Empowerment, Performance, and Operational Uncertainty: A Theoretical Integration

Empowerment is being promoted as a general recipe for enhancing work performance. We argue that there are already strong grounds for suggesting that this universalistic assumption is flawed, and that the effectiveness of empowerment practices will be contingent oil the degree of operational uncertainty that prevails. This argument is supported by all analysis of ideas in common emerging from five different areas of inquiry, namely those concerned with organisational theory, work design, total quality management, human factors. and human resource management. We identify the theoretical and practical implications of our analysis, and some of the lines of investigation required to develop the ideas further.