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Employee empowerment,
job satisfaction and
organizational commitment
An in-depth empirical investigation

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empowerment

325

Sut I Wong Humborstad

Department of Leadership and Organizational Management,
BI Norwegian School of Management, Oslo, Norway, and

Chad Perry
Gibaran Graduate School of Business, Adelaide, Australia
Abstract
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to test the relationship between perceived empowerment
practices and Chinese service employee service effort and turnover intention, also to examine the
mediating role of employee job attitudes in this relationship.
Design/methodology/approach To test hypotheses about the relationships above, survey data
were collected by a self-administered questionnaire from frontline service workers at six four- and
five-star hotels in the Macau Special Administrative Region of China. The final sample of
290 participants rated empowerment practices in their workplace, as well as their job attitudes, service
effort and turnover intention. Perceived empowerment practices were measured using items from
Hayes employee employment questionnaire. Employee job attitudes were measured using job
satisfaction and organizational commitment scales based on Harrison et al. Structural equation
modeling was used to examine the hypotheses.
Findings Statistically significant results were obtained for a full mediating effect of job attitudes on
the relationship between empowerment practices and turnover intention. However, the relationship
between empowerment and Chinese employee service effort was insignificant.
Research limitations/implications This study is cross-sectional and so a longitudinal
examination of the variables could be revealing. In addition, other moderating and/or mediating
factors could exist such as demographic characteristics of service employees. Finally, most of the
conceptual underpinnings for this study come from research carried out in Western countries and
more work should be done within Chinese organisations and more qualitative research would be
appropriate for theory-building research.
Practical implications Managers in service industries in China should carefully monitor
employee job attitudes towards the empowerment practices. Owing to cultural differences on the high
vs low power distance dimension in particular, managers from the West should not overlook how
much empowerment is accepted among Chinese service employees.
Originality/value Contributing to attitude engagement theory, job attitudes consisting of job
satisfaction and organizational commitment explain the success of empowerment implementation in
Chinese service organisations.
Keywords China, Employee behaviour, Customer service management, Empowerment, Job attitudes,
Job satisfaction, Organizational commitment, Turnover intention, Service effort
Paper type Research paper

Chinese Management Studies

Vol. 5 No. 3, 2011
pp. 325-344
q Emerald Group Publishing Limited
1750-614X
DOI 10.1108/17506141111163390

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Introduction
Empowerment involves giving employees the autonomy to make decisions about how
they go about their daily activities (Carless, 2004; Haas, 2010). As service industries
become more competitive, the importance of empowerment in service industries is
increasingly recognized as a key to catering to more and more demanding customers
(Boshoff and Allen, 2000).
However, empowerment is contextual (Foster-Fishman et al., 1998). It is a social
construct nested in how an individual integrates perceptions of personal control,
a proactive approach to life and an understanding of the socio-political environment
(Perkins, 1995; Rappaport, 1995; Zimmerman, 1995; Perkins and Zimmerman, 1995).
Hence, empowerment can be viewed differently across cultures (Robert et al., 2000;
Fock et al., 2002) and thus the success of empowerment as a managerial practice
depends on an appropriate understanding of the culturally based assumptions, values
and beliefs held by those who are being managed (Hofstede, 1993; Robert et al., 2000;
Wang, 2008). In particular, incongruence between empowerment as a management
practice and cultural values may be influential in high power distance nations where
subordinates are accustomed to unquestioningly taking orders from their supervisors
(Hui et al., 2004; Humborstad et al., 2008b).
Results of the few empowerment studies conducted in high power distance cultural
contexts have been inconsistent (Hui et al., 2004; Powpaka, 2008). For example,
Robert et al. (2000) failed to obtain conclusive findings. In their study, the
empowerment-job satisfaction relationship was revealed to be negative in the India
sample, but this relationship was found otherwise in some other high power distance
country samples. On the other hand, Hui et al. (2004) provided support for variation in
empowerment effects on job satisfaction and the intention to comply with customer
requests being a function of power distance, after controlling some extraneous
variables. Also, empowerments effect on organizational commitment shows
inconclusive results. Bhatnagar (2007) and Chen and Chen (2008) found that some of
the sub-dimensions of empowerment were positively correlated to organizational
commitment, but others were negatively or not correlated to organizational
commitment in their India and Taiwan samples, respectively. It is important that
this uncertainty be explored further because of the growing economic importance of
China (a high power distance country, as noted above) and the number of Western
managers entering China with possibly misplaced ideas about empowerment.
Given the extant uncertainty about empowerment in high power distance cultures,
this study aimed to more thoroughly investigate how perceived empowerment
practices are linked with Chinese service employee job satisfaction and organizational
commitment, to predict their service effort and turnover intention these are
important for service organisations because they reflect the quality of service
performance (Zeithaml et al., 1990). Our contribution centres on the effects of the new
variable of job attitudes on this service performance.
The research setting for this study of service employees who interact with customers
is the hotel/casino industry in the Macau Special Administrative Region (SAR) of China.
This setting is appropriate because Chinese culture is known to have a higher power
distance orientation than some Western countries do (Hofstede, 1980; Correia, 1997).
Indeed, appropriately for this research, Correia (1997) used Hofstedes (1991)
five-dimensional framework to confirm the presence of high power distance culture

