In response to increasing global competition, companies are continuously under pressure to undergo dramatic changes. Organisations have flattened their structures to replace their traditional hierarchical management structures with empowered work teams. These are teams that have full responsibility of what they do and handle things traditionally handled by management in the past. In order to achieve this, the management challenge is to create working conditions in which individuals in these teams voluntary choose to commit, collaborate and act towards accomplishment of organizational goals (Duvall, 1999). Today's highly competitive environment, technological improvement, complex customer needs, corporate restructuring and continuous search for innovative ways to take organizations to new heights, affect companies throughout the world. To survive in today's difficult economic conditions, organizations demands more from employees. This study conceptualizes empowerment, dividing empowerment into three categories: structural empowerment, leadership empowerment and motivational empowerment. The study narrows to examine psychological empowerment specifically, an aspect of motivational empowerment. The theory of Spreitzer (1995) of four cognitions and the three principles of Menon (2001) is combined to conceptualize psychological empowerment. Job satisfaction is also discussed with emphasis on intrinsic and extrinsic satisfaction. Organisational commitment is examined from the three-component theory of Allen and Meyer (1991). The objective of this study is to determine the relationship between psychological empowerment, job satisfaction and organisational commitment in a chemical industry. A correlation design was used to determine the relationship between the constructs. Data from a sample of 61 (N=61) employees were used. A correlation design is used to determine the relationship between psychological empowerment, job satisfaction and organisational commitment. Data were gathered and explored in terms of descriptive statistics. Cronbach alpha coefients and factor analysis are calculated to give an indication of the validity and reliability of the measuring instruments. Pearson product moment correlation coefficients and canonical correlations were used to obtain the empirical results. A regression analysis and multiple stepwise regression analysis was carried out to determine the extent to which psychological empowerment predict job satisfaction and organisational commitment. The results of the empirical study indicated practically significant differences between psychological empowerment as a total and two variables: Intrinsic job satisfaction and affective commitment. It was found that psychological empowerment could be used to predict job satisfaction to a certain degree, but could not predict organizational commitment as a total. However, there are indications that it could be used to predict affective commitment. / Thesis (M.A. (Industrial Psychology))--North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2004.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:nwu/oai:dspace.nwu.ac.za:10394/2344 |
| Date | January 2003 |
| Creators | Laage, Lelanie |
| Publisher | North-West University |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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