Introduction
Rooting for
empowerment?
David Collins
The author
David Collins is Lecturer in Human Resource Management,
the University of Sunderland, UK.
Abstract
Quality, flexibility, and commitment are the buzzwords of
management strategy and reflect many of the goals currently
sought in business. In order to contribute to these business
goals, human resource professionals have had to rethink the
contributions they make. This has led to the creation of yet
more buzzwords – including the buzzword “empowerment”.
Argues that interest in empowerment is not matched by a
wider reflection on the factors which have promoted and
facilitated these goals, nor is it matched by any wider reflec-
tion on the nature of organizations. Argues that these
oversights have led to an implicit and passive definition of
empowerment being used. To redress this balance, analyzes
the forces which have promoted innovation in management,
and have made empowerment “thinkable”. Makes a case for
viewing empowerment as an ideological construct, and from
here offers an alternative, activist model of empowerment.
Empowerment in Organizations
Volume 3 · Number 2 · 1995 · pp. 25–33
© MCB University Press · ISSN 0968-4891
25
The buzzword “empowerment” has become a
strategic concern for managers, human resource
professionals and consultants alike. Perhaps
because of this, much of the literature is highly
prescriptive. In their attempts to “empower”
workers, therefore, managers have been encour-
aged to view empowerment in rather simplistic
terms, and as a relatively unproblematic solu-
tion to a range of strategic management and
labor management problems. Further to this,
there is also the implication that the process of
empowerment will lead to clear and desirable
gains for both managers and workers.
It seems then that the definition of empower-
ment which underscores empowering initiatives
is accepted as being both self-evident and held
in common by all groups in industry. This
article will argue that this notion of empower-
ment is framed too narrowly.
The article will argue that authors tend to shy
away from defining empowerment in any mean-
ingful, or contextual, way. It will argue that,
when analyzed within the context of work, the
definition of empowerment and the descriptions
of states of empowerment offered seem strange-
ly passive. Undue stress seems to be placed on
the managerial role of “empowerer” at the
expense of those who are to be empowered.
Thus, a passive definition of empowerment is
developed and passive roles are ascribed to
those supposedly empowered. This raises key
questions over the status and aims of empower-
ing initiatives which this article will attempt to
address.
To this end the article is structured as fol-
lows: first, the business aims of empowerment
and the forces promoting interest in empower-
ment will be analyzed; second, empowerment as
defined in the literature on managerial empow-
erment will be analyzed in comparison with the
variety of ways in which the term may be inter-
preted. Here attention will be drawn to active,
or perhaps more properly “activist”, models
of empowerment; third, based on this analysis
a case will be made for activist models as
representing a fruitful approach by which to
The author is grateful to Keith Horton of Napier
Business School, Edinburgh, Scotland, for his help
and constructive comments on an earlier draft of this
article.
 Rooting for empowerment?
David Collins
re-examine, and rethink, the dynamics of
empowerment.
The push for empowerment
Empowerment stands at the front of a long line
of managerial initiatives developed to address
both the contemporary and the perennial prob-
lems which beset organizations. In order to
understand the growing interest in empower-
ment we have to be aware of the nature of these
problems and how they impact on organiza-
tions.
In previous periods management initiatives
and innovations focussed on approaches to
management such as Taylorism and its associat-
ed practices of scientific management. Follow-
ing scientific management, or sometimes in
tandem with it, managers and workers have
endured further developments such as the
human relations movement, socio-technical
systems approaches and so on. Throughout the
1960s and 1970s further refinements to man-
agement thought and practice took place as
Britain, for example, struggled to cope with
unofficial strikes and a range of macroeconomic
problems[1,2]. This led managers to concen-
trate on a range of labor management problems
and in the late 1960s, for example, managers
sought formalization in, and control over, labor
management issues. Later, innovations such as
worker participation schemes, the development
of autonomous work groups and a range of
other techniques, designed to allow for the
collaborative redesign of work, came to the fore.
