Empowerment - Employee Commitment

Despite being in support of empowerment, many leaders find themselves going back to their old management style because they have trouble making empowerment work in practice. Chris Argyris has conducted significant research in the area of employee commitment and its relationship with empowerment. In this article we examine some of his ideas.

The impact of employee commitment

Argyris believes that the main barrier to achieving successful empowerment in the workplace is the difficulty in uniting team members’ external and internal commitments to their jobs.

Without addressing employee commitment, Argyris considers that empowerment in the workplace is a fundamentally flawed concept. He believes that, although people who manage love the theory of empowerment, they tend to revert to the tried and trusted command and control method of management, thus undermining any empowerment initiatives. Team members, too, play their part in stifling empowerment, as they enjoy the greater freedom but prefer not to be personally accountable for their actions.

Types of employee commitment

Argyris considers there to be two different ways in which people can commit themselves:

• External commitment – This is simply contractual compliance. When team members have scant control over their future, they exhibit little commitment to their jobs. What commitment they do exhibit is simply external, i.e. they simply do what is required of them.

• Internal commitment – This comes from an employee’s personal motivation to the project, job, or colleague. This is extremely closely aligned to empowerment. If managers want their team to commit to more than just the bare minimum then they must develop internal commitment.

The difference between internal and external commitment

External Commitment	Internal Commitment
Tasks are defined externally.	Tasks are self-defined.
The process of completing the task is defined externally.	The process of completing the task is defined by the individual.
Performance goals are management-defined.	Performance goals are self-defined.
The importance of the goals is externally defined.	The importance of the goal is defined by the individual.

Issues in securing internal commitment

The issue with initiating a programme of empowerment, with the ultimate aim of an internally committed workforce, is that of persuading team members to abandon the comforting structure provided by a simple external commitment to their job or career.

Some difficulty may be experienced in producing internal commitment in a team. According to Argyris, standard incentive programmes simply do not work. He claims that he has repeatedly witnessed the creation of dependency, rather than empowerment, by organisations offering team members rewards such as higher compensation or better career paths. Such methods simply create a temporary increase in internal commitment. This soon wears off and is replaced with the more familiar external commitment. Most of the popular incentive schemes simply advance external commitment, while repressing internal commitment. Furthermore, they do not make people embrace empowerment with any more enthusiasm. Empowerment may be seen as too much like hard work for many people.

Argyris’ recommendations

Argyris suggests a set of recommendations to help foster a more studied view of empowerment:

• Organisations have both top-down controls and empowerment programmes, and therefore a degree of inconsistency is inevitable. These inconsistencies need to be managed and, more importantly, brought to the surface in order to avoid the establishment of a damaging credibility gap.

• Ensure that any change programmes are not blatantly contradictory. For example, when designing a programme to expand internal commitment, it is important to structure it in ways that will not simply foster external commitment.

• Empowerment has its limitations. It is important that managers understand what can and cannot be accomplished through empowerment.

• Distinguish between the jobs that require internal commitment and those that do not. Time and energy should not be wasted on trying to establish empowerment that will simply result in cynicism and disillusionment.

• Encourage all employees to examine their own behaviour as a precursor to empowerment. Employees are generally willing to commit to empowerment if the organisation is sincere about the move and if the work allows it.

• Factor in such variables as morale, satisfaction and commitment to HR policies, but ensure that they do not supersede performance.

• Make sure that employees understand the choices available to them concerning commitment and empowerment.

Reference: Chris Argyris, ‘Empowerment: The Emperor’s New Clothes’, Harvard Business Review on Managing People (Harvard Business School Press, 1999).

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