Empowerment is common to both the scholarly and the popular management literature. However, empowerment’s many interpretations have dulled the concept as a research tool. Here, empowerment is separated into perceived environment and individual behavior components. The linkage between organization environment and managerial behavior is tested with a population of 23 effective managers. It is found that an accepting or empowering environment increases the probability that the effective manager will undertake activities outside the job description, but that an empowering environment is not necessary for effective middle-manager behavior.
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