Dimensions and Patterns in Employee Empowerment: Assessing What Matters to Street-Level Bureaucrats

Abstract

Empowerment of public employees has been touted as an important mediating step in improving public organizational outcomes, yet such a relationship depends on an assumption that employees value what is offered as empowerment. This qualitative study explored the assumption through in-depth interviews of streetlevel bureaucrats in a large state human service agency. The interviews support previous research that empowerment is multidimensional; five patterns in empowerment were found. Empowerment programs must consider what each individual employee values.