The Impacts of Employee Empowerment on Innovation: A Survey on Isparta and Burdur Organized Industrial Zones

Abstract

This study has analyzed, by examining the relationship between empowerment and innovativeness which are significant concepts for organizations, how empowerment efforts affect innovativeness, and how behavioural, psychological, and social and structural dimensions of empowerment affects innovativeness. As a result of these examinations, all the hypotheses which comprised our research have been accepted. In other words, it has been concluded that the behavioural, psychological, and social and structural empowerment efforts concerning the employees have a highly positive impact on innovativeness, and that the simultaneous application of behavioural, psychological, and social and structural empowerment has an impact of high degree on innovativeness.

Understanding the Impact of Empowerment on Employees Innovation Performance: Evidence from the Jordanian Hotel Industry

“…This result also implies that the employees hold and perceived all the cognitions of psychological empowerment in the Jordanian hotels which in turn leads them to be more able go through innovation performance effectively. This result was supported with previous researches, which confirmed a significant relationship between psychological empowerment and innovation performance (Spreitzer 1995;Bolat 2008;Kahreh et al, 2011;Köksal, 2011;Bhatnagar, 2012;and Uzunbacak, 2015).…”

“…The research's results argued that when structural empowerment and psychological empowerment are merged together as a whole, the influence of empowerment on employees' innovation performance shows a higher level (R 2 = 0.473, p = 0.000), which distinguishes this research from other researches were conducted. This result was supported by Uzunbacak (2015) who indicated that employees are appreciated the efforts of empowerment, participate in management, have the authority to make decisions and to produce new ideas and that managers attempt to create an environment which will facilitate employees' creativity and innovativeness encourages employees to behave innovatively. In this created environment (structural empowerment), the employee will feel empowered and be able to produce and implement new ideas (Köksal, 2011).…”

“…Competitive environment, the changes in customers' demands and globalization are the key factors that have led the service organisations to empower their employees, attempting to increase their profitability, creativity and innovation (Çuhadar, 2005). Both empowerment and innovation are of great importance for organizations to be successful in the long term, to enlarge, and to survive (Sreeniva, 2014 andUzunbacak, 2015). For these reasons, empowerment, which gives employees the autonomy and authority to act independently, make decisions, and helps to create new research fields, new ideas, products and markets and thus contributes to the service organisation growth (Al-Sabi, 2011 and Al Zahrani, 2012).…”

“…Thus, the ability the employer has to empower employees would affect the extent to which an employee would find his/her job meaningful, feel confident of having the skills required to perform their job successfully (competence), feel he/she has authority to determine how to do the job and make a difference to the organisation outcomes by achieving the job purpose (Al-Sabi, 2011). This was supported by Uzunbacak (2015) who indicated that the employees are appreciated the efforts of empowerment, participate in management, have the authority to make decisions and to produce new ideas and that managers attempt to create an environment which will facilitate employees' creativity and innovativeness as well as encourages employees to behave innovatively. In this created environment, the employees will feel empowered and be able to produce and implement new ideas (Köksal, 2011).…”

“…participate in decision-making, provide new ideas, and present better ways of doing work), and those employees are more motivated and more productive in the work (Kemp and Dwyer, 2001). Research suggests that empowerment can enhance employees' innovation performance (Sreeniva, 2014 andUzunbacak, 2015), particularly in the hospitality industry (Nadeem et al, 2018;and Ergun, 2018) and thus a way to improve workplace environments and help organisations function effectively (Erstad, 1997).…”