The Impact of Empowerment on Employees Performance in Standards Office of Tehran

This study aimed to investigate the impact of empowerment on employees’ performance in Standards Office of Tehran. However, the dimensions of empowerment was investigated from psychological perspective and their impact on employees’ performance were analyzed. The main objective of this study was the analysis of empowerment impact on employees’ performance. The sub-objectives of study were the investigation of psychological aspects of empowerment including self-efficacy sense, the sense of having choice right, effective being sense, sense of meaningfulness of work, and sense of trust in others. Also, this study offered strategies to improve employees’ performance by using the empowerment components. Dara were collected by using library and questionnaire and were analyzed by descriptive-survey method. The results indicated that the employees in Standards Office of Tehran were ready to implement the empowerment process and the extent of empowerment’s psychological components were high between them. Therefore, it was suggested that senior managers in Standard Office of Tehran may increase the performance of employees by implementing the process of empowerment. Creating mentally healthy and safe environment, they may also increase the effect of empowerment in employees and develop empowerment.


Introduction
Empowering is a process in which managers help employees to make independent decisions.According to Blanchard, managers believe that empowerment gives decision-making power to the individuals.Empowerment means to help people improve their self-confidence, cope with their powerlessness and helplessness, and have the enthusiasm and intrinsic motivation to perform the tasks (Blanchard, 2003, 39).Empowerment is granting more authority to the staff to take the necessary decisions without the approval of the higher authorities (Azida et al, 2009, 82).Also, empowerment has been defined as the process of dividing power among the individuals of organization (Wallerstein, 2006, 67).In the psychological literature, empowerment is conceived as a intrinsic motivation mode in people.According to Mc Kllnd, people need inner strength and desire to influence and control other people.Power is an intrinsic need and it is the determination right.Empowerment rooted in motivational desires of people.Any strategy which increases the employees' determination right and their selfsufficiency will lead to their empowerment.In fact, empowerment is the creation of conditions for improving the motivation of individuals in fulfilling their duties through improving their self-efficacy (Kanungo & Conger,1988).Today, employees need freedom of action and decision-making power to fulfill their obligations.Employees look for responsibilities and authority to do their jobs.Meanwhile, organizations are looking to increase the productivity by employees (Quinn & Spereitzer, 1997).Empowerment reasons: Empowerment is a constant movement and its importance is steadily increasing.Empowerment is the basis of development in today's business and progresses in line with social changes, technological developments, and competitive environment demands.In the new century, the situation has completely changed.The foreign competitors are considered to be major threads.So, most of the businesses in global markets see themselves in precarious situations.Today, organizations need individuals who are empowered to be able to help them win the competition (Smith, 2000,26).The rapid growth of technology has affected all aspects of the organizations.Technological changes have led to a change in the nature of work.Today, the empowered employees are needed who have the necessary skills to deal with these changes (McCoby, 1999).Many organizations have found that in increasingly competitive condition, they must continuously improve their customer service.This means that they must first know what the customer wants and then try to improve it.Organizations need the empowered people who find innovations and improve the products and services (Smith, 2000).Almost in all of the literature about total quality, empowerment has been considered an essential element of total quality management.
Thomas & Velthouse consider empowerment as an important component of total quality management (Ugboro & Obeng, 2000).Thomas and Velthouse (1990) developed the method which Conger and Kanengoo presented in 1981.They proposed that empowerment should be considered as a multidimensional structure.In their conceptual model about the employees' empowerment, these two researchers analyzed the four dimensions of empowerment including effect, selection, qualification, and significance (Thomas & Velthouse, 1990, 667).According to Thomas and Velthouse, empowerment is not a long-term personality trait which to be manifested in different situations; but there are knowledge lie in work context and environment.Empowerment reflects each employee's knowledge and awareness of her/himself.They believe that empowerment is not just the evaluation of employees' tasks; it also depends on contextual factors such as the relationship between employees and supervisors, and colleagues and subordinates (Moye & Henkin, 2006).
In the employees' empowerment model, Victor examined the operational research, organizational changes, and performance.The results indicate that empowerment programs with research in operation approach lead to higher performance of employees and key changes in the organization.He also showed that how the managers and employees may interact together on strategic and important issues to change the organization and improve performance.Ki Grasly and etc. examined the employees' views about the empowerment.The results suggest that employees do not understand the concept of empowerment and do not consider it as a relevant power to themselves.Nevertheless, they stated that it is somewhat associated with their personal responsibility and control over their work.They considered empowerment as a continuum which is significantly related to their internal feelings toward empowerment.Thus, employees have considered empowerment from it psychological and emotional aspects.Nik Azad Abdul Ghani and colleagues studied the empowerment four cognitive dimensions including the meaningfulness of work, competence, independence, and interaction in environment in higher education institutions.The results indicated that there is a significant correlation between psychological empowerment, innovative behavior, and performance and empowerment is an important predictor for increased performance.

Materials and Methods
The descriptive -survey method is used in this study.The Spritzer's psychological empowerment standardized questionnaire was used to collect research data.The Kolmogorov-Smirnov test was used to assess data normality.In this test, if the value of significance level will be greater than the 0.05, normality of data will be confirmed.And, if the value of significance level will be less than the 0.05, abnormality of data will be confirmed.Given the normality of variables distribution, the Spearman correlation test is used for analyzing the data and the Friedman variance analysis is used to rank the indicators of empowerment and employee performance.Also, Cronbach's alpha was used to determine the validity of questionnaire and the reliability was determined by using the classification method.

Population and sample
In the study, the population consists of all employees in the Standard Office of Tehran (N=170).The sampling method is simple random sampling.The sample size is 118 cases.

Analysis of data
Data analysis is the main and most important part of the research.The raw data are analyzed using statistical software; then, the processed data are available to users.The Kolmogorov-Smirnov test is used to evaluate the normality of variables.The results are given below.Look at the significance values in the above table.Since all of these numbers are greater than 5% error level, therefore, the null hypothesis-the normality of variables-is confirmed.Thus, we can conclude that all the variables have a normal distribution.

Findings
Sub-hypothesis 1: Meaningfulness (self-efficacy) sense impact on the performance of employees in Tehran's Standard Office.H0: The meaningfulness sense do not impact on the performance of employees in Tehran's Standard Office.H1: The meaningfulness sense impact on the performance of employees in Tehran's Standard Office.

Discussion and conclusion
According to the study of research hypotheses, the following can be concluded.There is relationship between self-efficacy sense, sense of having choice right, Effective being sense, sense of meaningfulness of work, sense of trust in others, and performance.
Since the psychological dimensions of empowerment impact separately on employees' performance, it can be said that empowerment directly impact on employees performance in Standard Office of Tehran.In other words, the employees' performance may be improved by the implementation of empowerment process.
As can be seen in the above table, the significant value is less than the 5% error level.This means that the null hypothesis is not confirmed.According to above table, therefore, being effective sense has the highest rank and trust in others has the lowest rank.According to table 4-14, the significant value is less than the 5% error level.This means that the assumption of ranks mean equality is not confirmed.According to above table, therefore, work quality has the highest rank and work quantity has the lowest rank.