LITERATURE REVIEW
Organizational and Psychological Empowerment
In the organizational literature, there are two widely discussed perspectives on employee
empowerment; these two are the structural (organizational) approach and the psychological
approach. The first approach is organizational empowerment which is about organizational
policies, practices and structures that provide employees with greater freedom and discretion
to make their own decisions and have more influence on their work (Mills & Ungson, 2003).
The other perspective, according to Peccei and Rosenthal (2001), is psychological
empowerment which takes a different view on empowerment and focuses on employees’
perceptions and cognitions. According to Spreitzer (1995), employees are actually
empowered when they have genuine perceptions of empowerment in their workplace.
Psoinos and Smithson (2002) explain that the psychological view focuses on perceptions of
power, competence, and self-efficacy. Accordingly, psychological empowerment is an
important component of workplace empowerment because it constitutes intrinsic task
motivation that is an important component of empowering work conditions.