Empowerment in academia : non-academic professional staff's perspectives on employee empowerment

Abstract

The concept of employee empowerment has long been heralded as advantageous to employees and organizations both in the public and private sectors. However, the concept still remains ambiguous because there is no settled idea about how it should be defined. Furthermore, employees' perspectives about employee empowerment are mostly overlooked in the existing body of research. It is particularly true about non-academic professional employees at higher education institutions and their views, concerns, or expectations with regard to empowerment. This qualitative study aimed to address the existing gaps in the literature on employee empowerment.It intended to explore non-academic professional staff's views about the definition and value of empowerment. The findings of this research study have useful implications for the definition of the concept and for academic institutions and their leaders about the role of empowerment.