As we entered the 1980s, managers were
forced to confront a new range of business
problems and opportunities in a changed politi-
cal environment. Considered together, these
factors called previous innovations into ques-
tion. In response managers became more
assertive. McIlroy[3] notes that in some organi-
zations this reassertion took on a rather violent,
perhaps even a vengeful tone. He quotes Ian
McGregor, the chairman of the National Coal
Board in Britain, who was noted as saying:
People are now discovering the price of insubordi-
nation and insurrection. And boy are we going to
make it stick[3, p. 190].
This is perhaps an extreme example. Gill[4]
probably captures the more typically held view.
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Empowerment in Organizations
Volume 3 · Number 2 · 1995 · 25–33
He tells us that profit, efficiency and ideas of
competitiveness underpinned changes in tech-
nology and formed the momentum of innova-
tion in this period as opposed to the Keynesian
policies previously applied.
Thus, whereas in the 1960s and 1970s man-
agers were attracted to ideas of participation in
order to humanize the work setting, solicit
worker suggestions and so reduce employee
turnover and militancy[5], from the 1980s
onwards the aims of managerial innovations in
work organization and in working practices have
been reinterpreted. They have also been stated
with a greater self-confidence in the rights of
management.
In comparison with the 1960s and 1970s,
when participatory schemes and schemes
promoting industrial democracy were sold to
employees and trade unions on the basis that
such innovations allowed workers a clear
representative voice in the formation of a
range of policies within the organization,
the 1980s and 1990s signify an altogether
different era.
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, ideas of
worker participation have undergone a transfor-
mation. The focus of these initiatives has been
redirected, squarely, at the problem of competi-
tiveness and this has called for a different form
of input from workers[6]. Thus, worker involve-
ment has been redirected away from joint regu-
lation and policy-making activities and remod-
eled so that managers now think of involvement
as a means of communicating directly with
workers. Worker proactivity, instead of partic-
ipation, has been stressed, and the gains accru-
ing to workers and their representatives from an
enhanced role in the processes of decision mak-
ing have been downplayed, if not wholly
removed from the agenda.
Yet describing the changing contours of
management thought does not explain why such
changes occur. What follows, therefore, is a
brief attempt to account for such changes. This
will entail an examination of management
ideology.
Ideologies of management
In mainstream discussion ideology is almost a
dirty word. It is difficult to use the term without
seeming a little “cranky”. This is unfortunate
 Rooting for empowerment?
David Collins
since the concept is powerful and expresses well
the conflicts and problems attendant on
attempts to manage organizations, or to bring
about organizational changes, such as those
associated with empowerment.
An ideology is different from a theory. Cen-
tral to the concept of ideology is the notion of
interest. Ideologies serve particular interest
groups. Thus Anthony[7, p. 1], quoting Bendix,
notes that ideologies of management are: “those
ideas which are espoused by or for those who
exercise authority in economic enterprises”.
Anthony tells us that an ideology of manage-
ment is vital. Quoting Terkel[7], he reminds us
of the reality of work experiences for the majori-
ty of the population.
Even those of us who truly enjoy our work
would have to acknowledge the stresses and
pressures which work requirements place on us,
and those around us. As Terkel states, work is
“about violence to the spirit as well as to the
body”[7, p. 4].
Ideologies of management exist to rationalize
or disguise these costs. Ideologies are the cre-
ations of actors and can be expected to change
and adapt to a range of pressures which build up
within or impact on business concerns. With
reference to the preceding section it seems clear
that throughout the 1980s and 1990s these
management ideologies have undergone some
fairly radical changes[8]. These ideologies have
become more self-confident and have been
expressed less in terms of reducing violence to
body and spirit, and more in terms of promoting
business success, while accepting certain “reali-
ties” and costs.
One way to understand this change is based
on an analysis of the various forces, both inter-
nal and external to business concerns, which
emerged over this period.
The “need” for change
A variety of external concerns has served to
focus management thinking over the last decade
or so. Over time a consideration of these factors
has led to the consensus that there is a need for a
change in management. Most often a case is
made for change based on some notion of the
need to address competitive pressures. Howev-
er, this does not explain how new mechanisms
and innovations are conceived and emerge to
address these factors.
