Argyris C
Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA.
Harv Bus Rev. 1998 May-Jun;76(3):98-105.
Everyone talks about empowerment, but it's not working. CEOs subtly undermine empowerment. Employees are often unprepared or unwilling to assume the new responsibilities it entails. Even change professionals stifle it. When empowerment is used as the ultimate criteria of success in organizations, it covers up many of the deeper problems that they must overcome. To understand this apparent contradiction, the author explores two kinds of commitment: external and internal. External commitment--or contractual compliance--is what employees display when they have little control over their destinies and are accustomed to working under the command-and-control model. Internal commitment occurs when employees are committed to a particular project, person, or program for their own individual reasons or motivations. Internal commitment is very closely allied with empowerment. The problem with change programs designed to encourage empowerment is that they actually end up creating more external than internal commitment. One reason is that these programs are rife with inner contradictions and send out mixed messages like "do your own thing--the way we tell you." The result is that employees feel little responsibility for the change program, and people throughout the organization feel less empowered. What can be done? Companies would do well to recognize potential inconsistencies in their change programs; to understand that empowerment has its limits; to establish working conditions that encourage employees' internal commitment; and to realize that morale and even empowerment are penultimate criteria in organizations. The ultimate goal is performance.
人人都在谈论授权赋能，但这却行不通。首席执行官们会巧妙地破坏授权赋能。员工往往没有准备好或不愿意承担随之而来的新责任。就连变革专家也会抑制它。当授权赋能被用作组织成功的最终标准时，它掩盖了许多组织必须克服的深层次问题。为了理解这一明显的矛盾，作者探究了两种承诺：外部承诺和内部承诺。外部承诺——或契约性遵从——是员工在对自己的命运几乎没有控制权且习惯于在命令与控制模式下工作时所表现出的状态。内部承诺则是员工出于自身的个人原因或动机而致力于某个特定项目、某个人或某项计划时出现的情况。内部承诺与授权赋能紧密相连。旨在鼓励授权赋能的变革项目存在的问题是，它们实际上最终产生的外部承诺多于内部承诺。一个原因是这些项目充满内在矛盾，传递出诸如“按我们告诉你的方式去做你自己的事”这样的矛盾信息。结果是员工对变革项目几乎没有责任感，整个组织中的人都感觉自己的权力被削弱了。该怎么办呢？公司最好认识到其变革项目中可能存在的不一致之处；明白授权赋能有其局限性；建立鼓励员工内部承诺的工作条件；并意识到士气乃至授权赋能在组织中只是次要标准。最终目标是绩效。
