...The term empowerment has been used by many, without really understanding the meaning. The aim of this paper is to point out the meanings that are given to the term empowerment in various contexts, this paper will then also discuss each of these meanings of empowerment. Furthermore this paper will also aim to critically analyse the social work intervention from the point of view of empowerment. This paper will then outline the ways this approach can be beneficial to both social work clients and professional social workers. Empowerment is not something that comes easily, rather empowerment is a development that challenges a person assumption about the way things are and can be. This is also challenging towards a person assumptions about power, helping, achieving and succeeding (Joe, 2015). In order for one to understand or be able to explain the concept of empowerment, one needs to understand the general concept of power....
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...Empowerment Approach to Human Services Management Paper Vanessa Cuffee September 5, 2014 BSHS/425 Heather Zuhurak The empowerment approach will ensure a client that help will be provided in a respectful and empowering way. Empowerment is used at my agency to lift and encourage clients to better their daily lives. In every aspect positive energy and approaches are used. The client’s strengths are building upon, and this helps strengthen his or her weaknesses. There are 12 basic principles in the empowerment approach. 1. Empowerment-oriented organizations create formal structures that support client’s participation in organizational decision-making. 2. Empowerment-oriented organizations create partnerships with program beneficiaries in which clients, staff, and board members are all treated equally. 3. In service delivery the purpose of involving the client is to decrease personal feelings of powerlessness, improve the quality of services, and the access to services. 4. Empowerment-oriented organizations will develop policies, programs, and procedures that will bridge cultural, ethnic, gender, and other demographic barriers to effective service delivery. 5. Empowerment-oriented organizations have managers who are 100% committed to the empowerment of staff members and program beneficiaries. 6. Empowerment-oriented organizations have specific strategies that will increase the psychological empowerment and workers motivation. 7. Team building and collaboration among...
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...change societies and the economic landscape of these countries? Why some countries have been slow to empower women in their countries? This paper will address these questions and other areas as it relates to the empowerment of women. Empowering means “To invest with power, especially legal power or official authority”. So when you hear the phrase “empowering women” what comes to mind? Initially I had no clue, it was until I read articles that I fully understood what it meant. Political empowerment, Economic empowerment, and Social empowerment is what empowering women is all about. I’ve only listed a few of the categories, but some countries and or societies treat them as mutually exclusive to women. The first article I read emphasis the importance’s of education among women. Educating women would be one of the first steps toward empowerment. Education helps with social development and improves your well-being. Yet there are still place that excluded young girls from a formal education. The benefits of women being educated greatly outweigh them being illiterate. With education empowerment among women; they better informed on health matters which can lead to deduction in population and child mortality rates. Educated women can seek better employment opportunities, which in turn help their households and national income. Empowerment for women in terms of educations; drive women to become more politically active and more informed how to exercise their legal rights. ...
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...I S S U E S A N D IN N O V A T I O N S IN N U R S I N G E D U C A T I O N Nurse educators’ workplace empowerment, burnout, and job satisfaction: testing Kanter’s theory Teresa P. Sarmiento MScN RN College Nurse Educator, George Brown College, Toronto, Ontario, Canada Heather K. Spence Laschinger Canada PhD RN Professor and Associate Director Nursing Research, School of Nursing, The University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Carroll Iwasiw EdD RN Professor and Director School of Nursing, School of Nursing, The University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada Submitted for publication 22 May 2003 Accepted for publication 21 October 2003 Correspondence: Heather Spence Laschinger, School of Nursing, The University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario N6A 5C1, Canada. E-mail: hkl@uwo.ca SARMIENTO T.P., LASCHINGER H.K.S. & IWASIW C. (2004) Journal of Advanced Nursing 46(2), 134–143 Nurse educators’ workplace empowerment, burnout, and job satisfaction: testing Kanter’s theory Background. Empowerment has become an increasingly important factor in determining college nurse educator burnout, work satisfaction and performance in current restructured college nursing programmes in Canada. Aim. This paper reports a study to test a theoretical model specifying relationships among structural empowerment, burnout and work satisfaction. Method. A descriptive correlational survey design was used to test the model in a sample of 89 Canadian full-time...
