Relocating empowerment as a management concept for Asia

a r t i c l e i n f o Management theories, especially those in the area of human resource management, are predominantly Western-centric in origin and in the empirical testing that underpins them. The purpose of this paper is to explore perceptions of one such theory, employee empowerment, in an Asian context. Information gathered from an open ended questionnaire and focus groups provide an in-depth examination of hotel managers' perceptions and practice of empowerment in the workplace. This study provides tentative indicators of significant culturally-driven differences in the understanding and application of employee empowerment (in terms of both research and practice) between Western and Asian contexts. The results of this study indicate that empowerment in Asian cultures relates much more to the individual and his/her merits, in contrast to organizationally-driven empowerment in Western countries. The findings also indicate that empowerment by hotel managers is related to the level of personal trust the manager has in an employee. Researchers and practitioners define empowerment, as a theoretical concept and as an applied management tool, in different ways. Bowen and Lawler's (1992) discussion of empowerment relates the concept to practice that includes sharing information, rewards, knowledge and power with front line employees. Employers give front line, non-managerial employees, those described by Bateson and Hoffman (1999) as " boundary-spanning workers " mediating between the organization and its customers, opportunities to make their own decisions and to develop their abilities and job performance skills (Kreitner & Kinicki, 1992). Management researchers seek to expand the conceptualization of empowerment beyond discretionary power and job autonomy. For instance, Spreitzer (1995) claims that researchers need to operationalize empowerment as a psychological construct reflecting an individual's feelings of self-control and self-efficacy; Arnold, Arad, Rhoades, and Drasgow (2000) argue that empowerment should capture the nature of the relationship between managers and their subordinates. claim that a level of vagueness surrounds the question of what empowerment means in terms of why empowerment is employed, the source of authority for the empowerment, to whom empowerment is given, where and when empowerment should be applied, and what caveats should accompany empowerment. In spite of this search for the characteristics of empowerment, addressing its perceived benefits in the workplace, Harley (1999, p.42) addresses its perceived benefits in the workplace, " Advocates of empowerment tend to promote it with considerable fervor, claiming that it has the potential to generate the kind of 'win-win' outcome …