at workplaces in the Macau setting. This setting is also an important one. A clear policy
direction of the Macau Government has set tourism, gaming, conventions and
exhibitions as the head, and the service industry as the body, driving the rest of the
economy (DSEC, 2009). Tourism industries contribute more than 50 per cent of the GDP
and hotels cater for more than 22 million visitors to Macau (DSEC, 2009). Thus, the
setting provides a multi-organisation, homogeneous culture site to investigate an
important, high power distance phenomenon where all subjects are boundary spanners
between customers and the organisation.
In the rest of the paper, a literature review develops two hypotheses. Then the
methodology of path analysis and bootstrapping are described and the findings
explained. Implications for management are explored. Finally, limitations and further
research are presented.
Empowerment
The notion of empowerment derived from alienation, industrial democracy, participative
management and job enrichment (Eccles, 1993; Spreitzer et al., 1999b) and has become
widespread (Bartunek and Spreitzer, 2006). It concerns a form of employee involvement
initiative (Wilkinson, 1998) and refers to the degree with which employees are
encouraged to make certain decisions without consulting their supervisors, so that
organizational dynamics are initiated at the bottom (Michailova, 2002). Empowerment
practices decentralize power by involving employees in decision making (Carless, 2004).
This aspect of empowerment is concerned with the behaviour of a supervisor (Lee and
Koh, 2001) and so empowerment can be defined as a discretionary construct that has
management providing employees with discretion and autonomy over their tasks
(Hsieh and Chao, 2004). It focuses on the relationships between team leaders and
members (Lee and Koh, 2001) and on the employees perception of their individual power
to cope with the events, situations and people they encounter at work (Carless, 2004).
Empowerment implies that people at the lower levels of organisations sometimes
know best the leaders role should be to act as coach and/or mentor and important
decisions can be made at all levels of organisations (Robert et al., 2000). It encourages
service personnel to use their own judgment to make prompt decisions (Lovelock, 1992;
Humborstad et al., 2008b). In brief, empowerment practices could stimulate individual
frontline service employees to deliver high-quality service as a discretionary effort
(Malhotra and Mukherjee, 1999; Hancer and George, 2003).
High power distance cultural context
Members of organisations within a high power distance culture accept that power is
distributed unequally (Hofstede, 1991). They are accustomed to hierarchal structures
and paternalistic leadership so they often hesitate to take the initiative or make decisions
without consulting supervisors (Chen and Fahr, 2001; Aycan et al., 2000). This cultural
value of power distance might affect the personal value of power sharing employees
may not accept and exercise any discretionary power granted by management
(Aryee and Chen, 2006; Chow et al., 2005). However, having employees willing to accept
empowerment is one of the conditions for its successful implementation (Hui et al., 2004).
That is, even if empowerment can be used as a management tool to achieve better quality
and performance (Bordin et al., 2006; Gumusluoglu and Ilsev, 2009; Spreitzer et al., 1997),
it requires employee willingness to accept it (Liden et al., 2000).

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Although some studies have investigated the effect of empowerment on job

satisfaction and performance in such a high power distance cultural context (Eylon and
Au, 1999; Hui et al., 2004; Robert et al., 2000; Littrell, 2007), the empirical evidence about
differences between empowerment effectiveness in high power distance countries and low
power distance countries is inconclusive (Powpaka, 2008). For instance, Robert et al. (2000)
found a significant negative empowerment job satisfaction relationship in an Indian
sample, while positive results were found in Mexican and Polish samples (these two
countries are high on the power distance dimension and all three samples were conducted
across industries). On the other hand, Hui et al. (2004) revealed positive results in both high
and low power distance contexts, but the effects of empowerment were weaker in their
Chinese frontline hotel workers sample. Moreover, perceptions of empowerment could
differ among Chinese workers due to recent industrial modernization (Li, 1999). Some
might accept empowerment as a way to motivate and utilize human resources, but others
might find empowerment too difficult to work with because of their traditional norms of
high power distance between management and employees. In brief, while research in the
West has consistently shown positive effects of empowerment on outcomes such as job
satisfaction, turnover intention and creativity to drive better performance (Spreitzer,
2008), the inconsistent findings in the East seem not to fit in.
Perhaps, the recently uncovered, higher order variable of workers job attitudes could
have an important bearing on their behaviour under empowerment (Harrison et al.,
2006). Could that variable better explain how empowerment could work in China and
other high power distance cultures? The next section justifies our consideration of that
job attitudes variable.
Empowerment, job attitudes and service effort
To capture Chinese employee attitudes towards empowerment, we developed a model
of the mechanisms of their empowerment that includes the variable of job attitudes.
That job attitudes variable (Harrison et al., 2006) combines job satisfaction with
affective organizational commitment and is linked to service effort and turnover
intention within a structural model of empowerment, as shown in Figure 1. Each
concept in that model is discussed next to develop hypotheses.
Job
satisfaction

