The Role of Employee Task Performance and Learning Effort in Determining Empowering Managerial Practices

Abstract

Touting its potential benefits, employee participation or empowerment has served as an underlying theme in many recent public sector management reforms. However, few studies have investigated the conditions under which public managers are more or less likely to use participatory practices while making decisions with their employees. This study contributes to the public management literature by investigating how public manager assessments of employee behavior can affect the degree to which the manager uses two different types of empowerment: consultation and delegation. Using survey data from both employees and their supervisors collected in a large government agency, we find that supervisor perceptions of subordinate task performance and learning efforts are important in predicting their use of the two empowerment practices. In particular, public managers are more likely to delegate work to employees they perceive as higher performers but more likely to consult with employees who they perceive as exhibiting greater learning effort.