies that aim to boost knowledge-sharing practices, transformational leadership and employee involvement. Keywords: Employee Empowerment, Employee Involvement, Job design, Employee Job Satisfaction, Knowledge Sharing Practices, Organizational Commitment, Organizational Performance, Transformational leadership.