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Empowerment in Organizations
Volume 3 · Number 2 · 1995 · 25–33
Thus, while managers and commentators
speak of the “need” for change and the “need”
for empowerment, we must acknowledge that
needs, and the innovations which address these
needs, are not so much discovered as created.
We must acknowledge that new ideas in a field
such as management do not appear “from the
ether”, nor are they simple discoveries as in
scientific or archaeological research. Instead the
“need” for proactivity and the “need” for
empowerment are the active creations of man-
agement and a number of business academics
who seek to serve management[9,10]. These
needs, therefore, are ideological constructs.
A key test for empowerment, therefore, rests
not on the confirmation of changed competitive
conditions – that competition is now more
intense is plain to see. Instead this article will
argue that the acid test for empowerment, as an
ideological construct, must be the extent to
which it can address these new business prob-
lems while reconciling the perennial conflicts
within organizations. However, before attention
is turned to this issue, it is necessary to trace the
nature of these competitive forces.
The factors which have informed manage-
ment thinking are outlined below. These factors
relate to changes in the nature of competition
and the consequent need to secure competitive
advantage.
IT and changes in competition
A change in the nature of competition is often
associated with the growing use of and sophisti-
cation of IT systems. For some the growing use
of IT is viewed as being at the root of competi-
tive discontinuity. For example, attention has
been drawn to a range of changes to the process-
es of business which IT will bring about.
Porter[11] has drawn attention to the increased
market permeability which can come about as
IT is used to reduce barriers to market entry.
Others[12] have drawn attention to the reduc-
tions in product development time which IT use
facilitates, while others have drawn attention to
the new business areas which IT use may
spawn[13].
In line with these, Kanter[13] has promoted
the idea that competition will force corporations
to increase the pace at which they launch new
products and product innovations. In this way
 Rooting for empowerment?
David Collins
the use of IT represents a new era in business
since it demands a rethink of the whole compet-
itive process.
This discontinuity, we are told, comes about
since IT use threatens to alter barriers to com-
petition in a quite fundamental way. Kanter tells
us that this competitive discontinuity is such
that corporations can no longer predict the
future by extrapolating from the past. Size, she
warns, will be no protection as market perme-
ability increases. Instead managers have been
warned of the need to innovate and think more
creatively.
While the finer points of these changes are
left to the managers, the development of proac-
tivity, among subordinates, has been offered as
the overall mechanism by which to address
these competitive challenges. Reacting to previ-
ous ideologies of management she tells us that
this will require managers to empower their
workers to innovate and take risks. This require-
ment for proactivity, and so empowerment, is
also shown clearly in an article entitled “Rat-
tling SABRE”[14].
SABRE, as most people are aware, is a highly
successful, IT-based, flight reservation system.
One of a few systems heralded as bringing
competitive advantage to their operators. How-
ever, as a reaction to the simple, technological
focus of other accounts of IT systems, Hopper’s
article attempts to place those who actually use
these systems at the centre of the analysis. We
are told that as IT becomes cheaper and more
flexible, future competitiveness will be based
more on the quality of service which operators
deliver than on the technological set-up alone.
We are reminded then that competitiveness will
hinge on the skills and motivation of staff and
that managers will ultimately be judged on their
ability to harness this potential. The consensus
seems to be, therefore, that empowerment is a
prerequisite for competitiveness where IT facili-
tates business operations.
A global challenge
A further development informing the quest for
empowerment relates to the perceived competi-
tive ranking of, in particular, the USA and its
slide in the world economic order. This has
been an extremely potent influence on manage-
ment thinking, since here management ideolo-
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Empowerment in Organizations
Volume 3 · Number 2 · 1995 · 25–33
gies and ideologies of national identity and
patriotism coincide.
In particular the ascendant competitive
position of economies such as that of Japan has
been a key influence on key commentators in
the area. As Fukuda[15] notes the rise of the
Japanese economy, at the expense of the USA,
led those in the West to look for answers. The
answer found was managerial. The consensus
developed that Japanese corporations were
successful because they managed to secure the
commitment of their workers by involving them,
directly, in the process of managing and design-
ing small-scale and incremental work improve-
ments.
