Empowerment is an approach of work design which aims at delegating decision power, autonomy and employees’ participation in managing the company. This paper shows the peculiarities of empowerment in terms of its dimension, implementation cycle and typology. The steps of its implementation cycle are discussed in order to highlight its complexity and strategic nature. The following dimensions are presented: shared vision, organizational structure and management, responsibility for knowledge management and learning, and employees’ institutional recognition. The diversity of empowerment is analyzed in function of two types of authority for decision-making: over job content and over job context. Based on this analysis, the following typology of empowerment is presented: no discretion, task setting, participatory empowerment, mission definition and self-management. The relationship of empowerment with organizational configurations, evolution stages of functional areas and human resource management is also studied.
empowerment; work organization; company management; human resource management; organizational structure
