Eveliene Westgeest

Current position: n.a.
Thesis title: Employee empowerment and its relation to affective commitment

Empowerment can be of great value for a company and its employees. However, to be able to benefit most from giving employees empowerment, it is not only important to focus on the achievements that could be gained by giving employees empowerment, but also to take into account the possible disadvantages and risks. This study investigates the relations between the dimensions of empowerment (impact, competence, meaning and self-determination) and affective commitment. This study also investigates the interactional effects of the dimensions of empowerment with job engagement and trust in the management on affective commitment.

The research was done among Dutch employees working at the Rabobank. Rabobank has an internal program which is focused on giving employees more responsibilities and more autonomy in their work. This program has been implemented gradually, and employees who were just acquainted with the program have been approached for this study.

The results of this study show two main effects, the first main effect is a marginally significant one with empowerment meaning and the second one is a significant inverted u-shaped relationship. Besides significant moderating effects are shown. The results show that empowerment meaning is positively related to affective commitment. Thus, when an employee feels his work is meaningful and fits in with his personal ideals, it positively relates to affective commitment. An inverted u-shaped relation is found between self-determination and affective commitment. This means that an increase from low to moderate levels of self-determination is associated with an increase in affective commitment. However, affective commitment decreases at relatively high levels of self-determination.

In addition to these effects, there are also certain moderating effects. The results show that job engagement can strengthen or weaken the relationship between empowerment competence and affective commitment. The highest degree of affective commitment can be achieved by a low level of competence and a high level of job engagement. The results also show moderating effects with trust in the management and three dimensions of empowerment: impact, meaning and competence. When an employee scores low on empowerment meaning, the degree of identification with organizational goals, and scores high on trust in the management, this leads to the highest degree of affective commitment. When the employee has already identified his own goals with those of the organization, trust in the management does not play a large role. The second interaction to achieve the highest degree of affective commitment, shows the employee has to feel he has an impact on the organizational outcome and trusts the management. Finally, a low score on an employee‟s competence in combination with a high score on trust in the management causes the highest score on affective commitment. For these latter two interactions with the dimensions impact and competence, the degree of trust in the management is especially important when the employee already has a high score on these dimensions.

Empowering people does not automatically cause benefits for the organization. It is important to take into account the degree in which employees are empowered, as well as the role of job engagement and trust in the management.

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