Impact Of Performance Feedback On Employee Empowerment In The Public Sector

Organizational leaders have implemented empowerment practices and/or adopted empowerment leadership styles to produce positive outcomes for their organizations. Empowering employees has been associated with increased employee engagement and job satisfaction. Based on organizational theory, this conceptual paper explores employee empowerment from three perspectives (managerial, psychological, and interactional) to present a comprehensive analysis of existing empowerment literature. Additionally, literature on performance feedback and the organizational outcomes associated with employee empowerment are also explored. While empowerment literature has explored employee empowerment as a mediating variable to various organizational outcomes (e.g., increased performance, increased job satisfaction, and increased employee engagement), minimal literature was found that explored performance feedback as an antecedent to employee empowerment. Thus, this study attempts to fill this gap by exploring whether providing frequent informal feedback contributes to perceptions of empowerment in public service employees of a County of Los Angeles department. This study is socially pertinent because traditional performance appraisals (i.e., annual performance evaluations) may not be meeting employees’ developmental needs. The proposed research design for this study is a non-experimental qualitative study based on semi-structured interviews with non-supervising employees from various work locations of the County of Los Angeles Child Support Services Department. Archival data is also reviewed and analyzed to augment the data collected. A thematic content analysis is conducted to identify recurring themes relating to the research question. Despite its limitations, this study provides a comprehensive exploration of various empowerment perspectives.