The Effect of Psychological Empowerment on Organizational Cynicism: A Research on University Staff

Abstract

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.