A Dimensional Analysis of the Relationship between Psychological Empowerment and Effectiveness Satisfaction, and Strain

This paper examines the contribution of each of the four dimensions in Thomas and Velthouse’s (1990) multidimensional conceptualization of psychological empowerment in predicting three expected outcomes of empowerment: effectiveness, work satisfaction, and job-related strain. The literature on the four dimensions of empowerment (i.e., meaning, competence, self-determination, and impact) is reviewed and theoretical logic is developed linking the dimensions to specific outcomes. The expected relationships are tested on a sample of managers from diverse units of a manufacturing organization and then replicated on an independent sample of lower-level employees in a service organization using alternative measures of the outcome variables. The results, largely consistent across the two samples, suggest that different dimensions are related to different outcomes and that no single dimension predicts all three outcomes. These results indicate that employees need to experience each of the empowerment dimensions in order to achieve all of the hoped for outcomes of empowerment.