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...Empowering Your Organization Empowering Your Organization This paper will focus on four detrimental symptoms of disempowerment: Blame and victim mentality, Apathy and burnout, Gossip and backbiting and Top talent leaving for better opportunities or work environment. These are common issues found within many organizations. Their negative impact is corrosive and metastasizes like a cancer. However, if symptoms are recognized, diagnosed and consequently addressed the damage can be halted and replaced with positive and productive values that will serve to empower. World-renowned for their pioneering work on empowerment the six values identified by Gershon and Straub (2009), will be used as a tool to develop strategies to resolve these four issues of disempowerment. The Blame Game Hierarchy, inequality, and violence, in the history of mankind there has been a structure of those that lead and those that follow, the blessed and those that lament, hunters and prey. The world is a diverse place; therefore, different societal sects or cultures view and respond to difference in position/title, wealth and power, and capability in dissimilar ways. In the workplace this disparity can produce a phenomena referred to as “victim mentality.” This behavior is marked by an individual blaming everything and everyone for their failures and woes; with the individual assuming the role of victim, e.g., John who is chronically tardy to work is terminated. Instead of seeing his behavior as the...
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...Motivation and Empowerment Team B CJA/474 May 5, 2014 Ashley Webb Motivation and Empowerment Motivation and empowerment are very important aspects of leadership in any organization. Halting someone with ambition serves no purpose; however, many in leadership roles who do not understand the front line theories involved serve to offer nothing but confusion and discourse among their men. According to “More, Vito, and Walsh” (2012), “Motivation is a predictor of overall effort as an individuals ability, and an organizations support will determine the level of an officers job performance (p. 181). Knowing this concept wins, in this paper we will compare motivation and empowerment, discuss components of empowerment, and implications of empowerment to an organization, as well as the roles of trust with personnel issues. Comparing Motivation and Empowerment Motivation and empowerment go hand and hand, let’s start by defining what is Motivation? The process, by which a person’s efforts are energized, directed and sustained toward attaining a goal. Someone who is motivated will forth effort and work hard to accomplish their goal, and they will channel their energy in doing what is best the company, and one will stay the course and be diligent and persistent in achieving the goal. What is Empowerment? It involves helping others build their own power bases, most company will go all out by empowering their workers with tools that will benefit their business and help the company...
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...many companies are using various techniques and empowering employees is one of them. Employee’s empowerment means that the employee can make decisions and take risks rispecting the company’s vision and goals. However, the empowerment has many pro and cons. Some of the advantages are: increase in motivation, productivity, efficiency, creativity, reduce costs, and focus on quality. Also, when the employee is empowered will become as an entrepreneurial and will take risks that will translate in a higher income for the company or success. However, the employees take higher risks it can be a disadvantage as it can be even cause a loss from taking the wrong decision. As for example, an employee could try to predict the sales in the future for a particular product and decide to order too much of that product that will be difficult to sell. Another disadvantage of employee empowerment is the security of private information being not secure as everyone can access the information. For example, in medical office patients information need to be safe, but an employee decides to take work at home and all the paper documents with patient information now can be accessed by everyone visiting her house. Furthermore, managers can have hard times to delegate because people will become arrogant increasing conflicts and causing issues with the interpersonal relation, therefore, communication. Empowerment can make managers fear of losing their job as their performance is not needed any longer since...