Organisational
commitment
Service
effort

H1
Jop
attitude

Empowerment
H2

Figure 1.
Proposed structural model

Turnover
intention
Source: Developed for this study

First, consider job attitudes. Job attitudes are a combination of job satisfaction and
organizational commitment and job satisfaction and organizational commitment are
two of the most often studied variables in organizational behaviour research (Mathieu
and Zajac, 1990; Riketta, 2002; Petty et al., 1984). The concept of attitude is usually
presented as having an affective component a feeling, preference, or mood about a
person, idea, event or object (Warr and Wall, 1975). In more detail, job satisfaction is a
pleasurable or positive emotional state resulting from the appraisal of ones job or job
experience (Locke, 1976). It is an affective or emotional response toward various facets
of ones job. In turn, affective organizational commitment is viewed as the relative
strength of an individuals emotional attachments to, identification with and
involvement in a particular organisation (Mowday et al., 1982).
In the meta-analysis of Harrison et al. (2006), job satisfaction and affective
organizational commitment were found to contribute to second-order structured job
attitudes and suggested that these two constructs should be combined to evaluate
a more general concept of job attitudes. (A second-order factor, like job attitudes in our
model, is present when first-order factors like job satisfaction and organizational
commitment are explained by some higher order factor structure (Schumacker and
Lomax, 2004).) Based on this meta-analysis results of 112 management studies,
Harrison et al. (2006) argue that a combination of these two constructs captures an
employees general attitudes towards their job and is important for understanding
work behaviour. This study about work behaviours adopted their recent framework.
In brief, job attitude is measured here as a second-order construct consisting of job
satisfaction and organizational commitment.
Next, consider the crucial factor of service effort. When service employees are unwilling
or unable to deliver service at the required level, service quality suffers (Zeithaml et al.,
1990; Humborstad et al., 2008a). The effort of service employees to deliver quality service
plays a significant role in the organisations attempts to satisfy customer expectations
(Gronroos, 1990; Zeithaml et al., 1990). Thus, effort is an important element in motivation
theory (Mohr and Bitner, 1995). It mediates the relationship between motivation and
performance and forms a mechanism by which motivation is translated into accomplished
work (Brown and Peterson, 1994; Naylor et al., 1980). Indeed, actual employee service
performance is likely to reflect the amount of employee effort expended in service
encounter situations (Yoon et al., 2004). Of course, effort does not necessarily automatically
translate into performance; for example, if a worker has insufficient training, resources or
equipment, they might conceivably put in a lot of effort but still not perform at a high level.
However, the relationship would usually be positive and the use of effort in this research is
justified because we are interested in workers rather than managers views, that is, effort
could be considered more relevant than harder-to-measure performance. That is, service
effort is what managers were aiming to achieve with their direct empowerment actions
and is a reasonable proxy for actual service performance.
In turn, empowerment could bring conflicting values to an organisations high power
distance tradition (Hui et al., 2004; Robert et al., 2000) to facilitate empowerment,
organisations could actually shorten the distance between leaders and members, with
rules and procedures reduced (Hirst et al., 2008). These empowerment practices might
conflict with traditions where hierarchy and managerial rules are respected. As noted
above, some studies demonstrated strong resistance to empowerment in the high power
cultural context (Robert et al., 2000; Pang et al., 1998). However, some studies revealed

