Understanding Empowerment & Its Role in Organisational Success.

Part 1: Empowerment in an Organisation
Empowerment may be defined in many ways depending on which field and context you are referring it to or coming from. It’s basic definition however is ‘that process of adding power to’ from which then your contextual definition is derived.
Organisations are groups of people working together for a common purpose or goal and in which agency relationships occur from which the role of empowerment within organisations can best be viewed and analysed.
An agency relationship arises whenever one or more individuals, called principals, hire one or more other individuals, called agents, to perform some service and then delegate decision-making authority to the agents. The agents than act on behalf of and in conjunction with the principals towards that organisational purpose or goal.
Agents authority is defined and controlled within the terms or reference (TOR) and or terms of engagement, and the flexibility or elasticity of the TOR remains within the principals control. The T.O.R flexibility defines the empowerment index (E.I) and can be measured as a percentage reflecting how directorial the principal is.
Various factors come into play that determine the E.I which include internal factors like Organisational policy, Corporate governance, Managerial Styles, and Organisational targets. While external organisation factors like Organisation clientele and goal time frames. The interplay and effects of these factors are still the subject of research and shall there for not be discussed here.
Empowerment therefore aims to give agents the tools (skills, resources, authority, opportunity, motivation, as well holding them responsible and accountable for outcomes of their actions) and resources necessary to make confident decisions in the organisation without supervision.
Be sure to like and or comment on this article, and stay tuned for the next 2 parts of the series.