Pascale and Athos[16] also took up this
mantle. Japanese corporations, they agreed,
were successful but not thanks to some cultural
peculiarity. Instead Japanese success was
deemed to be due to nothing more startling
than good management. If the USA was failing
this failure was not a cultural problem, but a
simple case of US managers failing to manage
US workers and resources appropriately. US
managers, like their British and European
counterparts have been exhorted to reconsider
their managerial style and free the potential
latent in their organizations. As was noted earli-
er the key means to do this has come to be
described as empowerment.
However, before we move on to examine the
definition, and so the nature of empowerment
sought, there is one final set of factors which
should be mentioned as facilitating this drive for
management-led empowerment.
Retreating from joint regulation
While it is true that the forces of competition
and the powerful voices of key managerial fig-
ures have focussed attention on the need for and
potential of empowerment, the sketch of how
and why empowerment has emerged as a strate-
gic concern will remain incomplete until we
look directly at the forces operating within
organizations themselves. Until we consider the
forces internal to these organizations we cannot
account fully for the rise of empowerment. It
seems clear that for empowerment to emerge as
a potential solution certain changes within
organizations would be required.
 Rooting for empowerment?
David Collins
Ideologies cannot stand alone and must at
least point toward some facilitative factors.
Empowerment could only become a viable
solution to these competitive problems when
managers were presented with new opportuni-
ties to retreat from joint regulatory approaches
and make more direct appeals to workers, in the
name of competition and the challenges of
technological change.
Any number of organizational developments
might be listed here. For brevity I will do little
more than sketch the changes in broad terms,
while acknowledging that this will simplify the
picture to some degree.
A sketch of change
During the 1980s a range of issues, political,
legislative, economic and technological, have
coincided to reduce or remove many of the
internal pressures which managers faced in the
previous decades.
In Britain a succession of Conservative gov-
ernments throughout the 1980s set about dis-
mantling the mechanisms and assumptions of
the industrial relations system which emerged
after the Second World War. Notably the gov-
ernment has reversed policies which sought to
promote a model of good employment prac-
tices. This idea of a model employer was based
on a concern to develop procedural mechanisms
which would promote collective bargaining and
joint regulation.
Likewise, during the 1970s, trade unions in
Britain and elsewhere were granted an enlarged
role in national economic planning. At national
and at industry level initiatives such as the
development of joint management-worker
director schemes in industries such as the Post
Office and British Steel were put in place[17].
Over the 1980s, however, these schemes have
been scrapped and trade unions have been
removed from the processes of economic plan-
ning. As a consequence worker involvement has
been altered to concentrate on direct forms of
participation.
Probably the most reliable source of informa-
tion on this subject is to be found in the Work-
place Industrial Relations Survey (WIRS).
These surveys are largely structural in nature,
but they do point towards changes in the nature
of workplace decision making. Beaumont[18],
for example, notes changes in the nature of joint
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Empowerment in Organizations
Volume 3 · Number 2 · 1995 · 25–33
consultative committees between management
and trade unions. He tells us that research
indicates that working conditions seem to be
discussed less frequently at these meetings. This
would appear to suggest that managers are
exercising unilateral decision-making powers
where once some form of joint decision making
took place. Thus, while it is true that there have
been changes in the workplace, it is not entirely
clear that these changes have empowered.
The surveys also point out that, as joint
consultation has contracted, new forms of
communication designed to bypass trade unions
have developed. The Industrial Relations
Review and Report (IRRR)[19] notes that:
Employers have a new authority and confidence
on the shopfloor and many feel less constrained in
the way they organise work, in contrast to the
1970s and 1960s when unions were able to exert a
greater influence.
This would seem to imply that managers, far
from ceding control, were taking steps to regain
it. So just how is it that managers can claim to
empower while the evidence points to them
retaking control?
To answer this it is necessary to consider
what is actually meant by the term empower-
ment.