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otherwise (Aryee and Chen, 2006; Hui et al., 2004; Eylon and Au, 1999). For example,
Eylon and Au (1999) found both low and high power distance groups experienced
increased job satisfaction led by empowerment and no significant differences between
the two groups were found. Hui et al. (2004) also supported the effect of empowerment on
job satisfaction. However, they argued that this effect is more pronounced in a low power
distance cultural context. On the other hand, Aryee and Chen (2006) provided empirical
evidence that empowerment leads to higher job satisfaction and performance in a
Chinese sample of manufacturing workers. In brief, extant evidence about whether
empowerment produces positive job satisfaction and organizational commitment in
high power distance workplaces, is inconclusive.
Thus, it is interesting to look at if or how the hitherto unexplored effect of job attitudes
mediates the mechanism of the empowerment-organizational outcomes relationships
and this mediation may be particularly apt in the Chinese context of this research. China
has been experiencing the rapid industrialization of modern societies in the past two
decades and the values implicit in modern institutions may have been to some extent
incorporated into the personal values of some Chinese service workers (Powpaka, 2008;
Zhang et al., 2009). That is, empowerment may produce positive job attitudes among
Chinese service employees and may in turn lead to higher service effort. Thus,
we hypothesize that job attitude is a mediator it clarifies the nature of the relationship
between the independent and dependent variables (MacKinnon, 2008). (In contrast,
a moderator C sets conditions on the relationship between variables A and B.)
We hypothesize that:
H1. Job attitudes positively mediate the positive relationship between
empowerment and service effort in Chinese service organisations.
Empowerment and turnover intention
In addition, through job attitudes, empowerment may affect turnover intention.
Turnover intention is a conscious and deliberate wilfulness to leave an organisation
(Tett and Meyer, 1993). It can be described as a psychological response to specific
organizational conditions which fall along a continuum of organizational withdrawal
behaviours ranging from daydreaming to the physical act of turnover (Kraut, 1975).
Employee turnover intentions, absenteeism and actual turnover have received
substantial theoretical and empirical consideration (Chiu et al., 2005; Mowday et al.,
1982; Porter and Steers, 1973). This dysfunctional behaviour negatively impacts
organizational performance (Mobley, 1982). Moreover, the potential cost of staff
turnover in service industries is recognized to be high, and includes knowledge lost
within the organisation, the training required for new employees, loss of established
connections with customers, and ultimately, lowered service quality and customer
satisfaction ( Joiner et al., 2004). In particular, there has been a rapid development in the
hotel industry in Macau since the gaming license has been liberated in 2000. Retaining
qualified frontline employees has been a great challenge in the Macau gaming industry
(it is the largest gaming centre in the world), tourist numbers are increasing at a faster
rate then the local population. Consequently, career development in tourism industry is
more important than in other industries. That is, retaining qualified service employees
is one of the main HR issues for many hotels in Macau and explains why so many
managers were willing to be involved in this study.

Furthermore, deciding to leave ones job is not normally impulsive but is a decision
that one has been contemplating/intending for some time prior to taking action
(Barak et al., 2001). Therefore, turnover intention is considered to have an immediate
causal effect on turnover and is believed to be the best predictor of actual turnover by
many researchers (Lee and Bruvold, 2003; Barak et al., 2001; Kiyak et al., 1997; Hom and
Griffeth, 1991). Presumably, satisfied and committed employees are likely to dedicate
more of their time, energy and talents as a way to demonstrate their reciprocity and to
maintain a close tie to their organisation and are less likely to leave their organisations
(Boshoff and Mels, 1995; Siu, 2002). Hence, should empowerment lead to positive job
attitudes, it would in turn decrease employee turnover intention. Thus, we hypothesize:
H2. Job attitudes positively mediate the negative relationship between
empowerment and turnover intention in Chinese service organisations.
Method
Sample and procedure
To test the hypotheses developed above, this study collected data by a
self-administered questionnaire within similar hotels in one industry from six
four- and five-star hotels in the Macau SAR of China during the first quarter of 2006.
The focus of this research is high power distance and so indirect empowerment
influencers like job characteristics and types of leadership were appropriately held
constant all the hotels had similar processes and were of a similar size and standard.
Macau is a suitable setting to investigate the high power distance of China, even
though it was the Wests first colony in China. The Western country of Portugal was a
light colonial power in Macau until the handover in 1999, but this does not mean power
distance in Macau is necessarily lower than Mainland Chinas because Portugal itself
has a somewhat high power distance score (Hofstede, 1991). Since the handover, Macau
has been a SAR of China with its own Macau Government and Portuguese constitute
a mere 2 per cent (and declining) of the population (DSEC, 2009). The six hotels were
chosen because they had a long business history in Macau with Chinese owners and
management. Other hotels that were owned by Western corporations or had sizable
non-Chinese staffs were not considered in this study.
Out of the 445 questionnaires distributed by managers and supervisors to all the
frontline service employees at the hotels (the total number of service employees hired at
the six selected hotels), 316 respondents replied. Of their responses, 26 were incomplete.
Thus, the final sample consisted of 290 participants, giving a satisfactory response
rate of 65.2 per cent. To achieve this response rate (Kinnear and Taylor, 1991),
all questionnaires were distributed with sealable envelopes attached. Respondents were
asked to complete the questionnaire and to insert the completed script into the attached
envelope and to seal it before return. It was also stated that the sealed envelope would be
opened only by the researchers to ensure confidentiality and anonymity. Although a
65.2 per cent response rate is considerably high, a non-response bias test was performed
by using t-test to ensure the data were appropriate. Following the standard Armstrong
and Overton (1977) procedure, two groups of data (one consisted of the first
100 respondents to reply and the second one consisted of the last 100 respondents to
reply) were extracted from the original data set, with the second group reflecting
non-responders more than the first group. t-tests were carried out to compare the mean
responses of all items between the two groups to assess whether there would be any

