Employee Empowerment and Management Control

Employee Empowerment

• Empowerment represents a shift in the locus of control from externally imposed directive control to internally imposed self-control
• Management can achieve this shift in the locus of control by using four forms of managerial control:
  • Ex-ante control: operating before the event and focusing on inputs
  • Concurrent control: operating during the event and focusing on processes
  • Ex-post control: operating after the event and focusing on outputs
  • Meta control: operating “above” the event and focusing on values

Implementation Factors

• Careful employee selection, recruitment, and training as a means of exercising ex-ante control
• Having empower-able employees and inculcating skills, knowledge, and attitudes conducive to responsible behavior during service delivery
• Performance-related rewards for promoting employee responsibility, creativity, and initiative
• Customer-oriented organizational culture to enhance service delivery
• Empowering management style to instill company values, shape attitudes, and stimulate desired behaviors

Empowerment

• Empowerment requires a change in the form of management control
• Devolving decision-making authority and responsibility to frontline employees for controlling and enhancing service quality and customer satisfaction during service delivery
• Empowerment requires employees to engage in discretionary behavior, aiming to meet or exceed customers’ expectations during routine and non-routine service situations

Examples of Empowered Behavior

• Taking immediate action to resolve customer complaints, even if not directly related to their area of responsibility
• Making financial concessions
• Using creativity and doing “whatever it takes” to please guests, even beyond what is expected of them as employees
• Exercising discretion in their dealings with guests

Servant Leadership

• Characteristics of servant leadership (foresight, persuading, awareness, and stewardship) are important for employee empowerment
• Servant leaders include followers’ input into important managerial decisions
• Servant leaders’ behavior increases employees’ self-determination and self-efficacy levels by providing autonomy, empowerment, and the conditions in which to grow and develop

Implementing Empowerment

• Implementing employee empowerment requires leaders to examine the importance of training, reward practices, organizational culture perceptions, and management style