Cynicism is a concept used to describe people who are dissatisfied, constantly critical,
and full of negative thoughts. Organizational cynicism, on the other hand, is defined
as harsh criticism and negative beliefs/feelings about the organization, either openly
or secretly. The developing technology and competitive environment, economic crisis,
mass layoffs, insufficient remuneration policy and long working hours cause
employees to develop negative attitudes towards their organizations. Since it causes
individuals to develop a series of unconstructive feelings towards the organizations,
it can be said to be associated with low productivity and loss of income directly.
Organizational cynicism is conceptualized in three dimensions as “cognitive,
affective, and behavioral”. Psychological empowerment in organizations can be
defined as “increased intrinsic task motivation”, which is the perception of helping
employees decide on their job-related roles, the meaningfulness of work, and
influencing important decisions. Empowerment, as a motivational construct, consists
of four dimensions: “meaning, competence, self-determination, and impact”.
The hypotheses of the research were formed with the proposal that the dimensions of
psychological empowerment affect negatively the dimensions of organizational
cynicism. The sample of the research consists of administrative staff working at a
university in Istanbul. According to the results obtained in this study, 8 out of 12
hypotheses were accepted and 4 were rejected. The "competence" and "impact" subdimensions of empowerment did not have a significant relationship with the
"behavioral" dimension of cynicism, while the "competence" dimension of
empowerment had a positive, not negative, relationship with “cognitive and affective
dimensions” of organizational cynicism.