Poster Paper:
A Longitudinal Analysis of the Impact of Employee Empowerment on Work Attitudes in U.S. Federal Agencies
*Names in bold indicate Presenter
Derived from Bowen and Lawler’s four-dimensional definition of employee empowerment (sharing information, knowledge, rewards and power with lower level employees), this paper aims to examine the influence of employee empowerment on work attitudes in terms of job satisfaction, self-perceived performance and turnover intention in federal agencies. In order to see work attitudes in federal agencies over time, a longitudinal design is used to make causal statements with stronger test of the hypothesized relationships. Drawing on the data of Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey (2010-2017), a longitudinal Mediation Structural Equation Model is tested to see the link between changes in employee empowerment and changes in work attitudes of job satisfaction, self-perceived performance and turnover intention in federal agencies.
The findings suggest that changes in employee empowerment has positive effect on changes in the short-term consequence - job satisfaction and self-perceived performance, and negative effect on changes in the long-term consequence - turnover intention in federal agencies. It also finds that there are differences in the impact of employee empowerment on work attitudes among its four facets of sharing information, knowledge, rewards and power with lower level federal employees. Especially, sharing knowledge and power with lower level federal employees has positive and substantively significant influence on job satisfaction and self-perceived performance, and negative and significant influence on turnover intention in federal agencies. But it finds no significant evidence for the influence of the other two facets of providing information and rewards with lower level federal employees on work attitudes in federal agencies.
The findings can provide insights on how employee empowerment affects work attitudes in federal agencies, and, based on the findings of this empirical evidence, practitioners can know how to increase job satisfaction, self-perceived performance and decrease turnover intention in federal agencies.
