Empowerment in Organizations

Training, empowerment, and creating a culture for change

Leon A. Kappelman Thomas C. Richards

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Leon A. Kappelman Thomas C. Richards, (1996),"Training, empowerment, and creating a culture for change",
Empowerment in Organizations, Vol. 4 Iss 3 pp. 26 - 29
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Linda Honold, (1997),"A review of the literature on employee empowerment", Empowerment in Organizations, Vol. 5 Iss 4
pp. 202-212 http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/14634449710195471
Jean-Sbastien Boudrias, Patrick Gaudreau, Andr Savoie, Alexandre J.S. Morin, (2009),"Employee empowerment: From
managerial practices to employees' behavioral empowerment", Leadership & Organization Development Journal, Vol.
30 Iss 7 pp. 625-638 http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/01437730910991646
Nick Nykodym, Jack L. Simonetti, Warren R. Nielsen, Barbara Welling, (1994),"Employee Empowerment", Empowerment in
Organizations, Vol. 2 Iss 3 pp. 45-55 http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/09684899410071699

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Introduction

Training, empowerment,
and creating a culture
for change

During the past decade we have witnessed a

multitude of change programs aimed at transforming organizational structures and processes to enhance productivity, effectiveness, and
competitiveness. These change efforts have
largely fallen short of the mark because most
organizations fail to account effectively for the
human element in these change projects. One
solution is early employee participation in the
change process. For participation to pay off, it
must be combined with meaningful information and real influence. Real influence is what
employee empowerment is all about.
Employee empowerment, by providing
workers with opportunities to influence decisions, promotes worker motivation and
reduces worker resistance toward organizational changes. Employee empowerment is important to the organizational change process
because empowerment fulfills the individuals
need for a sense of control. This is a particularly critical need during a time of organizational
change because the larger forces of change are
usually beyond the individual employees
control. Hardly anyone likes to feel like they
are being pushed around.
Empowerment itself is a difficult and
demanding organizational change. Moreover,
like many change efforts, an incremental and
gradual implementation strategy is recommended on the road to full empowerment. The
role of training in this process cannot be
overemphasized since training is how the skills
and knowledge necessary for effective empowerment are acquired. Moreover, training is
recognized as important to the success of most
organizational change efforts. Training helps in
preparing the organization for change, in
accomplishing the change itself, and in making
the change a permanent part of the organization. Furthermore, it is generally accepted that
motivation and other attitudes can influence
training outcomes, and that the outcomes of
training are not only knowledge and understanding, but also emotions and attitudes. The
question is where do we begin?
We examine during this study an innovative
first step one organization took on the road to
employee empowerment. Although this first
step was small, it resulted in large benefits to

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Leon A. Kappelman and

Thomas C. Richards

The authors
Leon A. Kappelman is Associate Professor and Thomas C.
Richards is Professor in the Business Computer Information
Systems Department, College of Business Administration,
University of North Texas, Denton, Texas, USA.
Abstract
Examines an innovative first step which one organization
took on the road to employee empowerment. States that,
although this first step was a small one, it resulted in large
benefits to the organization. Reveals that this field study was
conducted during the information system conversion phase
of a larger organizational change, at 52 recently-acquired
branches of a $40-billion interstate bank. Discovers that the
payoffs were surprisingly large when employees are given a
small empowering opportunity just before their training.
Indicates that empowered employees are more able to adapt
to change and less likely to resist it, and their need for control
is being met through their empowerment, rather than by their
resistance. Finds that even in small quantities, empowerment
can be a large contributor to success. Also believes that
small, low-cost empowerments with large payoffs can almost
always be found.

