empowerment

It's our last week of blogging and the conversation has already started. Roy Hobbs wrote about empowerment and its utility in motivating employees. As Hobbs pointed out, allowing employees to make their own decisions and actively participate in the decision making process gives them a greater sense of responsibility and accomplishment. With true empowerment, the micromanaging Hobbs mentions should not occur.

A few years ago I published a book chapter titled, "Communicating Disability: Metaphors of Oppression, Metaphors of Empowerment," in Communication Yearbook 27. In the chapter I discussed the ways in which language and specific metaphors oppressed and/or empowered persons with disabilities. For example, disability as medical problem largely oppresses persons with disabilities because it suggests that such persons are broken and need to be repaired. In contrast, disability as culture highlights the empowering potential of disability as a cultural identity.

In much the same way, different metaphors of organization can lead to varying levels of oppression and empowerment. Organizations as machines and instruments of domination clearly oppress organization members. Organizations as cultures suggests organization members can exert power in creating organizational values and norms, but cultural artifacts may also serve to reinforce the status quo and oppressive power relationships.

Empowerment is a favorite management term, but it's also a contested term. Is empowerment truly possible in organizations? What if employees don't want to be empowered? Can empowerment result in having to do more work for the same pay? And wouldn't that be a form of oppression? As an optimistic person, facilitating organization member participation in organizational life and decision making seems like a positive move for everyone. But there certainly is a dark side to so-called empowerment initiatives in organizations.

--Professor Cyborg