Workers who feel empowered by their employers have higher morale and are more productive, regardless of their industries, jobs or cultures, according to new research from the University of Iowa.

"Empowerment is an effective approach for improving employee attitudes and work behaviors in a broad range of industries, occupations and geographic regions," said lead researcher Scott Seibert, professor of management and organizations for the Tippie College of Business. 

The study shows that, when done properly, empowerment initiatives lead to higher job satisfaction, lower turnover and reduced stress among employees. Empowered workers are also more innovative and perform better at their jobs. 

Seibert and his co-authors examined more than 140 previous studies of various aspects of psychological empowerment in the workplace published since 1995. They then looked for similarities in those studies' outcomes and conclusions. Although the studies don't support the often extravagant claims made by media, they do tend to exaggerate the value—or lack thereof—of empowerment. Some claim it will revitalize an organization with "lightning-like" speed, while others dismiss it as a "chimera" and point to high failure rates at organizations that try it.

The studies do identify certain organizational characteristics and leader behaviors, as well as employee traits, that lead to successful empowerment initiatives. Effective empowerment initiative should include the following.

High performance practices. Managers share information, decentralize authority, involve workers in decision-making, provide training opportunities and pay well. Seibert says high performance management makes workers feel a strong part of their organization and that they matter to the firm's success.

Socio-political support. Managers make their employees feel like valued parts of the organization, and encourage employees to recognize each other's importance.

Leadership. A manager who inspires, provides strong feedback and is a good role model enhances workers' feelings of competence and helps employees find meaning in their work.

Work design characteristics. Managers encourage training and provide individual workers with challenging work assignments.

"Managers in these studies reported that empowered workers were more innovative and more willing to take the initiative to solve problems on their own," Seibert said. "Employees said they were more engaged in their work when empowered, that they felt like they had an influence and an impact on the business around them."

These work improvements apply to improved team performance as well as individual performance, and that they tended to be strongest in the service sector.It also found that men and women generally have similar reactions to empowerment. 

The study also showed empowerment had an impact across national borders and cultures, though its impact seems to be greater in Asia than in North America. Seibert says that could be because empowerment is more effective in collectivist cultures where individuals react more strongly to cues promoting identification and inclusiveness, or that work arrangements in Asian businesses are more conducive to empowerment initiatives.

The study also found that employees who have positive self-evaluation characteristics are more likely to feel empowered, and people who feel more empowered to begin with will react more strongly to empowerment initiatives.

Seibert's study, "Antecedents and Consequences of Psychological and Team Empowerment in Organizations: A Meta-analtyic Review," was co-authored by UI doctoral students Gang Wang and Stephen H. Courtright and will be published in a forthcoming issue of the Journal of Applied Psychology.

Planning to negotiate a raise? Don't discuss it with your boss in his or her office. So says a new study by an organizational behavior expert at Washington University in St. Louis.

“Parties who negotiate on their home fields can be expected to claim between 60 percent and 160 percent more value than the visiting party,” says Markus Baer, assistant professor of organizational behavior at the Olin Business School. Baer’s latest study, “Location in Negotiation: Is There a Home-Field Advantage?” is among the first to empirically demonstrate that there is indeed a home-field advantage in negotiation. It appears in the March edition of the journal Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes.

Baer and his research partner, Graham Brown of the University of British Columbia, set out to test the generally accepted theory that a home-field advantage exists, not only in sports but also in business negotiations. They found that it does, but visiting-player confidence can go a long way in evening the playing field.

“There was surprisingly little systemic research examining whether location matters in negotiation,” Baer says. “And no study explains why it would matter. Do people in their own environments perform better, or do visitors to their offices perform worse? As a result, home-field advantage remains one of the least understood phenomena in negotiation.”

Baer and Graham set up a series of three experiments. In the first, students assumed the status of “resident” and were taken to a private office. They were given 20 minutes to make the office their own by choosing a chair, putting their name outside the office, choosing posters to put up, writing their schedule on a board and logging into a computer to check their email. They were also given a key to the office. They were then told they would be negotiating with a fellow student over the price of a pound of coffee.

Participants assuming the role of a “visitor” were told that they would be negotiating with a fellow student who had an office because he or she was entering data for a professor in the department thus leading them to believe that the “resident” party had a permanent claim to the office. The experiment showed that residents clearly outperformed visitors. 

By creating a third condition—a “neutral party” who was led to believe that the resident party did not have a permanent claim to the office but just happened to have arrived a little earlier—the authors were able to also show that the home-field advantage may be due both to a resident advantage and a visitor disadvantage. That is, residents did better than a neutral party, who, in turn, outperformed visitors.

