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Proceedings of the 9 Symposium on Applied Science, Business & Industrial Research – 2017
ISSN 2279-1558, ISBN 978-955-7442-09-9

The Impact of Employee Morale on Enhancing Work Performance Through
Empowerment Programs: A Case of Apparel Industry

Sandarani GAJ, Wattegama EJ
Department of Industrial Management, Wayamba University of Sri Lanka
jgammanpila@gmail.com

ABSTRACT

Workforce of an organization is a resource which contributes significantly for
gaining competitive advantages over its competitors. It is important for an organization to
craft strategies to retain them and improve their work performances. Introducing
employee empowerment programs is popular among many organizations as a strategy to
achieve the aforementioned purposes. The objective of present study is to investigate
whether the employee work performance has improved from the morale that arises from
such empowerment programs in apparel industry in Sri Lanka. One export oriented
apparel manufacturer was selected purposively. The data were collected from primary and
secondary sources. Five factors such as organization and management, immediate
supervision, fellow employee relationships, material reward, and job satisfaction were
identified from the literature for measuring the morale enhancement via empowerment
programs and the individual efficiency and quality rates were considered for measuring
the work performance. The results revealed that there is a relationship between the morale
and work performance when the empowerment programs are available for the employees.
Finally, some managerial implications and future research directions have been identified.

KEYWORDS: Employee Morale, Empowerment Programs, Work Performance

1 INTRODUCTION At present, most of export oriented
apparel manufacturers in Sri Lanka are
Apparel manufacturers mainly use labor using such type of programs to improve the
intensive production methods to maximize working performances of their machine
their profit share. When it is compared to operators. However, there is no literature
other categories of non-managerial level support to evaluate the sustainability of the
employees, the working culture among the benefits that can be generated through
machine operators is different. Therefore, introducing such programs in Sri Lankan
any changes to such an employee will context. As a result, the objective of present
directly impact on the organizational study is to examine whether the morale will
performance. The workshops, talent shows, effect on the performance of employees
outbound trainings, etc. are some of the through the empowerment programs in
programs that the employer can use to apparel manufacturing context in Sri Lanka,
enhance the moral and motivation of their thereby it is expected that the findings
employees of that caliber. Such programs would contribute to fill the literature gap and
are known as empowerment or motivational provide implications for the managerial
programs. The literature has also shown that decision making of apparel manufacturers in
the employee morale can enhance via Sri Lanka.
empowerment or motivational programs

(For example; Bass, 2003; Porte & Steer, 2 LITERATURE REVIEW
1973; Langfred & Moye, 2005) and have
identified that there are some factors that Morale is a mental condition or attitude
effect on the success of those programs, of groups which determines their
such as, job satisfaction, material reward, willingness to cooperate. According to
and so on (Kahya, 2007). Baehr and Richard (1958), morale can be

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