Employee Empowerment and Differentiation in Companies: A Literature Review and Research Agenda

Abstract

Similar goods and services, which increase in the market, have decreased the market share of companies. Therefore, it has put pressure on companies towards product differentiation and new markets establishment. Since it can cause companies to gain differentiation capabilities, human resource has transformed into the strategically competitive element of a company.   Employee empowerment causes to benefit from different skills and capabilities of human resource at maximum degree. Therefore it plays an important role in customer and employee satisfaction.   In this study, employee empowerment concept and the effects of employee empowerment on differentiation process in companies have been investigated. The probable contributions of employee empowerment on differentiation process have been determined, from the point of view of speed, prevalent participation, team responsibility, differentiation alternatives, organizational learning, employee qualifications, creativity, motivation and job satisfaction. In order to obtain those contributions, some proposals related to conditions of empowerment that are necessitated in companies, have been presented. This article is presented as our initial work to our planned future work which is entitled as “risk management based approach to employee enpowerment and differantiation process.   Keywords: Differentiation, Empowerment, Human Resources Management, Innovation, Risk Management.