The Managerial Discourse on Employee Empowerment Mirela Ivanova European University Viadrina Chris

Power through Empowerment? The Managerial Discourse on Employee Empowerment Mirela Ivanova European University Viadrina Christian von Scheve Freie Universität Berlin German Institute for Economic Research (DIW) Ivanova, M., von Scheve, C. (2019). Power through Empowerment? The Managerial Discourse on Employee Empowerment. Organization. doi.org/10.1177/1350508419855709 0 Abstract Informed by the sociology of knowledge approach to discourse, the current study explores how employee empowerment is discursively constructed as a management technique. Combing insights from labour process theory, Foucauldian approaches to governmentality, and neo-Weberian interpretations of the ideological basis of capitalism, we develop an empirically informed theoretical framework that accounts for the multi-faceted character of employee empowerment. Results show, firstly, that discourse justifies the necessity of this technique by presenting it as an efficient answer to perceived increases in competitive pressures and an ever changing economic environment since the beginning of the 1990’s. The discourse promotes advanced liberal modes of (self-)governance, which are created and maintained through a complex set of means for the control of labour. Secondly, although the ideological structure of the empowerment discourse is in accordance with the third spirit of capitalism, as identified by Boltanski and Chiapello, it also introduces changes by removing the neo-manager and granting the empowered employee a central role. Furthermore, our analysis suggests that empowerment is associated with strategies for reducing labour costs, such as de-layering and work intensification. 1 Introduction The term empowerment usually carries positive connotations. After all, who wants to be powerless? As Bröckling (2015) shows, however, the term has had different meanings and been used in various discourses representing a range of diverse interests. It entered management thought at the end of the 20th century forming the idea of employee empowerment (EE). According to Kunda and Ailon-Souday (2005), EE is one of key tenets of the most recent managerial ideology – market rationalism (MR). Characterised by its fascination with the market, this ideology’s rhetoric promotes down-sizing, outsourcing, subcontracting, de-layering, and EE in order to achieve market adaptability. EE, conceptualised as the granting of more work- related autonomy to employees, can thus be defined as a specific management technique, i.e., an institutionalised program, a set of ideas referring to organisational management in practitioner- oriented discourse, and a form of intentionally enacted management. Although EE is identified in the scientific literature as a key institutionalised management practice, there is little research specifically dedicated to its discourse. Hales’s (2000) study on empowerment rhetoric and practice reveals how the ambiguity of the term often gives rise to conflict between senior and middle management. It also illuminates how empowerment is used as a strategic tool in the reconstitution of managerial work. Hales’s analysis, however, does not engage with a deeper examination of the knowledge structures within this discourse and their relations to the social context within which they emerged historically. The current study fills this gap and aims at understanding why the concept of employee empowerment emerged in the first place and gained popularity, which problems it promised to solve, which understandings of the employee, the manager, and the organisation it conveys, and, more generally, which knowledge configurations are characteristic for this discourse. To address these questions, we first discuss 2 existing theories and research on EE as a management strategy and technique. We then outline our methodological approach and detail the specific methods of discourse analysis we used. Subsequently, we present the results of our analysis and provide a detailed reconstruction of the knowledge configurations characteristic of the discourse on EE. In the concluding part, we summarize the study’s contributions to the literature and suggest avenues for future research. Employee Empowerment: Theoretical Accounts Without explicitly addressing the emergence of EE as a management strategy, a number of theoretical paradigms in sociology, management and organisational studies provide valuable insights into the question why EE might have appeared in practitioner-oriented discourse. Looking at the social science literature, three paradigms seem particularly conducive to advance our understanding of the emergence of EE (see Hales, 2000; Flecker & Hofbauer 1998; Mir & Mir, 2005; Bröckling, 2015; McDonald et al, 2008): (1) Labour Process Theory (LPT) with its focus on management and control, (2) neo-Weberian accounts of the ideological basis of modern capitalism, and (3) Foucauldian approaches to governmentality. Despite being widely echoed in the existing scholarship, these perspectives have mostly been discussed independently of each other and in often disjointed, even opposing ways. In our view, however, each of these perspectives can make a unique contribution to a multi-paradigmatic understanding of the emergence of EE as a management strategy. Moreover, the three perspectives may mutually shed light on each other’s blind spots and thus promote a comprehensive account of EE. Importantly, we do not propose a grand synthesis of these paradigms, but rather use them to better comprehend the different facets and dimensions of employee empowerment – a task that can hardly be accomplished by a single paradigm alone. Labour Process Theory 3 Although Labour Process Theory is hardly a unified theoretical perspective, it is fair to say that most researchers in this field agree in conceiving of management as a tool for the control of labour. In an attempt to establish a unified theory, LPT scholars (Thompson & Smith, 2000-1) have developed a core set of propositions for the analysis of labour processes. As a tool for critical inquiry, these core principles can contribute to illuminating the role of specific management techniques – such as EE – in capitalist labour relations, in which labour has assumed the characteristic of a commodity. Amongst these core principles (Thompson & Newsome, 2004), three seem particularly relevant to the analysis of employee empowerment. The first principle refers to the imperative to constantly innovate and re-innovate the production of goods and services due to the logic of capital accumulation and competitive pressures. By seeking competitive advantage, organisations adopt management strategies and techniques that aim at sustaining innovation and creativity for invention and at reducing labour costs. Employers therefore need to balance their in some ways contradictory interests in advancing production processes and in cutting on labour costs. Although at first glance, empowerment does not seem to be about reducing the costs of labour, scholars have argued that under its guise, management has been “aggressively pursuing overhead and labour cost reductions” (Hughes, 1993: 124). Contrary to widespread conceptions, the implementation of empowerment programmes was linked to downsizing and work-intensification (Wilkinson, 1998), even under the aegis of “neo-Taylorist management techniques” (Upadhya, 2009: 10). When analysing the strategies of justification for EE in managerial discourse, it therefore seems worthwhile to look at whether the need for organisational empowerment is discursively promoted by emphasizing its capability for reducing labour costs. 4 The second principle refers to organisations’ “control imperative” (Thompson and van den Broek, 2010). Since organisational gains depend at least in part on workers’ labour performance, and market mechanisms alone cannot regulate the labour process, organisations need to control their employees. This has led to the development of various conceptualisations of management control strategies (Braverman, 1974; Edwards, 1979; Friedman, 1977; Burawoy, 1985) that organisations tend to mix and match in specific ways (Thompson & McHigh, 1995). Research in this tradition has investigated the organisational practice and implementation of EE, suggesting that empowerment promotes the tightening of managerial control, increases top-down surveillance (Checkland, 2008), and intensifies workers’ performance by expanding their scope of responsibilities. From an LPT perspective, the question of labour control focuses mostly on the way in which management has attempted to influence and monitor labour performance, whose intensity and extensity is considered indeterminate. Goals of labour control and performance enhancement might be important drivers of the advent of EE and should constitute important points of reference when investigating pertinent managerial discourse. The third principle refers to organisations’ need to draw on the knowledge, creativity, and experience of their members in order to constantly renew the labour process. The “structured antagonism/relative autonomy principle” (Hall, 2010: 168) highlights the managerial preconditions to “keep the wheels of capitalism turning” (Huws, 2014: 30). These preconditions concern the level of autonomy given to employees in such a way that a certain level of cooperation from labour can be guaranteed. In conceptualizing EE as a way of capitalising workers’ subjectivity, Flecker and Hofbauer (1998) invite us to consider empowerment as a technique for the mobilisation of employees’

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