This thesis is about how the front-staff in two service companies experience empowerment. Competition for business in today's society is becoming increasingly fierce, which means that they must find a way to differentiate themselves from competitors. Service has become a way to compete. Front-staff competence and ability to offer a good service is a crucial factor when the company's success is being measured.Empowerment in business is used as a tool to create motivation and satisfaction of individuals at work. Companies using empowerment can create the freedom and opportunities for employees to act at their own intelligence and discretion. By letting staff take advantage of leadership power can improve service quality because the staff is given the freedom and opportunity to act. To achieve this, companies should look to the need to educate, develop and motivate their staff so that they feel confident in meeting service. Empowerment can exist in different degrees and in different dimensions depending on the variation and standardization of the task. A standardized company is not given as much capacity for empowerment.Empowerment has both advantages and disadvantages that may affect staff as well as company performance and wellbeing. For empowerment to exist in an adequate way, it is important to ensure that the front-staff perceive the responsibilities and power that the management gives them.With this as background, we have by means of a qualitative research methodology interviewed eight respondents in the two service companies where empowerment exists in different degrees. An intense study characterizes the paper, because the interest is to go deep in the investigation and study the individual's perception.The research question is: "How does the front staff in service-oriented companies experience empowerment?"Purpose of this essay is therefore to compare how empowerment affects frontline staff in service businesses, to see if there are similarities and differences in how front-staff perceive the empowerment, depending on the degree of standardization in the company.We have summarized our findings in three main points: Empowerment has both positive and negative effects that can exist at the same time The experience of empowerment is dependent on trust and security in the workplace Empowerment should be adapted to the company
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:hh-16379 |
| Date | January 2011 |
| Creators | Melin, Emmie |
| Publisher | Högskolan i Halmstad, Sektionen för ekonomi och teknik (SET) |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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