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Partnership, not empowerment, creates excellent organizations
1Einstein Consulting Group, San Diego, CA.
Managed Care Quarterly
|December 4, 1994
Summary
Organizational empowerment, while popular, often yields disappointing results. Partnership, focusing on shared goals and vested interests, offers a more effective strategy for driving organizational change and improving outcomes.
Area of Science:
- Organizational behavior
- Management science
Background:
- Empowerment has been widely promoted for enhancing organizational excellence over the past decade.
- However, empowerment initiatives, focused on increasing employee decision-making power, have frequently led to unsatisfactory outcomes.
Purpose of the Study:
- To critically evaluate the efficacy of empowerment as a strategy for organizational change.
- To propose partnership as a superior guiding principle for organizational development.
Main Methods:
- Conceptual analysis of organizational change theories.
- Comparative evaluation of empowerment versus partnership models.
- Discussion of practical implications for healthcare organizations.
Main Results:
- Empowerment strategies, by solely focusing on power distribution, are often insufficient for achieving desired organizational improvements.
- Partnership, characterized by increased participation within agreed objectives and shared vested interests, demonstrates greater potential for success.
Conclusions:
- Partnership offers a more robust framework for organizational change than traditional empowerment models.
- Healthcare organizations can benefit from adopting partnership principles to foster greater participation and achieve better outcomes.