Research issues for employee empowerment in hospitality organisations

Employee empowerment is said to have much to offer hospitality organisations. Empowered employees will respond to customer needs as they arise, they will react appropriately to customer complaints, and they will develop a sense of ownership taking personal pride in ensuring that service encounters are a success. A more considered approach suggests that claims for employee empowerment need to take account of different definitions and meanings used by managers. They fail to recognise the initiatives which are called empowering take different forms which result in different working arrangements and boundaries for what the empowered can do, and represent different benefits to employees and employers. Whatever the intentions of managers, the effects of empowerment will be mediated by the experiences of the empowered. There are likely to be tensions between managerial intentions and employee experiences of empowerment. This paper suggests that there is unlikely to be a simple trade-off between empowering employees and improved organisational performance. A framework of analysis is needed which both examines each step in the process and the effects created.