Defining empowerment
According to Pateman’s[20] line of analysis,
participation and empowerment are natural
corollaries. Effective participation is born of a
feeling of political efficacy or, if you will, a sense
of empowerment. Thus, if workers are to partic-
ipate fully within their organizations, empower-
ment will be required. This much is clear from
the general management literature. What is less
clear, for it is less explicit in the literature, is
what is actually meant by empowerment. In fact
writers on empowerment seem to be quite coy
when examining the concept.
One way to duck the definitional issue is to
attempt to ignore it. Instead of defining empow-
erment some writers seem to prefer to describe
its outcomes. Here, there seems to be a taste for
homespun examples. Fox[21], for example,
characterizes the dynamics of empowerment in
terms of a child embarking on an unsupervised
shopping trip. Empowerment, she tells us,
occurs when the child is briefed to buy a certain
 Rooting for empowerment?
David Collins
article of clothing, say trousers, and trusted to
make the right choice about which style and
brand of trousers to buy without further adult
supervision.
However, the sanctions attendant on the
child who decides to buy, say, shoes instead are
never discussed. Nor does she tell us how this
relationship between parent and child helps to
illustrate the situation between adults in a work
environment. This is a key issue which home-
spun examples are really not very good at inves-
tigating, since they cannot hope to grasp the
complex dynamics of empowering initiatives in
employment situations. No matter how badly
the child screws up on the shopping trip, the
family will probably not be bankrupted, or sued,
the child will not be sacked, will not damage its
career prospects within the family, or risk
defaulting on a mortgage!
Martin and Nicholls[22] do examine what
might be broadly termed empowerment at
work. However, in discussing commitment, they
also fail to define their area of interest with
sufficient clarity. In this way they also fail to
capture the complexities and subtleties of what
may be conveyed by the apparently simple term;
empowerment. In a sense Martin and Nicholls
prefer to sell empowerment, rather than attempt
to define it. Thus, they focus on the supposed
outcomes of a state of commitment at work.
Commitment for Martin and Nicholls refers
to giving all of yourself at work and is contrasted
with compliance. The implication is that com-
mitment-seeking policies make compliance-
ensuring policies redundant. But, as others have
argued, this form of thinking fails to capture the
complex dynamics of management[23] and so
fails to capture the dynamics of empowering
initiatives.
In order to capture the dynamics of this
process we have to be awake to the range of
possible meanings and implications conveyed by
the term. Now, while small single volume dictio-
naries tend to yield definitions such as giving
official authority or legal power, we have to
realize that in a political and ideologically
imbued setting this bland definition will tend to
disguise a considerable degree of semantic
elasticity. And so, just as the term participation
might be thought of as conveying a whole con-
tinuum of meaning, ranging from minimal
levels of consultation through to extensive forms
30
Empowerment in Organizations
Volume 3 · Number 2 · 1995 · 25–33
of democratic decision making or workers’
control, the term empowerment might also be
thought of as representing a continuum of
possible definitions and outcomes.
This continuum might be envisaged as being
bounded at one extreme by highly passive con-
notations of the term and by active or activist
connotations of the term at the other extreme.
The continuum is also useful in explaining the
dissent and conflict which tend to bubble up
between those who promote empowering solu-
tions to organizational problems, and those who
are critical of these innovations. In short the
conflict develops because, although everyone is
ostensibly using the same term, each side tends
to focus on connotations of the term which
inhabit different extremes of the continuum.
Give and take in empowerment
Those who promote empowerment as a means
to address business problems tend to mobilize a
definition of empowerment based on passive
connotations of the term. Thus, the role of
managers in the process of empowering and
enabling subordinates is stressed, as managers
are encouraged to relinquish their authority and
enable others to meet new challenges.
To be fair this modeling of empowerment
stems from a reaction to the perceived pitfalls of
Taylorism and/or Fordism. Here, Taylorism is
regarded as a system which compartmentalizes,
and so alienates, people by disallowing their
participation in other elements of the labor
process. The solution to this, which empower-
ment has pinpointed, is to allow workers to play
a more active role which was previously denied
to them. If workers are allowed to offer ways to
enhance products or improve quality, tasks
which were previously the domain of managers
or technical specialists, then surely they have
been empowered? To some extent this is true.