Empowerment in Organizations
Volume 4 Number 3 1996 pp. 2629
MCB University Press ISSN 0968-4891

26

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Training, empowerment, and creating a culture for change

Empowerment in Organizations

Leon A. Kappelman and Thomas C. Richards

Volume 4 Number 3 1996 2629

the organization. This early, although small

empowerment seemed to set the tone at the
beginning of the change process, and thereby
avoided much of the resistance so common
when change efforts are shoved down employees throats. In fact, it actually resulted in
increased employee motivation regarding the
change program. Moreover, because this early
empowerment was provided in conjunction
with training, this new-found motivation in
turn enhanced training outcomes. As we analyzed our findings regarding the notable results
of this small employee empowerment, we were
reminded of the song lyric little things mean a
lot.

invisible psychological states of employees.

The behaviors measured were training and
empowerment. Training was simply the fact
that an employee went to training sessions. All
employees participated in these training activities. Empowerment was the fact that some
managers permitted their employees to schedule their own training (since certain deadlines
were met), and thereby, to have a small degree
of control during the change process. Not all
employees were so empowered. The three
attitudes measured were motivation-aboutthe-change, training-satisfaction, and satisfaction-with-the change. All of the data were
collected by self-reports when the employees
filled out the questionnaires. Figure 1 depicts
the relationship among these five variables.
When examining the correlations among
these five variables (as shown in Table I), we
found that when workers were empowered they
were 88 per cent more motivated, 146 per cent
more satisfied with their training, and 99 per
cent more satisfied with the organizational
change as a whole.
We also studied the effect of training and
empowerment on the employees satisfactionwith training, motivation toward the change,
and overall satisfaction with the change. A
simultaneous analysis of the contribution of
the two behaviors to changes in each of the
three attitudes individually revealed that
empowerment explained 440 per cent more
about the variation in levels of motivation, 623
per cent more of the changes in training satisfaction, and 375 per cent more of the variation
in overall satisfaction (calculated in terms of
the standardized beta coefficients from each
multiple regression analysis as shown in
Table II).

The study and its findings

We conducted a field study, during the information system conversion phase of a larger
organizational change, at 52 recently-acquired
branches of a $40-billion interstate bank. This
system had been operational for more than five
years at over 600 existing branches in five
states. This information system was already a
proven success in that it met the banks technical and organizational requirements. This
allowed us to conduct our study without concern for problems caused by the qualities of the
object being changed, and to focus on the
characteristics and effects of the change
process.
Because of its importance to customer
service and marketing, this information system
was a key technological component of this
organizations larger total quality management
program. The system provided real-time integration of all customer activities so complete
service could be provided from any branch or
service center.
A questionnaire was presented approximately two weeks before cut over to the new
system. Five weeks after the changeover of the
information system, the primary research
questionnaires were distributed. The entire
population of 512 branch employees was
polled. A total of 146 usable questionnaires
were returned.
We measured two behavioral and three
attitudinal variables for each employee.
Behaviors are visible activities in which
employees participate and attitudes are

Figure 1 Relationships among employee training, empowerment, motivation,

and satisfaction during an organizational change
Worker
empowerment
in training
(behavioral)
Worker
participation
in training
(behavioral)

Worker
motivation
about OC
(attitude)

Key
OC = Organizational change

27

Satisfied
with
training
(attitude)

Overall
satisfied
with OC
(attitude)

Training, empowerment, and creating a culture for change

Empowerment in Organizations

Leon A. Kappelman and Thomas C. Richards

Volume 4 Number 3 1996 2629

Table I Means, standard deviations and correlation coefficients

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

Empowerment
Training
Motivated about change
Satisfied with training
Satisfied with change

Mean

SD

1.88
2.86
87.40
33.63
4.11

1.98
2.09
9.89
5.45
0.60

0.25***
0.25***
0.30**** 0.15*
0.24*** 0.10
0.14*
0.07

0.30*** 0.24*** 0.14*

0.15*
0.10
0.07
0.22*** 0.34****
0.22***
0.46****
0.34**** 0.46****

* p < 0.10
** p < 0.05
*** p < 0.01
**** p < 0.001

Notes:

implications regarding the success of most

organizational changes that affect and/or rely on
employees. The results support the concept that
empowerment is critical to the success of
organizational change efforts. We found that by
giving workers the opportunity to schedule their
own training, they were empowered. Moreover,
this empowerment resulted in large increases in
employee motivation toward to the change, in
their satisfaction with the training they received,
and in their overall satisfaction with the change.
Also important are the economic implications of these findings. Motivated employees are
more productive employees and satisfied workers more productive workers. Organizational
research shows there are positive relationships
between employee satisfaction and such productivity measures as performance, turnover,
and absenteeism. Moreover, even small
improvements in employee attitudes like motivation and satisfaction, can produce meaningful
economic benefits. The logical consequence of
this is to extend the model depicted in Figure 1
to include the success of the organizational
change and improvements in productivity and
profitability.
Several additional conclusions are apparent
from this study that have profound implications
for managers who are concerned with the successful implementation of organizational
changes and training programs:
(1) In order to manage people, it is essential to
consider their psychological dimensions.
We found that providing employees with an
empowering experience in conjunction with
their training, significantly improved the
outcomes of that training, as well as increasing their motivation and satisfaction with

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Table II Standardized regression coefficients (betas) and significance tests

(p-values)

Dependent variables
Satisfied with Satisfied with
Motivation
training
change

Independent
variables
Empowerment
Train
Notes:

Beta
p<
Beta
p<

0.31***
0.0003
0.07
0.4

0.24**
0.0063
0.04
0.66

0.15*
0.0925
0.04
0.67

* p < 0.10
** p < 0.01
*** p < 0.001

Conclusions and implications for

management
Training provided an opportunity to empower
and motivate employees. Empowering workers
in this small way (i.e., schedule your training
sessions) during the actual implementation of
the organizational change provided workers
with a small degree of control over what was
essentially a change process over which they had
no control. Providing workers with this small
amount of control also provided an opportunity
to demonstrate managements commitment to
empowerment. Such early demonstrations are
likely to breed early worker buy-in to the
change, thereby reducing employee resistance,
and increasing the chances of program success.
Moreover, in this situation, it was a sensible,
low-cost, low-risk, first step on the road of
employee empowerment.
While our study examined the experience of
one organization during the information system
conversion phase of a larger organizational
change, we believe that our findings have
28

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Training, empowerment, and creating a culture for change

Empowerment in Organizations

Leon A. Kappelman and Thomas C. Richards

Volume 4 Number 3 1996 2629

employee performs, the culture of the organization, as well as other influences. The
impact of any such change should always be
measured, rather than merely assuming that
the payoffs exist.

the change. This occurred because this

empowering experience provided employees with a need-meeting sense of control
during a time of organizational change.
(2) If training investments are to pay off, the
entire training experience must be considered. We must consider not the content, but
the entire context. In this study, training
alone provided little measurable benefit in
terms of employee attitudes and explained
almost nothing about their attitudes toward
the success of the change effort. Training
and empowerment, however, provided a
great deal more statistical insight into these
outcomes.
(3) Even when limited, empowerment can have
big payoffs. Most employees will never have
the empowering opportunity of contributing to the early design and planning activities in the organizational change process,
but almost every employee will be trained.
This study clearly shows that giving employees a small empowering experience can
have a profound effect on that employees
motivation and satisfaction with the organizational change itself. It is possible that the
benefits of any empowerment are mediated
by factors such as the type of work the

In some organizational change programs, such

as continuous quality improvement, empowerment is a critical component of the program.
Our findings provide a suggested mechanism for
demonstrating the organizations commitment
to empowerment early in the implementation of
an organizational change. Empowerment is also
an important component of the process of
successful organizational change. Our findings
show that even in small quantities, empowerment can be a large contributor to success. We
also believe that small, low-cost empowerments
with large payoffs can almost always be found.
Empowered employees are more able to
adapt to change and less likely to resist it,
because their need for control is being met
through their empowerment, rather than by
their resistance. In these times of continuous
changes in the world around us, an organization
which fosters empowered employees is an
organization ready to handle change, planned or
not. The ability to cope with change, is a
survival skill no organization can do without.

29

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