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significantly different pattern between the two groups. Out of all 26 items including
demographic questions, we found only two questions with statistically significant
differences between the mean responses of these two groups. They were one item from
the job satisfaction scale (higher with the first group) and one item about education
attainment (lower with the first group). Therefore, we consider that there is no
problematic issue with potential non-response bias.
Two major actions were taken in this study to ensure the reliability of the
questionnaire. First, nearly all measures were adopted from past studies reported in the
literature (discussed below), thus ensuring that they had been previously tested and
proven to be reliable. Most of these measured have also been used in other studies with
Eastern samples and have shown good reliability. The Appendix presents all the items
in the measures. All these items were originally written in English, and for this study
questionnaires were needed in Chinese. To ensure the reliability of the translation, each
question was back translated from Chinese to English by a second translator and
compared with the original text. Some modification was made after the review. Second,
the questionnaire was pre-tested with a pilot sample of 15 individuals in Macau to ensure
that all directions and items were clearly understood. The data and feedback collected
from the pilot test were reviewed, and minor modifications on the translation were done.
From the profiles of the 290 respondents, the sample was reasonably representative
of Macau service workers the sample was evenly distributed in both genders (male
48 per cent/female 52 per cent) and in marital status (single 50 per cent/married
50 per cent). Most respondents were suitably from 21 to 30 years old (48 per cent),
while 23 per cent were 31-40 years old, and 20 per cent were 41-50 and those who have a
high school education (45 per cent) dominated the sample. With the rapid growth of the
tourism industries in Macau, working in these industries was attractive career
development in tourism industries would be relatively more fruitful than in other
industries. Therefore, the perception of frontline service jobs might not necessarily be
the same as in other countries, where tourism products are more underdeveloped.
Measures
Empowerment. All constructs in the questionnaire used established measures. Hayes
(1994) five items (1 strongly disagree; 5 strongly agree) employee empowerment
scales were used to measure the respondents perception of empowerment at work. The
measures were specialized for customer contact personnel. A sample item is I have the
authority to correct customer problems when they occur. To ensure the internal
consistency of the items measured, reliability tests were performed by examining
Cronbachs alpha values. Reliability measures above 0.70 are deemed to be acceptable
for research purposes (Nunnally, 1978). And the alpha coefficient for the four items
(one item from the original scale was omitted to achieve a satisfactory alpha coefficient)
was 0.70. The original English measurement items are attached as the Appendix.
Job attitudes. This was a second-order latent variable consisting of job satisfaction
and organizational commitment (Harrison et al., 2006). To measure job satisfaction,
Hackman and Oldhams (1975) three items (1 strongly disagree; 5 strongly agree)
were used (e.g. I am satisfied with my job currently). The alpha coefficient of the three
items was 0.85. In turn, we assessed organizational commitment using the four items
(1 strongly disagree; 5 strongly agree) from an affective organizational commitment
scale developed by Meyer and Allen (1991). A sample item is I feel a strong sense

of belonging to the organisation. Some of the items were reverse coded. The alpha
coefficient was 0.69.
Service effort. For service effort as the dependent variable, a perception measurement
was used by asking respondents a single question about their willingness to invest effort
to deliver quality service at their work. A multi-item source was not available and
single-item measures can sometimes have advantages over multi-item measures
because multi-domain measures can confound the dimensionality of the concept with the
multiplicity of their causal sources (Bowling, 2005). This confounding from a multi-item
variable may have been particularly serious in this study because of the complex links
between effort and performance discussed above.
Turnover intention. The respondents turnover intention was measured using a
four-item scale (1 strongly disagree; 5 strongly agree) developed by Seashore et al.
(1982). A sample item is For me, this company is the best of all possible organisations
to work for. The five-year time horizon in one item was approved by the managers
involved. The alpha coefficient was an acceptable 0.79, as depicted in Table I.
To conclude, some of the Cronbachs alpha values among the scales adopted were only
acceptable. The results of relatively low alpha coefficients could be due to the fact that
all scales were adopted from past studies, which were developed in the West.

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Analytical procedures
Because the proposed meditational model involves latent constructs, this research used
structural equation modelling (Baron and Kenny, 1986; Judd and Kenny, 1981) of the
AMOS 16 software. To evaluate the hypothesized model, we followed the two-stage
procedure recommended by Anderson and Gerbing (1988). First, confirmatory factor
analysis (CFA) was examined to assess the adequacy of the measurement component of
the model. Then the structural model was evaluated. To examine the significance of the
indirect effects, a bootstrapping procedure was performed (Shrout and Bolger, 2002;
Preacher and Hayes, 2008). Moreover, since all measures were obtained from the
common source, a control of common method variance was carried out to compare the
results with and without potential bias of the common method variance (Mackenzie et al.,
1999; Podsakoff et al., 2003).
Analysis of the data
There were missing values in the data collected. However, all variables forming the
model appeared to have less than 10 per cent of the respondent missing data the
range was from 1.2 to 4.3 per cent. Hence, the results indicate that the missing data
Variables