However, we must also acknowledge that this
definition of empowerment hinges more on
some notion of accountability than on any wider
change in the processes of work and decision
making which might be implied by a more active
modeling of empowerment. Thus, workers are
empowered only in the sense that they have a
greater responsibility to act within a narrow
sphere directly related to production, and then
 Rooting for empowerment?
David Collins
held to be accountable for their action or indeed
their inaction.
Clement[24] echoes this. He tells us that this
passive version of empowerment is oriented to
improving the performance of the organization
and assumes that goals throughout the organiza-
tion are held in common and unproblematically.
Clement chooses to call this the “functional
concept of empowerment” (p.54) and contrasts
this with the “democratic concept”.
Clement’s democratic concept is a much
more active, or activist, modeling of empower-
ment. Thus, democratic or activist empower-
ment is representative of a process whereby
workers gain or assume power and represents a
process in which workers “act with a greater
grasp and sense of their own powers” (p.54). In
this sense the Lucas Plan for Industry represents
a prime example of active empowerment.
Wainwright and Elliot[25] discuss the
attempts of Lucas workers to protect their jobs
and advance useful and socialized forms of
production. The plan was set against a back-
drop of redundancy and reductions in military
spending. For Lucas Industries this represented
a crisis period since the group was a major
supplier of components which had, as their final
destination, the military. Workers at Lucas,
however, refused to accept that this downturn in
military spending should lead to their redun-
dancy. Quite simply they refused to accept that
society could afford to dispense with their skills
when military technologies and the skills which
built them could so easily be adapted for peace-
ful and useful ends. When government and
management refused to accept this viewpoint
Lucas workers set about developing a new plan
for the industry. Wainwright and Elliot[25, p. 1]
note:
In 1975 and 1976 … shop stewards working at
Lucas Aerospace, a company heavily involved in
arms production, drew up a detailed plan for
socially useful products and new forms of employ-
ee development. They put forward this plan as an
alternative to redundancies and to arms produc-
tion. In doing so they demonstrated in a most
practical way how people without any official power
might reverse both the drive towards militarism
and the growth of unemployment (author’s
emphasis).
From this we can see that for Clement[24], and
indeed for Wainwright and Elliot[25], empow-
erment only truly occurs when workers actively
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Empowerment in Organizations
Volume 3 · Number 2 · 1995 · 25–33
take the initiative and attempt to wrest control
from managers. In this sense the 1960s and
1970s can be regarded as decades of empower-
ment since workers actively pursued policies of
job control and joint regulation in this period.
The 1980s and 1990s, marked by new manager-
ial self-confidence, are, according to this line of
thinking, decades of disempowerment marked
by retreating worker power. This would be borne
out by the Lucas experience. During the 1980s
the worker attempts to change Lucas industries
ran up against the policies of Mrs Thatcher’s first
government and were reversed by a program of
redundancies and restructuring.
So which is the case? Are we in an era of
empowerment or disempowerment? I would
argue that the continuum illustrates that both
sides of the argument are correct in so far as
they define empowerment quite differently –
one rooted in the needs of business and some
notion of accountability – the other based on the
advance of worker control in matters of policy.
The question which remains is: how does this
change the picture?
This question takes us back to our discussion
of ideologies of management. Arguing over the
existence or non-existence of empowerment
within organizations will not tend to advance
the debate. Instead each side of the argument
will tend to become entrenched while letting off
the odd salvo from the safety of their own para-
digmatic bunker. Here I believe we can break
this deadlock by analyzing empowerment in
ideological terms.
With empowerment examined in ideological
terms, the focus of debate can shift from squab-
bles over the appropriate definition of empower-
ment to be applied. Instead, the key issue in
discussing empowerment, however we choose to
define it, must turn on the extent to which
managers can secure the ideological appeal of
empowerment in the face of other competing
ideas and experiences. Since, while it is true that
ideologies serve dominant groups, it is also true
that these ideologies must be constructed in
such a fashion that they both serve dominant
groups while appealing to subordinate group-
ings.
Here, as the next section will discuss, the
ideology of empowerment, construed as
accountability, seems to be running at odds with
worker experience.