The second experiment examined the role of confidence in explaining exactly why the home-turf advantage arises. It was designed exactly as the first, however before the negotiation, participants took a questionnaire designed to measure confidence. This experiment showed that the advantage of residents over visitors in distributive negotiations can at least partly be explained by the different levels of confidence residents and visitors are likely to have from knowing that they will be negotiating on their home fields or on someone else’s territory.

In the final experiment, visitors’ confidence levels were manipulated by having students provide answers to a fake assessment. They were told that based on the assessment, their negotiating skills were quite high and they should do well in the negotiation.The results of the experiment showed that boosting visitor’s confidence levels before the negotiation can help to eliminate the home field advantage.

“Our findings suggest that location is an important factor to consider when examining the forces shaping outcomes of distributive negotiations and, therefore, should be incorporated into existing approaches to negotiation,” Baer writes in the paper. 

However, Baer’s research also suggests one way of overcoming home-field advantage if the location of a negotiation cannot be changed. “Confidence plays a critical role in any negotiation, regardless of where it takes place,” Baer says. “Anything a person entering a negotiation can do to boost his or her confidence is a good thing. Something as simple as participating in negotiation training may work to minimize the disadvantage of negotiating on someone else’s home turf.”

30 Rock is one of my must-see shows, and the latest episode was particularity interesting to me. In "¡Qué Sorpresa!," Jack (Alec Baldwin) has his first meeting with his new boss. Jack is used to the old-school, huge corporate structure, but the new boss tells him that the company will now function more like a family. For example, there's no more executive lunchroom; it's open to all levels of employees.

One of the first duties Jack is assigned is to meet with all his reports and listen to their ideas for improving the company. He is then to take one of the good ideas back to his boss. Hilarity ensues!

While the action of using a manager to foster communication between lower-level employees and executives is straight-up hierarchical and something I'm not a fan of, the action of asking all levels of employees for their ideas is something I support. Sometimes, the best ideas come from those on the front lines, and those people should be allowed to offer their minds as much as their muscles.

How often do you meet with your employees for ideas? Does your boss regularly request your opinion? 

Think about it—a company is more than one person leading it or a group of managers steering it. It's a team effort. And training courses for a select group of high-level employees may be a waste of money, according to Johan Bertlett, who recently defended a Ph.D. thesis in psychology at Lund University in Sweden.

A good working climate is not only a requirement for job satisfaction—it is also an important success factor for a profit-driven company. Almost 200 employees at Arlanda Airport in Stockholm were included in Bertlett’s study, which shows that the manager is only able to influence the working climate to a limited extent. Instead, it is the interaction between the manager and the staff that is crucial. 

“Of course you need a good manager if the interaction between the manager and the staff is to work,” Bertlett said. “But it is important to understand that the manager’s situation is also influenced by the staff. Simply focusing on the manager means turning a blind eye to the contributions of the staff, and in doing so, you exclude a lot of the potential that exists within the company.”

The best working climate is found at companies where the manager and the staff interact and where the manager creates good conditions for the staff to manage themselves and each other. 

“A good manager should train his or her staff and encourage informal leadership by delegating to those who are willing to take greater responsibility,” Bertlett said.

In his view, there are many benefits of solving problems at operational level; first and foremost, the communication and decision-making paths become shorter, and the managers can focus more on strategic management. 

Many employees are happy to take on more responsibility, but not many are prepared to do it if it is not reflected in their pay packet.

“It is not only a matter of the manager being able to delegate, it is also a matter of how much commitment the employee is willing to show," Bertlett said. "And the company management must also create the general conditions for this to work."

Bertlett hopes that his research will influence how management training is offered in the future. 

“The management of a company should think again before they send their team leaders on management training courses," he said. "It would probably be more beneficial to send an entire team instead." 

(Story materials provided by Lund University.)

According to a new study, dominant CEOs—who are powerful figures in the organization as compared to other members of the top management team—drive companies to extremes of performance. Unfortunately for shareholders, the performance of a company with an all powerful CEO can be either much worse than other companies or much better. But there is one solution to an all powerful CEO: a strong board of directors. Companies with strong boards counteract powerful CEOs, and swing the tide of performance to the plus side. This study on dominating CEOs and powerful boards is now published in the Journal of Management Studies. 

CEOs are typically the individual with the most power in the top management team for a company. Yet, casual observation has shown that some companies with strong CEOs, such as General Electric under Jack Welch or Microsoft as led by Bill Gates have performed tremendously well. Meanwhile, other companies have failed miserably, with often disastrous results for employees and shareholders, when the CEO is very dominant, such as Enron under Kenneth Lay.

