The impact of rewards on empowering public nurses

Employee empowerment is regarded as an essential management practice that may offer various benefits in health-care organizations. Despite a growing research body regarding the antecedents of psychological empowerment, the literature indicates limited empirical evidence on the effect of rewards on nurses' psychological empowerment. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of a bundle of rewards, namely skill variety, information, recognition and job security, on the psychological empowerment of public nurses. Further, this study investigates the influence of demographics on this construct. Data from 258 public nurses demonstrate that information, recognition and job security have a significant association with employees' feelings of psychological empowerment. This study shows no relationship between skill variety and psychological empowerment. With respect to demographics, age, work experience and tenure have an impact on psychological empowerment.