The Influence of Employee Empowerment on Employee Job Satisfaction in Five-Star Hotels in Jordan

Abstract

This paper examines the influence of empowerment on job satisfaction in five-star hotels in Jordan. The influence of empowerment on job satisfaction remains a relatively unexplored area. A 52-item questionnaire, measuring empowerment and job satisfaction, was distributed to 332 employees in 12 five-star hotels in Jordan with a 56% response rate. Principal components analysis determined the factor structure and regression analysis determined the influence of empowerment on job satisfaction. The results revealed both structural and psychological empowerment have significant individual influences on job satisfaction, but more significant when structural and psychological empowerment are combined. Most of previous studies were conducted in western economies and little in the Middle East generally and Jordan in particular. This research contributes to the literature by including both dimensions of empowerment where previous scholars used only one.

A Review of Literature on the Associations among Employee Empowerment, Work Engagement and Employee Performance

“…The present paper suggests researchers to further examine the influence of the employee empowerment with its two types (structural and psychological) on sales &marketing workforce performance in the presence of work engagement as mediating variable. Likewise, the studies which measure structural empowerment used Hayes scales (1994) with one dimension such as (Pelitet al, 2011;Karatepe, 2013;Sattar et al, 2015;Akhtar etal., 2016;Al-Ababneh et al, 2017), while the current paper suggests that researchers could measure the structural empowerment using six dimensions (information, support, opportunities, resources, formal and informal power) as described by the Kanter's theory.…”

“…In hotels segment, empowering front-line employees have positive influence to their satisfaction, increase the efficiency of the operations & enhance service provided as several studies have revealed (Melhem, 2004;Ayupp& Chung, 2010;Kim, 2011;Pelitet al, 2011;Al-Ababneh et al, 2017).On the contrary, Shahrilet al(2013) study did not support suggestions in which higher level of empowerment should result in higher level of job satisfaction through front-line staff in the hospitality industry, but empowerment plays a crucial role in succeeding services, guarantees and motivates the employees.…”

“…Lots of research reveals the significance of psychological empowerment as predictors to increase the job satisfaction in a various sector, such as; banking sector (Obeidat et al, 2013;Khera, 2015;Abdissa & Fitwi, 2016), IT industry (Rana & Singh, 2016), education sector (Schermuly & Schermuly, 2011) and hotels sector (Pelit et al, 2011;Al-Ababneh et al, 2017). Hence, psychological empowerment has a significant impact on organizational commitment (Ambad & Bahron, 2012) and HR productivity (Yaghoobi et al, 2011).The conceptual framework that guides the study is founded on psychological empowerment as described by Spreitzer (1995).Empowering employee can take many shapes.…”

The Relationship between Psychological Empowerment and Trust in Supervisor in Hotel Enterprises

“…On the other hand, there are many studies in the literature of tourism examining relationships between the personnel empowerment and other factors. Studies carried out in hotel enterprises show that psychological empowerment has an impact of job satisfaction (Ababneh, Sabi, Shakhsheer & Masadeh, 2017;Mohsen, 2014) organizational commitment (Işık & Yasım, 2017;Karakaş & Serçek, 2014;Kazlauskaite, Buciuniene & Turauskas, 2006;Moura, Orgambidez & Jesus, 2015), organizational identification (Yarmacı, 2012), organizational citizenship behavior (Çavuşoğlu & Güler, 2016) and cooperation among employees (Bardakoğlu & Akgündüz, 2016). There is also a lot of research about trust in supervisor.…”

“…There are studies that manifest the impact of trust in supervisor in hotel enterprises and conflict management methods (Toprak, Şentürk & Kılıç, 2017), intention to leave job (Pelit and Gökçe, 2019), organizational identification (Şen & Günaydın, 2019), job satisfaction (Güçer & Demirdağ, 2014) and organizational citizenship behavior (İşbaşı, 2000). According to findings of the research performed on 186 employees working at five-stars hotel enterprises in Jordan by Ababneh et al (2017), psychological empowering is an important precursor of job satisfaction. Mohsen (2014) found out in his study carried out on 528 employees in the Egypt hotel industry that "meaning" and "self-determination" dimensions of the psychological empowerment are important in terms of job satisfaction.…”