PurposeThis paper aims to test four potential predictors of the behavior of empowered employees during the delivery of service to customers.Design/methodology/approachA questionnaire measuring employees' perceptions of training, performance‐related rewards, customer‐oriented culture, empowering management style, and empowered behavior was filled out by 356 frontline employees of 16 luxury hotels in seven European countries. These statistical analyses removed common‐method bias.FindingsResults of regression analyses at the department level showed that two means of control – customer‐oriented culture and empowering management style – correlated significantly with empowered behavior.Research limitations/implicationsThe survey tool would benefit from further refinement. Creative replications of the survey in different service or hotel settings may benefit service managers, consultants as well as consumers, ultimately.Practical implicationsA direct implication of this study's findings is that in luxury hotel service settings, enhancement to employee empowerment may be achieved through careful management and organizational development. If done well, service enhancements may be within reach.Originality/valueIn prior research, employee empowerment has been identified as an important means to increase customer satisfaction. The present study contributes to a greater and more specific understanding of how employee empowerment can be attained in luxury European hotels.

This article highlights the ambiguities and debates surrounding the meaning, application, purpose and concomitants of the concept of empowerment presented in the service management literature and argues that these flow from the attempt to reconcile the need for control to secure employee compliance with the need to cede a degree of autonomy to secure co‐operation and initiative. It shows how empowerment is conceived primarily in terms of “choice” ‐ increase discretion over how work if performed ‐ rather than “voice” ‐ greater involvement in organizational decision‐making ‐ and is increasingly regarded as a particular and contingent management strategy in which control via regulation and supervision is replaced by more indirect controls. A study of five‐star hotels in Amsterdam is reported which shows that, despite managerial rhetoric, there was little “empowerment” in practice and what there was amounted to increased employee responsibility rather than greater choice over how work was done or more voice in organizational decisions and that supporting forms of recruitment, training and remuneration were mostly absent.

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