Empowerment in the Indian Hotel Industry
Volume 18, Number 3 Article by Sumi S Jha and Shreekumar K Nair September, 2006
Empowerment in the Indian Hotel Industry: The Role of Employee Personality :
Organisations today are increasingly considering employee empowerment as an important measure to enhance the intrinsic motivation of employees, thereby bringing about organisational effectiveness and growth. In the hotel industry, empowerment of frontline employees has been found to result in higher customer satisfaction and is therefore considered to have a positive impact on the business. However, management practitioners have long realised the fact that empowerment programmes meet with mixed reactions from the employees. Employees’ receptivity to empowerment practices largely depends on their personality make up. While employees with a particular combination of traits are likely to welcome empowerment initiatives, those with a different set of traits may shun them. From a business perspective therefore it is important to identify the personality attributes that are related to successful empowerment.
This study examined the effect of personality factors of frontline employees such as locus of control and needs for achievement, power, affiliation, and growth on empowerment in five-star hotels. Empowerment consisted of two components – psychological empowerment and structural empowerment, measured in terms of intrinsic task motivation and delegation, respectively. The findings indicate that, except need for affiliation, all the personality factors influence both intrinsic task motivation and delegation significantly. Need for affiliation was found to have a strong negative influence on both intrinsic task motivation and delegation taken together. Further, need for growth and need for achievement dimensions explained greater variance in both intrinsic task motivation and delegation taken together. The findings of the study suggest that the personality dimensions of subordinates considerably influence the success of empowerment initiatives in the hotel industry. The study also indicates that there is a need to improve the psychological empowerment or intrinsic task motivation of these employees.
Reprint No 06304