Social Empowerment Paper

ABSTRACT

The purpose of the present research is to study the influence of charismatic leadership, job satisfaction, inspiration and guidance on psychological empowerment.  Inspiration and guidance are a mediating variables as it is driven by charismatic leadership and leading to psychological empowerment.  The data were collected by the questionnaire and analysed using the Structural Equation Model (SEM).

Keywords: Charismatic Leadership, Job Satisfaction, Inspiration, Guidance, Psychological Empowerment.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

First and foremost, we would like to express our sincerest gratitude to our lecturer, Dr.Yusliza Mohd-Yusoff, for her guidance and advice throughout the preparation of this term paper. Further, we would also like to take this opportunity to convey our thanks to all of our friends and colleagues. Without their help on the inputs, the preparation of this term paper would be challenging and impossible. To our beloved family, for their words of encouragement, understanding and continuous support that help in many ways although they never know about our term paper. We really appreciate all the cooperation’s and supports receipt through the preparation of this term paper and there is not enough word in the words to show our gratitude.

INTRODUCTION

According to Conger and Kanungo (1988), psychological empowerment  is defined as a motivational self-efficacy. When employees exercise some control over their work life, it is deemed that psychological empowerment exists and this was quoted by  Spreitzer (1995). Spreitzer also stated that an individual's active orientation to his or her work role reflects psychological empowerment. In addition it consists of perceptions that are shaped by the work environment rather than a fixed personality attribute. Spreitzer also modified the model of Thomas and Velthouse (1990) and defined empowerment as a motivational construct manifested in four cognitions:

• Meaning
• Competence
• Self-determination
• Impact

The combination of these for cognitions reflects an active orientation towards to a work role instead of passiveness. According to Spreitzer (1995:1441), active orientation means is when an individual is having a sense of feeling that they are ble to shape his or her work role or context.  

i.        Meaning – A sense of purpose or personal association towards work as stated by Mishra & Spreitzer (1998). According to Quinn and Spreitzer (1997), empowered people sense that their work is significant to them and they pay attention about what they are doing and their responsibilities.

ii.        Competence – According to Mishra & Spreitzer (1998), individuals believe that they have the necessary skills and abilities to perform their work well. This aspect is labeled as competence rather than self-confidence because of a focus on value specific to a work role.

iii.        Self-determination – A sense of freedom about how individuals do their own work (Mishra & Spreitzer, 1998). According to Quinn & Spreitzer (1997), self-determination is related to the opportunity to select task and activities that make sense and to perform in ways that seems appropriate.

iv.        Impact – According to Mishra & Spreitzer (1998), impact is a belief that individuals can have an impact the system or organization in which they are connected and associated in. This describes an individual's ability to influence outcomes at work.

Basically, every organizations wishes to maximize employee’s contribution in order to achieve organization’s success. Psychological empowerment works in this manner and there are some other views suggesting that organization's performance and output are good when the employees and leaders participate fully in decision making and pursue a shared vision and purpose through team effort.                  

This research mainly focused on relationship between leader empowering behaviors and employee satisfaction to maximize the organization’s outcome. The current research shows how the leadership empowering behaviors influence the organizational outcome.

RESEARCH OBJECTIVES

             The research objective for this term paper is to identify the main factors that contributing to the positive outcome of psychological empowerment in an organization and to analyze on how psychological empowerment of a leader interrelated to the psychological empowerment of their subordinates.

Further, taking into consideration previous studies and research, we would like to analyze on how the study of psychological empowerment which were associated with other variables e.g. innovativeness, job satisfaction, et cetera would give boost effect to the productivity in an organization.

GAP ANALYSIS

Psychological empowerment has been studied in many perspectives towards many countries.  Based on our findings from other research paper, psychological empowerment can lead to a greater job satisfaction among employees in many industries.  At the same time, charismatic leadership played a vital role in order to initiative innovation and guidance as a mediating variable. Nonetheless, there are certain limitations from previous studies conducted that should be acknowledged in terms of future research.  

1. Sample and geographical factors

Several researches should be conducted longitudinally as the sample size of the study was limited to the Malay-Chinese working in western Malaysia, which might lessen its generalizability.  To enhance generalizability, the study should be replicated in different geographical areas as well.  Future researches must use additional diverse sample of respondents by engaging a longitudinal design.  Collection of data should be from multiple independent sources from different point of time or alternatively use experimental designs.  Also they must try to validate their current findings in other countries as it might have different cultures to be considered is it is one of the factors that contribute towards the outcomes.  Service concept and standards can be observed inversely in different countries due to level of economic development, availability of qualified personnel and cultural attributes.  Future research can study the relationship between employee autonomy, organizational support and psychological empowerment-Influence of cultural difference.