Psychological empowerment and organisational change among hotel employees in Egypt

Abstract

Empowering employees can have a significant impact on increasing job satisfaction, efficiency and productivity in the hotel industry. This paper aims to investigate the effect of empowerment on readiness for and acceptance of organisational changes among employees in Egyptian chain hotels. The study used a survey questionnaire to examine psychological empowerment across four dimensions (meaning, competence, self-determination, and impact) and readiness for change. Data were collected from 386 employees in chain hotels in Egypt, and the relationships between variables were examined using correlation and multiple regression analysis. The results show that there were no correlations between acceptance of change and any individual dimension of psychological empowerment. However, the regression analysis shows that psychological empowerment had a slight, but significant, positive effect on acceptance of organisational change. The overall model explained 2.7% of the variance in organisational change. Both “meaning” and “impact” constructs were significant, although “meaning” had a slight negative effect. These findings suggest that hotel managers should consider the effect of psychological empowerment when preparing for organisational change, although this is only one factor which should be taken into account.

Keywords: psychological empowerment, organisational change, hospitality industry, Egypt