 Rooting for empowerment?
David Collins
Experiencing empowerment
Despite the interest in empowerment there are
few empirical studies of any substance which
examine empowerment in any real detail. This
may be due to competing claims for manage-
ment attention, such that managers may be
unable to spare the resources in order to collab-
orate with academics. Equally, however, it may
be the case that managers are reticent about
allowing academics to conduct critical research
on empowerment, since they are only too aware
of the fragility of their ideological claims in the
face of worker experience. This is speculation,
but what does seem clear is that managers court
conflict when either deliberately or by accident
they clothe themselves in the rhetoric of activist
empowerment, while allowing only for function-
al or passive forms.
As noted earlier, empowerment has emerged
as an idea and focus for organizational change
thanks to the dovetailing of a range of issues and
problems. Management success in empowering
initiatives must be contingent on managing the
ideology of empowerment over time. This is
demonstrated in the Fucini and Fucini[26]
account of Mazda’s plant in Flat Rock, Michi-
gan.
Fucini and Fucini[26] spell out a story of
growing disillusionment as the actual experi-
ence of Mazda’s employees came to contradict
the expectations which Mazda managers had
nurtured.
The employees at Flat Rock were, no doubt,
attracted to the prospect of stable and reliable
earnings. However, as the selection process
made clear, Mazda were looking for something
special from their employees. Mazda, the
recruiters claimed, were looking for employees
who could take initiative, work as part of a team,
and cope with an environment which promised
multi-skilling and task discretion. Workers were
sold the image of a work situation which
promised empowerment and an end to the
detailed supervision and timing of normal
factory production. Yet, before long, worker
experience came to clash with the ideology of
management, which empowerment was sup-
posed to support. As a consequence, workers
began to react as their hopes of a new world of
work were dashed. Fucini and Fucini note:
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Empowerment in Organizations
Volume 3 · Number 2 · 1995 · 25–33
Despite Mazda’s orientation promise to involve
workers in management decisions, team members
were given no real voice in running the Flat Rock
plant. Team members had expected to design their
own jobs, but the programmed worksheets, which
rigidly spelled out every job, had already been
written by Mazda engineers before the workers
were even hired[26, p. 134].
They remind us that these worksheets had to be
followed exactly. In comparison with the US
“big three” which planned on the basis of hav-
ing workers in motion for 45 seconds per
minute, Mazda based its just-in-time work flow
at a rate of 57 seconds per minute. In a system
this tight, Mazda could not allow for any mean-
ingful worker discretion or innovation. In spite
of their claims, Mazda could offer only account-
ability when advertising some more active
model of empowerment:
If the sheet said [as it did for the finishing shop],
Put down your spatula before you pick up your
brush, the worker had to put down his or her
spatula...The worker who did not adhere to the
sequence of steps...could receive a written repri-
mand at the unit leader’s discretion[26, p. 150].
Experience of “empowerment” at Mazda,
therefore, soon led to discontent and worker
agitation as workers rebelled against the simple
ideological appeals which were held out before
them.
Thus, while empowerment is properly
viewed as an ideological construct, the Mazda
experience demonstrates that these ideologies
cannot simply be conjured anew or without
reference to competing ideas or experiences.
The Mazda experience exposes both the ideo-
logical nature of empowerment and the limited
appeal of empowerment in its passive forma-
tion.
Conclusions
This article has argued that management prac-
tices and innovations in management thinking
are ideological. In this way empowerment is
properly viewed as an ideological construct. In
order to demonstrate this, the article has traced
changes in management thinking and has
attempted to account for these changes by
analyzing the changing forces and opportunities
which confront management and allow ideas
such as empowerment to become “thinkable”.
 Rooting for empowerment?
David Collins
Since ideologies represent interests, an ideo-
logical view of empowerment has allowed us to
investigate the particular vision of empower-
ment which has been promoted. Further to this,
an ideological account of empowerment has
also allowed us to examine those other visions
which have been excluded and allows us to
account for the exclusion of these visions.
