Page 351 - Business Principles and Management

Unit 4

A growing practice in many organizations today is employee empowerment.
As you learned earlier, empowerment is the authority given to individual employ-
ees to make decisions and solve problems they encounter on their jobs with the
resources available to them. Empowered employees need to be well trained and
be effective decision makers and problem solvers. They need to understand the
effects of their decisions on the business, other employees, and customers. Empow-
ered employees have the confidence that their managers will support the decisions
they make. Some companies are reluctant to empower their employees, believing
that managers will lose control of the organization. However, experience has
shown that empowerment increases employee morale, produces more satisfied
customers and fewer reported problems, and increases work efficiency.
Unless employees know their specific responsibilities, duties, and authority,
they are likely to be unsure about the work they are to do. Furthermore, conflicts
may arise due to misunderstandings about what needs to be done and who makes
decisions about work assignments and satisfactory performance. When employees
understand responsibility and authority, overlapping duties can be eliminated
easily. Effective organization is helpful in eliminating conflicts between individ-
uals and departments and in increasing cooperation and collaboration.

ACCOUNTABILITY
Accountability is the obligation to accept responsibility for the outcomes of as-
signed tasks. When any manager assigns responsibility and delegates authority
to an employee, the manager does not give away the responsibility for ensuring
that the work is completed and for evaluating the quality of that employee’s
performance. Although the manager is ultimately responsible for the work, the
employee is accountable to the manager for performing the assigned work
properly, including the quality, quantity, and completion time. The manager, in
turn, is accountable to his or her boss for the outcomes of all work done in the
unit. Figure 13-8 shows how the owner of a small rental business might assign

FIGURE 13-8 When a manager assigns work to an employee, authority
and accountability must be given as well.

Owner

Employee A Employee B

Handle rentals Supervise buying, Handle rental
merchandising, deliveries
Maintain store advertising,
displays selling, credit, Report customer
Monitor rental delivery complaints
records Maintain records Maintain and
repair delivery
Report merchan- Control expenses equipment
dise loss and
damage Plan for future Repair rental items
business
Complete receiv- Develop industrial
ing activities Develop new rental business
business

338