SD

1. Empowerment
2. Job attitudes
2a. Job satisfaction
2b. Organizational commitment
3. Service effort
4. Turnover intention

0.91
NA
1.00
0.84
1.33
1.08

2.57
NA
3.14
3.09
2.93
2.85

2a

2b

0.70
1.00
NA
0.31 * *
1.00
0.85
0.34 * *
NA
1.00
0.64
0.14
NA
0.87 * *
1.00
NA
0.12
0.51 * *
0.49 * *
0.47 * *
1.00
0.79 20.29 * * 20.84 * * 2 0.79 * * 20.79 * * 2 0.60 * *

Notes: Correlation is significant at the *0.05 and * *0.01 levels (two-tailed); n 290
Source: Analysis of the survey data

Table I.
Standard deviations,
means, reliabilities and
intercorrelations of latent
variables

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in this research do not pose problems in treatment (Malhotra and Mukherjee, 1999).
Single imputation with mean substitution and regression-based imputation were used
to handle them (Kline, 2005; Schumacker and Lomax, 2004).
Measurement model. A structural regression model allows a latent variable to have
single or multiple indicators for each measurement model (Schumacker and Lomax,
2004). To examine their construct validity, CFA was used because it has advantages
over exploratory approaches in validating theoretically developed constructs
(Vandenbosch, 1996). As noted, all latent variables were measured using item-level
data except service effort.
The results of the measurement model indicate appropriate validity with satisfactory
model fit, including empowerment, job attitudes as the second-order variable consisting
of job satisfaction and organizational commitment, service effort and turnover intention.
Although the x 2 value was 166.26 with p-value greater than 0.05, the normed x 2 was
1.75 indicating that there was no significant difference between the model and the
sample data. In addition, the root mean square of error of approximation (RMSEA) and
standardized root mean square residual (SRMR) were both 0.05 (less than 0.08), and the
goodness-of-fit index (GFI), comparative fit index (CFI) and Tucker-Lewis index
(TLI) were 0.93, 0.96 and 0.95, respectively, so the indicators are reasonable measures of
empowerment and provide evidence of convergent validity. Hence, the results support
the view that job satisfaction and organizational commitment are explained by a
second-order structured latent variable of job attitudes.
Structural model. After assessing the validity of the constructs adopted, the posited
structural models were evaluated. Same model fit indices of the measurement models
were used to examine the proposed models. First, we examined the fully mediated model,
that is, there were no direct paths from empowerment to service effort and turnover
intention. The results of model fit demonstrated that the x 2 was significant
(x2 182.99, df 98, p 0.00). However, x 2 is sensitive to sample size (Kline, 1998;
Anderson and Gerbing, 1988; Hair et al., 1998; Kline, 2005), hence, the normed x 2 (x2/df)
was also assessed and was 1.87 (less than 3.0) suggesting a good model fit between the
implied model and the sample data. The GFI and CFI were 0.93 and 0.95, respectively,
greater than 0.90. The RMSEA and SRMR were 0.05, lower than 0.08. Also, the TLI was
0.94 greater than the 0.80 criterion, as depicted in Table II. All indices met the criterion
and support the modified model having a reasonable model fit.
Next, a mediated model with additional direct paths from empowerment to service
effort and turnover was evaluated. The x 2 value was 181.80 (df 96; p , 0.001) and
the normed x 2 was 1.89, which were approximately same as the x 2 results of the full
mediated model. The GFI, CFI, RMSEA, SRMR and TLI values were 0.93, 0.95, 0.05,
0.05 and 0.94, respectively. Hence, results suggest that the two models had similar fit to
the data. So, to compare these two models, a x 2 difference test was performed. The Dx2
between the fully and partially mediated models was 1.19 and the Ddf was 2 resulting
in a value of 0.595 (less than 3.84) (Hair et al., 2006). This result indicates the difference
of adding two extra direct paths in the partially mediated model was not significant.
That is, it suggests that the fully mediated model is an accurate representation.
Hypotheses testing. Now the hypotheses could be tested. First, H1 was evaluated.
As shown in Table I, the correlation between empowerment and service effort was not
significant. Hence, it did not fulfil the basic requirements for mediation for
further analysis (Baron and Kenny, 1986). Thus, H1 was not supported.