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...EMPLOYEE EMPOWERMENT Employee empowerment is creating a working environment where an employee is allowed to make his own decisions in specific work-related situations. It helps in giving platform to the employees for their words. It makes a healthy environment in a organization. Guidelines for effective employee empowerment • Select the right managers. • Choose the right employees. • Provide training. • Offer guidance. • Hold everyone accountable. • Build trust. • Focus on relationships. • Transform mistakes into opportunities. • Reward and recognize. • Share authority instead of giving it up. • Encourage disagree. • Give it time. • Share information. • Realize that empowerment has its limitations. • Watch for mixed messages. • Involve employees in decision-making. • Be prepared for increased variation. Employee empowerment is good because of job satisfaction, motivation, productivity, creativity and innovation. Whilst it increases the efficiency in employees. Employees when empowered become more entrepreneurial and start taking more risks. Greater the risk, greater are the chances to succeed. As with the positivity there exist negativity, similarly there are many disadvantages of empowerment. • Egotism / arrogance • Security • Risks • Industrial democracy Therefore the best executives are one who has the sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it. WHAT’S BEHIND...
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...Is empowerment a valuable tool for increasing efficiency and effectiveness in today’s organisations? In recent years, the degree of competition in the business world has increase dramatically, business has to be able to adapt with the change of the environment, law, and technology. Many managerial practices have been developed to enable the organisation to increase its efficiency and effectiveness. Empowerment as a tool that focusing on increasing employee motivation to contribute on the organisation has been discussed in widely for years, many scholars have conducted a large number of study on this regard. From various journal articles, this paper will define and discuss the benefit of the concept of empowerment on the organisation in three different aspects, first, the individual empowerment which personal perception on the workplace. Second, empowerment climate which is directly related to firm’s code of conducts as well as structures. Lastly, the relationship across two level or multi-level empowerment will be explained and discussed. The question that is the empowerment a valuable tool for increasing organisation’s efficiency and effectiveness will also be answered There are arguments on the definition of empowerment since this concept is complex and can be explained on multiple dimensions, levels, and disciplines. Definition of empowerment in general was explicitly given by Conger and Kanungo (1988) as “ a process of enhancing feeling of self-efficacy among organisational...
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...EMPOWERING LEADERSHIP AND EMPLOYEE CREATIVITY Abstract: This paper is organized as follows. First we explain the theory on psychological empowerment and various leadership theories to develop a relationship between empowering leadership and employee creativity. Secondly it provides case studies to support the empowerment theories. We argue that the use positive psychology, specifically empowering leadership, contributes to employee success within an organization. The paper cites research by various highly esteemed professors and the primary sources were various internet articles, journals and websites. Introduction The use of positive psychology, originally proposed by Martin Seligman in his 1998 Presidential Address to the American Psychological Association, has been garnering support in recent studies. It focuses not on why people fail, but rather why they flourish and excel. Recent studies have shown that Empowering Leadership can affect employee creativity. By use of the word “creativity” we refer to the “out of the box’ ideas used in production and problem solving. Professor Alex Linley of the University of Leicester maintained that part of the empowering process calls for the leader to delegate authority which empowers the employee to make decisions and implement actions without direct supervision. This expression of confidence in the employee results in developing the employees feeling of self-efficacy which manifest “in four cognitions: meaning, competence...
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...LESSON 7: CHARACRERISTICS OF AN EMPOWERED COMMUNITY 7.1 Introduction Other than its definition, we have also noted in previous lectures three important facts about empowerment, and these are: a) Empowerment is a process that takes time; b) Every human experience has a contribution to make towards that empowerment; and that c) While individuals and communities are at the end of the day responsible for their own empowerment, external inputs too have value. In this lecture we will be discussing characteristics of an empowered community over time; community’s role in its own development; and also the role of external input, especially that of people’s government, in this empowerment process. 7.2 Objectives By the end of this lecture, you should be able to a) explain the characteristics of an empowered community b) discuss the role of the people in their won empowerment; and c) discuss what should be the role of the government (and donors) in support of the people in their own empowerment. 7.3 Characteristics of an empowered community There are four characteristics that an empowered person or community should display. These characteristics are progressive in their arrangement and hence it should be easy to remember them. The four characteristics are a) the ability to understand one’s reality and to analyze the factors that shape that reality; b) the ability to decide what one wants to be; c) the willingness to act to change the situation for the better; and d) the ability to ensuring...
