Can empowered employees go the extra mile?

• Published date: 01 May 2022
• Author: Talat Islam,Kaleem Ullah Irfan
• Date: 01 May 2022
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2394

ACADEMIC PAPER

Can empowered employees go the extra mile?

Talat Islam

1

| Kaleem Ullah Irfan

2

1

Institute of Business Administration,

University of the Punjab, Lahore, Pakistan

2

Department of Business Administration,

National College of Business Administration

and Economics, Lahore, Pakistan

Correspondence

Talat Islam, Institute of Business

Administration, University of the Punjab,

Lahore, Pakistan.

Email: talatislam@yahoo.com

Employees are real assets for organizations as they contribute toward their effective-

ness by exhibiting discretionary behaviors. Engaging employees in discretionary

behaviors has become a great challenge for management. Therefore, this study exam-

ines the impact of four-dimensional psychological empowerment on employees'

individual-related and organizational-related citizenship behaviors. The data for this

study were collected from 261 nurses and their colleagues working in public and pri-

vate hospitals in dyads (nurses and their colleagues). The results generated through

structural equation modeling reveal that psychological empowerment is a multi-

dimensional construct. In addition, employees with impact and meaning cognitions

are more likely to exhibit organizational-related citizenship behaviors, whereas

employees with self-determination and competence cognition are more likely to

exhibit individual-related citizenship behavior. The findings of the study suggest man-

agement that, during selection, orientation, and training, they can work on

employees' perceptions of empowerment.

1|INTRODUCTION

Organizations of today are facing fierce competition, and almost

all of them wanted to be competitive, which is not possible with-

out extra contribution from employees (Eisenhardt, Furr, &

Bingham, 2010). It is also a fact that almost every organization has

few broken employees, who refused to go the extra mile with their

organization or refuse to help their colleagues at the time of need.

However, management and leaders can make them go the extra

mile and help their colleagues by enhancing their organizational

citizenship behavior (OCB). Organizations, by empowering its

employees, may get competitiveness as it creates a cooperative

environment where employees willingly help each other and per-

form extra for the accomplishment of their organizational goals

(Islam & Tariq, 2018). This study argues that empowerment is the

reason behind not going the extra mile and refusing to be the help-

ing hand for their colleagues.

The construct “empowerment”remained a debatable topic

among researchers as some of them have directly linked it with

organizational performance (Chen, Kirkman, Kanfer, Allen, &

Rosen, 2007; Seibert, Silver, & Randolph, 2004; Spreitzer, Noble,

Mishra, & Cooke, 1999),whileotherscalleditanillusionand

“emperor's new clothes”(Argyris, 1998). Argyris (1998) further

added that empowerment is not a guarantee to promote organiza-

tional values as it is prevented by some individual and organiza-

tional variables. This is because a school of thought casts doubt on

the empowerment construct (Argyris, 1998;Forrester,2000;

Malone, 1997; Marquet, 2015). Suffice to say, empowerment has a

less organizational effect because either employee willingly does

not want to be empowered or management does not want their

employees to be empowered.

The contradictory arguments about the association between

empowerment and contribution of employees to organizational per-

formance raise many questions. Therefore, this study aims to shed

light on the hidden facts that because of lack of desire, and perceived

or real deficiency to be empowered, employees may not perform

beyond their formal job descriptions even like an average employee.

Quinn and Spreitzer (1997, p. 41) defined empowerment as a

“mindset that employees have about their role in the organization”or

a psychological experience, therefore, not possible for the managers

to do. This means that empowerment is all about developing

employees' belief about authorization and capable of producing mean-

ingful outcomes instead of telling them they are empowered. Emp-

owered employees become ready to perform beyond their formal job

descriptions (Cole, 1995; Gupta & Rathore, 2020; Spreitzer, 2007),

and they ready to go the extra mile.

Received: 1 July 2020 Revised: 1 August 2020 Accepted: 13 August 2020

DOI: 10.1002/pa.2394

J Public Affairs. 2022;22:e2394. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/pa © 2020 John Wiley & Sons Ltd 1of9

https://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2394