دانلود رایگان مقاله انگلیسی نقش توانمندسازی کارکنان برای پیشرفت مستمر: ارائه دهنده خدمات مالی - امرالد 2018

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to understand the role of increasing employees’ level of continuous improvement (CI) empowerment, i.e. employees’ knowledge and understanding of CI, the possibility of open communication and support from the work environment regarding CI, in the implementation of CI over time. Design/methodology/approach – Based on the theory of structural empowerment, the authors test the research question using evidence from a case study in a European financial services provider. Data are gathered with questionnaires on a team level and cover a period of 2.5 years including 780 participants. Findings – The findings show that after conducting a CI programme in the case, there is a significant increase in employees’ CI empowerment over time, which has a positive but time-lagged relationship with the level of CI implementation. Research limitations/implications – Implications are that CI empowerment can be created sustainably and is an important factor in establishing CI in a company, but that it takes time until empowerment leads to changes in behaviour. However, it has to be considered that these implications are solely derived from empirical results from a single company. Practical implications – Financial service providers should invest in establishing CI empowerment and consider a delay in realising measurable benefits in terms of the level of CI implementation. Originality/value – This paper is the first empirical study to examine the relationship between employee CI empowerment and the implementation of CI from a longitudinal perspective.

7. Discussion and conclusion

7.1 Theoretical contributions

This paper is the first empirical study to examine the relationship between employee CI empowerment and the implementation of CI from a longitudinal perspective. Our results show that there exist a positive link between an increase in employee CI empowerment and a sustainable increase in the level of CI implementation over time, but that there is a time lag. This relationship allows us to derive several implications regarding the theory of CI. First, we provide evidence of a significant increase in the level of CI empowerment of individual employees. Hence, the results of Kotter (1995), Lillrank et al. (2001), Angell and Corbett (2009) and Holtskog (2013) regarding the positive relationship between CI introduction and employees’ understanding, communication and knowledge acquisition can be confirmed. Our results are descriptive in this regard as there might be other factors influencing the level of CI empowerment. However, given the absolute level measured it can be determined that employees have a high ability to unfreeze their existing principles and practices towards new behavioural patterns to implement CI within the organisation. In addition, our findings reveal that the level of CI empowerment is mostly increasing during the programme roll-out. This might be due to the fact that employees are confronted with new knowledge, methods and work practices in this part of the roll-out. Before implementing CI tools within a team, these tools are presented and discussed in special team sessions throughout the roll-out. Thus, relevant knowledge, as well as understanding of improvement tools and techniques, is transferred to individual employees during the roll-out. In addition, communication between colleagues seems to be improved in a long-lasting manner, due to frequent problem-solving sessions within the programme roll-out. Employees within the target teams are expected to use their experience, facts and knowledge obtained during the roll-out as a basis for debates and discussions with other colleagues.