THE ROLE OF EMPLOYEE EMPOWERMENT IN HIGH POWER-DISTANCE ORGANISATIONS

Abstract

An empowerment culture offers many benefits that are recognised by practitioners and scholars in the West. However, little is known about the effects of empowerment in high power-distance cultural context. The study explores the mediating and moderating effects of employee empowerment in the relationship between interpersonal trust toward their supervisors and job satisfaction. A cross-sectional survey designed to assess employee empowerment, interpersonal trust and job satisfaction was administered to a random sample of 200 employees in the banking industry at Kuala Lumpur city centre. A total of 178 valid responses were obtained and this represented a response rate of 89%. Mediation and moderation effects were tested using bootstrapping resampling procedure. Findings show that employee empowerment was a significant mediator of the relationship between interpersonal trust and job satisfaction (PE = .059, BC 95% CI of .001 to .157). However, the moderating effect of employee empowerment in that relationship was not supported. Managers should consider suggested strategies that can strengthen employees’ perception of empowerment and trust toward supervisor. This study is based on employees from service organisations, thus future research would benefit from exp