Model fit indices

x2
Degrees of freedom (df)
p (x 2)
Normed x 2 (CMIN/DF)
RMSEA
SRMR
CFI
GFI
TLI

Acceptable
level

Measurement
model

Fully mediated
model

Partially mediated
model

. 0.05
. 1.0 , 3.0
, 0.08
, 0.08
. 0.90
. 0.90
. 0.80

166.26
95
0.00
1.75
0.05
0.05
0.96
0.93
0.95

182.99
98
0.00
1.87
0.05
0.05
0.95
0.93
0.94

181.80
96
0.00
1.89
0.05
0.05
0.95
0.93
0.94

Note: n 290
Source: Analysis of the survey data

Employee
empowerment

335
Table II.
Model fit indices of the
measurement and the
structural models

Nevertheless, the indirect and direct paths between empowerment and service effort
remained as posited in the conceptual model discussed earlier. For H2, the correlation
between empowerment and turnover intention was significant with correlation
coefficient of 2 0.29 and p-value less than 0.01. Hence, the first basic condition for H2
was fulfilled. Next, the mediator of job attitudes was introduced in the relationship
between empowerment and turnover intention. The path estimates of the model revealed
that all paths were significant with p-values lower than 0.01, as depicted in Table III,
except the direct path of empowerment turnover intention had a p-value greater than
0.05, that is, the direct path between empowerment and turnover intention was not
significant when job attitudes as a mediator was controlled, indicating a potential full
mediating effect. That is, empowerment does not directly lead to turnover intention
when the mediator of job attitudes is controlled.
Next, to assess the statistical significance of the mediating effect, a bootstrap
procedure was conducted. There were two indirect effects of this model, that is,
empowerment-job attitudes-service effort, and empowerment-job attitudes-turnover
intention. Following the recommendations of Shrout and Bolger (2002), we first created

Description
Direct effects
Empowerment job attitudes
Empowerment service effort
Empowerment turnover intention
Job attitudes service effort
Job attitudes turnover intention
Indirect effects (bootstrap results)
Empowerment job attitudes service effort
Empowerment job attitudes turnover
intention
Notes: *p , 0.05; * *p , 0.01; n 290
Source: Analysis of the survey data

Not controlling for

common method variance

Controlling for common

method variance

0.32 * *
2 0.073
0.002
0.62 * *
2 0.89 * *

0.51 *
20.25
0.21
0.63 * *
20.93 * *

0.20 * *

0.24 *

0.28 * *

0.27 *

Table III.
Standardized parameter
estimates for both direct
and indirect effects

CMS
5,3

336

10,000 bootstrap samples from the original dataset (n 290); then we ran the structural
model with these bootstrap samples. Standardized coefficients and errors were
calculated for the two indirect effects. The results from the bootstrap samples indicated
that the standardized point estimate of the indirect effect (empowerment-job
attitudes-turnover intention) was 0.28 with the standard error of 0.08. The 95 per cent
confidence interval (CI) for the indirect effect ranged from 0.13 to 0.46. As zero is not in
the CI, the results revealed that the mean of the indirect effect of empowerment-job
attitudes-turnover intention (H2) was significantly from zero at the 0.001 level. Thus,
H2 was supported. While the direct effect from empowerment to job attitudes was
significant with a standardized coefficient of 0.32 and a p-value of 0.001, the direct effects
from job attitudes to turnover intention (standardized coefficient 0.89 and
p-value , 0.001) were also significant.
Moreover, H1 (empowerment-job attitudes-service effort) was not supported. The
results reveal that empowerment was not directly correlated to service effort among
Chinese service employees. However, empowerment-job attitudes was significant
this finding indicates that empowerment should lead to higher job attitudes; in turn,
empowerment could indirectly affect Chinese workers service effort through its effect
on job attitudes and job attitudes effect on effort.
Assessing the potential bias from common method variance
Because both exogenous and endogenous variables were measured using the same
source, the relationships between variables in this study may have inflated due to
common method variance (Spector, 2006; Podsakoff et al., 2003). To assess this
potential bias, we added a first-order latent variable to the indicators of both exogenous
and endogenous variables. This procedure controlled for the portion of variance in the
indicators measured from the common source (Mackenzie et al., 1999). Moreover, some
of the method factor loadings were constrained to be equal for identification purposes.
The results, as shown in Table III, revealed that the previously supported significant
relationships were not affected by common method variance. That is, common method
variance is not a potential threat in this study.
To conclude, H2 was supported in this study. The structural model of the proposed
model is shown in Figure 2 with all the path coefficients. Discussion of this finding and
its implications are provided next.
Discussion and implications
Literature on empowerment in Chinese organizational settings is not settled. While
empowerment in the West is widely suggested to stimulate untapped human resources
(Spreitzer et al., 1999a; Spreitzer, 2008), its use in high power distance Chinese
organisations needs evidence like this research. Some have argued that empowerment
may be less effective in high power distance cultures (Robert et al., 2000) and so
Western management concepts such as empowerment may not be useful among
Chinese employees (Pang et al., 1998). In turn, we found that, on their own, perceived
empowerment practices do not stimulate or motivate stronger service effort among
Chinese service employees (H1).
However, we found the mediating effect of job attitudes is a mechanism that helps
empowerment lead to lower turnover intention among Chinese service employees (H2).
Managers use empowerment to allow workers to solve problems themselves

Job
satisfaction

Employee
empowerment

Organisational
commitment
Service
effort

0.073 n.s.

337

0.62**
Empowerment

0.32**

Job
attitude

0.062 n.s.