The key idea is that a dominant CEO may lead a firm to a deviant strategy. This strategic deviance can yield a strong position for a firm in its markets, or it can drive it to big losses. To control the negative effects of strategic deviance, and balance the power of the CEO, a company needs a strong board of directors. A strong board provides a useful watchdog and a second set of valued opinions to the strategic direction of the company. This oversight by the board can help catch the deviant strategy that could lead to firm failure before it is implemented by the CEO and the organization’s top management team. 

Although strong boards can help counter the potential for big losses or even firm failure that comes from having a dominant CEO, the board does not completely eliminate such a possibility. Other mechanisms of firm governance need to be activated to also provide greater levels of caution against firm failure in light of an all powerful CEO. 

Having a dominant CEO can place an organization in jeopardy, but it is a challenge that can be managed. As recommended by the authors of the study, “Having dominant CEOs is risky, but powerful boards help control the downside risk while leaving the upside potential relatively open. Thus, it is possible that coupling dominant CEOs with powerful boards represents an ideal governance arrangement.”

(Story materials provided by Wiley-Blackwell.)

Hay Group, a global management consulting firm, released its sixth annual Best Companies for Leadership Study and Top 20 list, of which 70 percent employ MPI members. The study ranks the best companies for leadership around the globe and examines how those companies develop current and future leaders. This year, General Electric topped the list, followed by Procter & Gamble, Intel Corporation, Siemens and Banco Santander.

According to Hay Group’s study, all of the Top 20 companies report that everyone at every level of the organization has the opportunity to develop and practice the capabilities needed to lead others, compared to less than 70 percent of all other companies in the study. In addition, 90 percent of the Top 20 companies report that people are expected to lead regardless of whether they have a formal position of authority, compared to only 59 percent of other companies.

“The Top 20 Best Companies for Leadership are at the forefront of a significant shift away from hierarchical organizational operating models,” said Rick Lash, director in Hay Group's Leadership and Talent Practice and co-leader of the Best Companies for Leadership Study. “Leadership in the 21st century is about leading at all levels; not restricting it to title. As organizations become flatter, the best leaders are learning they must check their egos at the door and become increasingly sensitive to diversity, generational and geographical issues.”

Hay Group’s study also found that the shift in organizational culture away from top-down leadership extends beyond employees at headquarters. All of the Top 20 companies encourage local leaders to participate in decisions made at headquarters, compared to 72 percent of all other companies. Similarly, 95 percent of the Top 20 companies report that ideas coming from subsidiary leaders are just as likely to be implemented as those from headquarters, compared to 76 percent of all other companies.

“This year’s Top 20 is a group of companies that are moving quickly to improve their efficiency and competitive positioning by flattening their business structures and diversifying their workforces,” added Lash. “They are adapting development tools and reward structures to equip managers with the changing global leadership skills the business environment demands and incentivizing leaders to use these capabilities effectively.”

Other findings in the survey include

• 100 percent of the Top 20 pay male and female employees the same rate
• 100 of the Top 20 get local leaders to participate in decisions made at headquarters to share ideas and best practices
• 84 percent of the Top 20 say it is easy for people to work from home in their organizations

Employees with high levels of emotional intelligence are more dedicated and satisfied at work than their peers, according to Dr. Galit Meisler of the University of Haifa. Meisler's research examines the effects of emotional intelligence on aspects of organizational politics, employee work attitudes, formal and informal behavior and feelings of justice and burnout. 

Results show that employees with high levels of emotional intelligence were more satisfied with their jobs and more committed to their organizations. These employees also exhibited fewer "undesirable" work attitudes, such as burnout, intention to leave and negligent behavior. 

According to Meisler, the effects of emotional intelligence are not limited to employee work attitudes alone; they also have an impact on various aspects of organizational politics. For example, employees with high emotional intelligence perceive organizational politics at their workplace as less severe than their colleagues. Likewise, better political skills were demonstrated by employees with a higher emotional intelligence level. 

One+ columnist Douglas Rushkoff needs your help. Well, he needs any-and-every-one's help. RandomHouse has agreed to publish a paperback version of his book Life Inc: How the world became a corporation and how to take it back, to which he plans to add a “resources” section. But the publisher wants to retitle the book to be more specific or evocative. So he's soliciting help from friends and strangers alike. 

The book is about how value creation and exchange have been legally monopolized by corporations and central banks and  concludes with ways to take back peer-to-peer value exchange. Watch this video for the nine-minute gist, and then post your title ideas here.