The research reported in this thesis aimed to investigate what employee empowerment means in theory and in practice.  There is high consensus in the management literature that employee empowerment is necessary for the survival and success of organisations.  It is a management response to an increasingly complex and competitive external environment and its popularity has been enhanced by the quality movement in general, and by Total Quality Management (TQM) and The European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) Excellence Model, in particular.  However, there are still considerable gaps in our knowledge and understanding of a range of issues concerning employee empowerment, both at the conceptual and practice levels.  Furthermore, the relative paucity of empirical research in the management context, has led to limited understanding of empowerment and provided little evidence of empowerment as a distinct construct and how it can be operationalised (Huq and Hill, 1999).  These gaps need to be filled, as the danger is that organisations may attempt to implement employee empowerment without a clear understanding of what it means, how to implement it or the complexity that surrounds it.  The knowledge drawn from the management literature review proved unsatisfactory, hence it was deemed necessary to draw knowledge from another discipline, namely social work (Huq and Hill, 2005), where empowerment is an important construct.  In social work, empowerment is not only viewed as a ‘goal for client groups’ (Frans, 1993: 312), but also that, ‘the practice of empowerment is now a central paradigm…’ (Adams, 1996: p.xv).

 This research was informed by a subjectivist ontology and constructionist epistemology which proposes that there is no objective social reality independent of human cognition, but that the social world is constructed by individuals and groups.  Thus, an interpretivist approach employing qualitative methods was adopted; it involved conducting two in-depth information-rich case studies.  In achieving its research objectives, this study makes a number of significant contributions to the knowledge of employee empowerment, which has frequently been criticised for its lack of research.  The findings demonstrate that among other things, even in organisations adept in the use of TQM and the EFQM Excellence Model, employee empowerment may have little to do with power or its redistribution.  Interestingly, employees in the case organisations did not appear to seek more power in the political sense, but more discretion and responsibility for decision-making and control over their own work situations, which has resonance with the social work literature.

This research is a first attempt to provide some important evidence, both at the conceptual and practice levels, about employee empowerment.  Few studies to date have contributed to both levels with regards to the enhancement of knowledge about employee empowerment, which this study does.  Furthermore, a ‘Framework for Implementing Employee Empowerment’ is proposed to assist in bridging some of the gaps in knowledge about the practice of employee empowerment.  This represents a novel contribution to knowledge in response to the complexities surrounding the understanding of employee empowerment at the conceptual and practice levels.  Recommendations for future research are also made.