Empowerment
The unreliable employee initiative which Taylor (op. cit.) replaced with his concept of scientific management (referred to previously) was an earlier form of empowerment. In convincing managers throughout the world to adopt scientific management principles, he gave management fully one-half of the responsibility whereas previously it had been up to the workman (Taylor, ibid); thus ensuring high productivity and high managerial overheads in order to maintain control. This could be seen as making scientific management the opportunity cost of empowerment. At this point an answer is needed to the question of what is empowerment.Empowerment is perhaps best described by Clare Hogg (1993) It is the quality (developed by individuals) which makes the difference between doing a job adequately (as with delegation) and doing it intelligently, creatively and with the commitment which goes together with accountability - a difference often referred to as discretionary effort. Clare Hogg (ibid) reports on the founder of the W L Gore organisation, whose inspiration to form the company came from his wartime experiences. Bill Gore had wartime experience working in a company where many managers had left for the front. Without their supervision people worked on projects largely devised and run by themselves. The work was fascinating, people worked harder and profits rose only to fall after the war when the management structure was restored. Essentially this story took place in a period of history which naturally brought great accomplishments from many people. To suddenly take away layers of management today would not necessarily have the same effect. As Jeanie Daniel Duck (1993) states empowerment does not mean abandonment ......... Setting the context for change means preparing the players.