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...A decentralized organization is one in which decision making is not confined to a few top executives but rather is throughout the organization, with managers at various levels making key operating decisions relating to their sphere of responsibility. Decentralization is a matter of degree, since all organizations are decentralized to some extent out of necessity. At one extreme, a strongly decentralized organization is one in which even the lowest-level managers and employees are empowered to make decisions. At the other extreme, in a strongly decentralized organization, lower-level managers have little freedom to make decisions. Although most organizations fall somewhere between these two extremes, there is a pronounced trend toward more and more decentralization. Advantages/Benefits of Decentralization: Decentralization has many advantages/benefits, including: 1. Top management is relieved of much day-to-day problem solving and is left free to concentrate on strategy, on higher level decision making, and coordinating activities. 2. Decentralization provides lower level managers with vital experience in making decisions. Without such experience, they would be ill-prepared to make decisions when they are promoted into higher level positions. 3. Added responsibility and decision making authority often result in increased job satisfaction. Responsibility and the authority, that goes with it makes the job more interesting and provides greater Incentives for people to put out...
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...according to the oxford dictionary refers to the ordinary men and women of a country rather than those who govern or have a special position in the society. (common mwananchi) My understanding of the statement: giving common citizens or people the ability/ empowering them economically, socially for there general well being. Fallacy: We can take development to the people The fallacy in reasoning here is that we can empower local people so that they can take control of their own lives, express their own demands and find their own solutions to their problems. According to this fallacy, the empowerment of common citizens by people in governance or those who have a special position in the society is possible and likely to be achieved; it presumes that the government/ the high & mighty in the society are willing to empower the local people and the latter are ready to receive the empowerment. This fallacy fails to address pertinent issues that will affect the smooth realization of taking development to the people. Greed & power People in governance / the high & mighty in the society want to amass wealth for themselves at the expense of the common citizens. This has seen to it that few people control resources instead of trickling it down to the people and hence a wide gap between the rich and the poor. e.g. Robert Mugabe...
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...receiver. Recently, Blog have become a significant platform to act as an online community for social interaction. With its simplify structure, blog followers can access post easily, join conversation and receive information that they needed (Chung and Kim, 2008). However, these advance in technology have become major reason to shift empowerment from organization, producer and marketer to individuals. In simple words, consumers are having more power over producer. In marketing concept, this consumer power cause the adoption of product-push approach to shift to consumption-pull strategy (Shankar et. al, 2006). In respected to this issue, practitioners have started investigate on empowerment from different perspective. However, most of the literature reviews are focusing on theoretical structure analysis. Few studies are done on travel blog and cancer patient blog in relation to empowerment. However, research methods are mainly questioning third person by questionnaire and focus group. Researcher sets the choice of answers, therefore result are limited and may not be accurate. Since, there is lack of health living blog analysis in related to empowerment level over time. Therefore, we are proposing a research on...
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...Table of contents Page no Contents 01 Personal information 02 Introduction 03 Conclusion 04 Anisa Abbas 22 July 2015 Student no 3618 863 8 Community & Health Psychology PYC4811 Assignment 02 657832 Introduction Community! “A group or network of people who are connected to each other by relatively durable social relations that extend beyond immediate genealogical ties and who mutually define that relationship as important to their social identity and social practice. They are a selforganized network of people with a common agenda or interest who come together by sharing ideas, information and other resources.” Trichardt, a pocket sized town which claims a mere 25 square kilometers in the Gert Sibande district of the Mpumalanga Province has a total of four thousand residents. Our small town has a mixed racial make-up with more than half of the residents being of the white race group. Recently a substantial amount of Asian/Indian families have settled into Trichardt. A possible reason for the influx would be that the location of the Masjid is easily accessible to the Muslim families. The Masjid is a point of gathering for the youth and male folk which also introduces and welcomes any new members into the community. In the past ten years of residing in Trichardt, I have witnessed dozens of caring, sharing and selfless behaviors within our community. There are a few senior members of the community who take on a leadership...
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