The management practice that enhances employee performance, well-being, and positive attitudes is

Abstract

The last three decades have witnessed the spread of employee empowerment practices throughout the public and private sectors. A growing body of evidence suggests that employee empowerment can be used to improve job satisfaction, organizational commitment, innovativeness, and performance. Nearly all previous empirical studies have analyzed the direct effects of employee empowerment on these outcome variables without taking into account the mediating role of employee attitudes. This article contributes to the growing literature on employee empowerment by proposing and testing a causal model that estimates the direct effect of employee empowerment on performance as well as its indirect effects as mediated by job satisfaction and innovativeness. The empirical analysis relies on three years of data from the Federal Human Capital Survey/Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey and a structural equation modeling approach, including the use of lagged variables. The results support the hypothesized causal structure. Employee empowerment seems to have a direct effect on performance and indirect effects through its influence on job satisfaction and innovativeness, two key causal pathways by which empowerment practices influence behavioral outcomes.

Journal Information

Public Administration Review has been the premier journal in the field of public administration research and theory for more than 75 years, and is the only journal in public administration that serves academics, practitioners, and students interested in the public sector and public sector management. Articles identify and analyze current trends, provide a factual basis for decision making, stimulate discussion, and make the leading literature in the field available in an easily accessible format.

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Wiley is a global provider of content and content-enabled workflow solutions in areas of scientific, technical, medical, and scholarly research; professional development; and education. Our core businesses produce scientific, technical, medical, and scholarly journals, reference works, books, database services, and advertising; professional books, subscription products, certification and training services and online applications; and education content and services including integrated online teaching and learning resources for undergraduate and graduate students and lifelong learners. Founded in 1807, John Wiley & Sons, Inc. has been a valued source of information and understanding for more than 200 years, helping people around the world meet their needs and fulfill their aspirations. Wiley has published the works of more than 450 Nobel laureates in all categories: Literature, Economics, Physiology or Medicine, Physics, Chemistry, and Peace. Wiley has partnerships with many of the world’s leading societies and publishes over 1,500 peer-reviewed journals and 1,500+ new books annually in print and online, as well as databases, major reference works and laboratory protocols in STMS subjects. With a growing open access offering, Wiley is committed to the widest possible dissemination of and access to the content we publish and supports all sustainable models of access. Our online platform, Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) is one of the world’s most extensive multidisciplinary collections of online resources, covering life, health, social and physical sciences, and humanities.

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Abstract

This article proposes a positive approach to organizational behavior (OB). Although the importance of positive feelings has been recognized through the years in the academic OB and popular literature, both management scholars and practitioners have arguably too often taken a negative perspective--trying to fix what is wrong with managers and employees and concentrating on weaknesses. Positive organizational behavior (POB) follows the lead of recently emerging positive psychology, which is driven by theory and research focusing on people's strengths and psychological capabilities. Instead of just retreading and putting a positive spin on traditional OB concepts, this unveiling of POB sets forth specific criteria for inclusion. Not only does positivity have to be associated with the concept, but it must also be relatively unique to the OB field, have valid measures, be adaptable to leader/management and human resource training and development, and, most important, capable of contributing to performance improvement in today's workplace. The criteria-meeting concepts of confidence/self-efficacy, hope, optimism, subjective well-being/happiness, and emotional intelligence (or the acronym CHOSE) are identified and analyzed as most representative of the proposed POB approach. The implications of these POB concepts for the workplace are given particular attention.

Journal Information

Effective with the February, 2006 issue the Academy of Management Executive has changed its name to the Academy of Management Perspectives. The overall goal of the Academy of Management journals is to serve the interests of the Academy's members, and the specific goal of the new Academy of Management Perspectives (AMP) is to publish accessible articles about important issues concerning management and business. AMP articles are aimed at the non-specialist academic reader, and should also be useful for teaching. Serving both these goals more effectively requires a change in strategy and direction for the journal. Going forward, Perspectives will concentrate on two types of articles aimed at this thought leader audience. The first are accessible surveys and reviews of contemporary knowledge about management and business issues. The goal would be to make information about empirical research in management accessible to the non-expert, including students, and the focus of the reviews would have to be on the phenomena of business and management, not the development of the academic literature.

Publisher Information

The Academy of Management (the Academy; AOM) is a leading professional association for scholars dedicated to creating and disseminating knowledge about management and organizations. The Academy's central mission is to enhance the profession of management by advancing the scholarship of management and enriching the professional development of its members. The Academy is also committed to shaping the future of management research and education. Founded in 1936, the Academy of Management is the oldest and largest scholarly management association in the world. Today, the Academy is the professional home for more than 18290 members from 103 nations. Membership in the Academy is open to all individuals who find value in belonging.

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The Academy of Management Executive (1993-2005) © 2002 Academy of Management
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