Managing to empower? a healthy review of resources and constraints

Employee empowerment has become something of a managerial buzzword, conjuring up images of positive commitment and meaningful participation at the workplace. Yet guidelines on `making it happen' are typically vague and over-generalised, offering limited insights into the messy complexities of workplace behaviour, and providing few signals on how committed practitioners might grapple with the ambivalent reactions that often characterise practical schemes. In place of the superficial success stories which usually support promotional accounts of empowerment, this paper considers the lessons that can be drawn from faltering and problematical episodes. Original research results are marshalled to encourage reflection upon key issues and constraints during the `working out' of empowerment schemes, and to flag the importance of self-consciously attending to the problematics of retaining momentum behind practical initiatives.