0.89**
Turnover
intention

Notes: *p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; n.s. = non-significant

Source: Developed for this study

(the Appendix) but they must also include actions that foster job satisfaction and
organizational commitment, to ensure that empowerment would affect turnover
intention among Chinese service employees. That is, management in China should
foster positive job attitudes through processes such as better and wider communication
of the purpose of empowerment and stronger organizational and supervisor support.
They could begin by looking at the items in the questionnaire (the Appendix) about
satisfaction and commitment they are the core elements within the core variable of
job attitudes.
For example, satisfaction involves the work environment, and commitment involves
emotional commitment to the family of the organisation. Giving staff a sense of
belonging to the organisation (by shared values or rituals) would make them feel
emotionally attached and part of the family. Also, the Chinese are sensitive to giving,
taking, gaining or protecting face in social settings it is considered the protocol of a
highly hierarchical relationship between superior and subordinate (Li, 1999).
Supervisors should learn to encourage different ideas and opinions so that Chinese
employees could feel committed their voices are listened to and their contributions
impact on their companys performance (Tian-Foreman, 2009).
In brief, Chinese employees tend to have more favourable work attitudes and
behaviour if they perceive favourable social relationships in their workplace (Wong and
Huang, 2003). With emphases on satisfaction and commitment like these, the usual steps
of empowerment would become more effective for reducing turnover intention. The
human resource manager of a five-star hotel in Macau SAR, China, illustrates a technique
that managers could use these job attitudes/satisfaction and commitment implications
of the research findings. She has short briefing sessions with employees on a regular
basis, to discuss outstanding issues. All ideas and issues would be listened to and
discussed. Although not all issues could be solved at once, employees would feel helpless
and distanced from their immediate supervisors/managers without these sessions.
Finally, consider limitations of the research and implications for future studies.
First, the present study is cross-sectional. A longitudinal examination of the variables

Figure 2.
Supported model
with standardized
parameter estimates

CMS
5,3

338

as they occur and as managerial interventions are made to improve desirable

organizational outcomes could be revealing. In addition, such research could examine
the impact of changes in the variables. Moreover, there may be other potential
moderating and/or mediating factors in addition to the important ones uncovered and
investigated in this study such as demographic characteristics of service employees.
(These demographics were not included in this analysis because there are no a priori
reasons to suspect they affect high power distance.) As well, possible relationships
between service effort and actual performance should be examined to provide an even
more comprehensive model.
Next, most of the conceptual underpinnings for this study come from research
carried out in Western countries. However, considering that human cultural contexts
and behaviour vary from country to country, more work should be done within Chinese
organisations to confirm the transferability of the ideas examined in this research.
More qualitative research would be appropriate for this kind of theory-building
research. Thus, future research needs to be centred in China to generate more relevant
constructs and their measurement.
Furthermore, to confirm the generalizability of the supported models in this
research, this work could be replicated in other cultural contexts than China such as
Africa and the Middle East. This sort of research could also be tried in less-modern
parts of China like Lanzhou city. Indeed, it could even be replicated in European
countries with high power distance like France and Germany (Hofstede, 1991). As well,
other service organisations with a different level of tangibility (Shostack, 1977) such as
fast-food outlets, airlines and consulting institutions, could be investigated.
In conclusion, this research found how Chinese employees accept empowering
management practices to demonstrate stronger job satisfaction and organizational
commitment, and so help empowerment to lead to lower turnover intention. However,
the relationship between empowerment and service effort was found insignificant.
This finding will help managers in China to effectively adopt empowerment policies
and be an empirical base for future researchers.

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344

Appendix. The English measurement items

The English version of the measurement items used follows. Note that respondents actually
completed a questionnaire in Chinese, which is a translation of this original.
Empowerment (Hayes, 1994):
(1) I have the authority to correct customer problems when they occur.
(2) I am encouraged to handle customer problems by myself.
(3) I do not have to get managements approval before I handle customer problems.
(4) I am allowed to do almost anything to solve customer problems.
(5) I have control over how I solve customer problems.
Job satisfaction (Hackman and Oldham, 1975):
(1) You are satisfied with your job currently.
(2) Your work environment is pleasant.
(3) You are extremely glad that you chose this company to work for, over other
organisations.
Affective organizational commitment (Meyer and Allen, 1991):
(1) I do not feel like part of the family at the organisation.
(2) The organisation has a great deal of personal meaning for me.
(3) I do not feel emotionally attached to the organisation.
(4) I feel a strong sense of belonging to the organisation.
Turnover intention (Seashore et al., 1982):
(1) You are very likely to stay in this company for the next five years.
(2) For you, this company is the best of all possible organisations to work for.
(3) You will not give up this company easily.
(4) You seldom hear about or are exposed to jobs outside your company that interest
you.
Service effort:
(1) I am willing to invest effort to deliver quality service to customers.
Corresponding author
Sut I Wong Humborstad can be contacted at: sut.i.w.humborstad@bi.no

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