Finally, a case is made for considering the
dynamics of empowerment in terms of the gap
between management ideologies of empower-
ment and employee experience of work. It is
argued that the conflicts and dynamics of
empowering processes should be understood
from the standpoint that managers have only
incomplete and conditional ideological control.
From this perspective it seems clear that
more fieldwork on empowering initiatives within
organizations will be required. However, with
empowerment as a contested concept, it is also
clear that a particular type of fieldwork
approach will be required.
It is time to drop the homespun examples
and instead concentrate on studying empower-
ment in the real world. Instead of wishing away
the conflictual and ideological aspects of man-
agement, it is necessary to make use of method-
ological approaches which can commit to view-
ing conflict and control as key dynamics of
organizations. Only then will we be able to make
sense of ideology, and only then will we be able
to trace and understand the processes and pit-
falls of empowering initiatives in the workplace.
Notes and references
1 Sisson, K. and Brown, W., “Industrial relations in the
private sector: Donovan revisited”, in Bain, G.S. (Ed.),
Industrial Relations in Britain, Basil Blackwell, Oxford,
1984, pp. 137-54.
2 Hyman, R., “Pluralism, procedural consensus and
collective bargaining”, in Hyman, R., The Political
Economy of Industrial Relations: Theory and Practice in a
Cold Climate, Macmillan, London, 1989, pp. 54-95.
3 McIlroy, J., Trade Unions in Britain Today, Manchester
University Press, Manchester, 1988.
4 Gill, C., Work, Unemployment and the New Technology,
Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1985.
5 Ramsay, H., “Cycles of control”, Sociology, Vol. 11 No. 3,
1977, pp. 481-506.
6 Storey, J., Developments in the Management of Human
Resources: An Analytical Review, Basil Blackwell,
Oxford, 1992.
33
Empowerment in Organizations
Volume 3 · Number 2 · 1995 · 25–33
7 Anthony, P.D., The Ideology of Work, Tavistock Publica-
tions, London, 1977.
8 Keat, R. and Abercrombie, N. (Eds), Enterprise Culture,
Routledge, London, 1991.
9 The desire of academics to be practical is clear in the
orientations and statements of their publications. For
example Carnall[10] is so keen to make a contribution to
management that he seems to eschew theory. He tells us
(p. 2) that “ the reader will find no elaborate proposi-
tions, hypotheses or theories. Rather the author has
attempted to synthesize what he takes to be the most
useful approaches to the problems of managing change
in organizations”. The ideological nature of this process,
however, is ignored.
10 Carnall, C.A., Managing Change in Organizations,
Prentice-Hall, London, 1990.
11 Porter, M.E. and Miller, V.E., “How information gives you
a competitive advantage”, Harvard Business Review,
July-August 1985, pp. 149-60.
12 The Economist, “A survey of information technology”,
June 16 1990.
13 Kanter, R.M., When Giants Learn to Dance, Simon &
Schuster, London, 1989.
14 Hopper, M.D., “Rattling SABRE: new ways to compete on
information”, Harvard Business Review, May-June 1990,
pp. 118-25.
15 Fukuda, J., Japanese-Style Management Transferred: The
Experience of East Asia, Routledge, London, 1988.
16 Pascale, R.T. and Athos, A.G., The Art of Japanese
Management, Sidgwick and Jackson, London, 1986.
17 Batstone, E., Ferner, A. and Terry, M., “Unions on the
post office board”, in McCarthy, W.E.J. (Ed.), Trade
Unions, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1987, pp. 109-23.
18 Beaumont, P.B., Change in Industrial Relations, Rout-
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19 Industrial Relations Review and Report, No. 475, Indus-
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20 Pateman, C., Participation and Democratic Theory,
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21 Fox, N., Empowering People at Work, Gower, Aldershot,
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22 Martin, P. and Nicholls, J., Creating a Committed Work-
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23 Hill, S., “Why quality circles failed but total quality
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24 Clement, A., “Computing at work: empowering action by
‘low-level users’”, Communications of the ACM, Vol. 37
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25 Wainwright, H. and Elliot, D., The Lucas Plan: A New
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London, 1982.
26 Fucini, J.J. and Fucini, S., Working for the Japanese:
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