Linking Psychological Empowerment to Individual Performance: An Attempt to Empower R&D Professionals at THSTI

Abstract

Employee empowerment is key to individual performance which significantly influences the individual's job involvement (Ugboro&Obeng, 2000) and performance and productivity of organization (Siebert et al, 2004). Employee empowerment has two broad dimensions i.e., psychological and structural empowerment. Organizations that have integrated employee empowerment practices with their people process & administration are more successful as it positively contributed towards improving employee performance. This paper focused on the psychological dimension of employee empowerment. It aims to explore the relationship between psychological empowerment (PE) and individual performance (IP) of R&D professionals. A sample size of 174 employees has been drawn from a biotech institute-Translational Health Science and Technology Institute (THSTI). Data has been fetched out from 5 different departments of the same research institute to determine the relationship between psychological empowerment on Individual performance. A structured questionnaire has been used to measure the level of psychological empowerment. Individual performance has been measured on the basis using 2 year's average performance ratings of employees provided by institute. The results found there existed significant positive correlation between Psychological empowerment facets and individual performance. It further proposed HR interventions to enhance individual performance based on psychological empowerment in R&D organization.