Empowerment Factors Research Articles

Application on the Entropy Method for Determination of Weight of Evaluating Index in Fuzzy Mathematics for Wine Quality Assessment

Considering the fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method often adopted characteristic vector method of two judgment matrix between indicators for multiple factor empowerment, which has some problems such as strong subjectivity, large amount of calculation, failed to consider the relationship between multiple targets and so on, this and puts forward the target factor of multiple evaluation by entropy method of empowerment, using the sensory evaluation data given by wine sommelier, to carry on the comprehensive evaluation of the wine quality. The result shows that using the entropy weight method empowerment factors of fuzzy comprehensive evaluation, the process is simple with small amount of calculation and the result is objective and reasonable.

Linking employee empowerment with productivity in off-site construction

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to address current knowledge gaps in off-site sub-element fabrication efficiency factors, by identifying an explicit relationship between productivity and employee empowerment.Design/methodology/approach– The research is based on two engineering fabrication-yard case studies that investigate both qualitatively (via analysis of semi-structured interviews that incorporate a five-point Likert scale, with fabrication-product stakeholders), and also quantitatively (via assessment using SPSS statistical analyses to determine significance and trends in the data-set) the relationship between empowerment and productivity.Findings– The results reveal a positive linear relationship in off-site construction between “employee empowerment factors” and, explicitly fabrication-yard “productivity-levels”. An especially strong and significant positive correlation is found to exist in resource development, worker involvement, process improvement, and task recognition as they refer to off-site construction productivity.Practical implications– Most academic studies of off-site construction remain largely anecdotal and lack an empirical objective study; as a result, this (fabrication-yard) case-study research provides a useful approach to measure empirically the link between employee empowerment and productivity of off-site construction.Originality/value– Employee empowerment in the construction industry has long been a focus of analyses; however, there remains a lack of consensus and very few studies into the direct relationship between employee empowerment on the one-hand, and productivity in off-site construction on the other-hand. It is argued here that the on-going new research undertaken in the present study will go beyond subjective opinion towards objective measurement of actual performance in off-site construction.

Intimate partner violence against women in Nepal: an analysis through individual, empowerment, family and societal level factors.

The current study estimated the national prevalence rate of intimate partner violence against women (IPVAW) in Nepal. Besides, the individual level, empowerment level, family and societal level factors were assessed to relate with the victims of IPAVW in Nepal. Nationally representative sample of 4210 women of reproductive age (15-49 yr) were included in the study. Household surveys using two stage sampling procedures, face to face interview with pre-tested questionnaires were performed. Emotional, physical and sexual violence were target variables. A violence variable was constructed from these three types of violence. Individual level factors were measured by age, residency, education, religion and husband's education. Empowerment factors included employment status and various decision making elements. Family and societal factors included economic status, neighborhood socioeconomic disadvantage index, history of family violence, husband's controlling behavior and other issues. Cross tabulation with chi-square tests and multivariate logistic regression were employed. Prevalence of emotional IPVAW was 17.5%, physical IPAVW 23.4% and sexual IPAVW 14.7%. Overall the prevalence of IPVAW in Nepal was 32.4%. Joint decision making for contraception, husband's non-controlling behavior to wives and friendly feelings were emerged as less likely to be IPVAW perpetration. The findings have immense policy importance as a nationally representative study and indicating necessity of more gender equality.

Education for Women Empowerment: Certain Reflections

A society is prosperous if its women population is empowered. Society grows faster with the empowerment of women. Empowerment enhances the decision making power, redistribution of social power and control of resources in favour of women. It develops self-confidence and trust in one‘s capacities to move in one‘s own life. Empowerment comes with education, democracy and access to resources. There are a number of quantitative and qualitative indicators which denote women empowerment. Education is very strong factor in women empowerment. In India, female literacy rate is very less as compared to male literacy. Government of India has undertaken number of initiatives at different level of education for providing women education. The success on account of women empowerment in India is very less due to a number of barriers such as social taboos, poverty and male dominance at various influential positions. Only way out is strong will power among women, enabling environment created in the society and government‘s proactive initiatives.

A Qualitative Study of Nursing Leader's Perceptions of Professional Empowerment amongst Pakistani Nurses

Several researches focused on impeding and promoting factors of empowerment amongst nurses in western context; little is available in non-western settings including Pakistan.

The HOSHIN KANRI TREE. Cross-plant Lean Shopfloor Management

Shopfloor Management (SM) empowerment methodologies have traditionally focused on two aspects: goal achievement following rigid structures, such as SQDCME, or evolutional aspects of empowerment factors away from strategic goal achievement. Furthermore, SM Methodologies have been organized almost solely around the hierarchical structure of the organization, failing systematically to cope with the challenges that Industry 4.0 is facing. The latter include the growing complexity of value-stream networks, sustainable empowerment of the workforce (Learning Factory), an autonomous and intelligent process management (Smart Factory), the need to cope with the increasing complexity of value-stream networks (VSN) and the leadership paradigm shift to strategic alignment. This paper presents a novel Lean SM Method (LSM) called “HOSHIN KANRI Tree” (HKT), which is based on standardization of the communication patterns among process owners (POs) by PDCA. The standardization of communication patterns by HKT technology should bring enormous benefits in value stream (VS) performance, speed of standardization and learning rates to the Industry 4.0 generation of organizations. These potential advantages of HKT are being tested at present in worldwide research.

Study on empowerment factors for career continuity of hospital nurses

The resignation rate of nurses working in hospitals is extremely high. This study aims to identify both the factors related to the resignation of nurses and the empowerment factors supporting their job retention. In 2011 we conducted a Web-based questionnaire survey of nurses with less than 10 years of working experience. There were 25 survey items including the following reasons for choosing the current employment position, intention of continuing work, sense of fulfillment and the presence or absence of problems in the current workplace. In addition, nurses who previously had resigned were asked why they left their last workplace. The reasons why they chose the current workplace were markedly different between the not-resigned (A group) and previously resigned (B group) nurses. As a result of cluster analysis, the reasons for resignation were classified into six clusters; "overwork", "burnout", "bad atmosphere", "work life balance factors", "working conditions" and "marriage". In this study, it is shown that there is a positive correlation between the sense of fulfillment at work and the intention to do research work. It is suggested that encouragement of nurses to undertake research work is one of the empowerment factors supporting their job retention.

Women's economic empowerment and formal income: Sri Lankan Export Processing Zones (EPZs) and their impact on gender perceptions of empowerment

Women workers in Export Processing Zones (EPZs) in Sri Lanka are often exposed to harsh working conditions and a range of negative social experiences due to their perceived low social status. Research has demonstrated that they experience both empowerment and disempowerment as a result of formal employment. The authors explore the differences between female Sri Lankan EPZ workers who felt empowered (n = 2196) and those who did not (n = 107), and investigate factors that contribute to empowerment. The analysis reveals a significant difference between the two groups of workers: empowered women had a longer history of employment service, saved significantly more money, and contributed much less to their family than non-empowered women. There were no significant differences in social experiences between the groups. However, the work-related variables used to investigate reported influential factors in empowerment demonstrated that as savings increased so too did the likelihood of empowerment. Conversely, as the proportion of the contribution to the family income increased, the odds of reporting empowerment decreased. The findings suggest that work factors may not be the most important in the establishment of and/or reporting empowerment but rather earnings management and contribution to household appear to be a more significant determining factor.

Social media and online health services: A health empowerment perspective to online health information

This study investigates how differences in the use of online health information and social media affect the use of online health services. We attempt to predict the extent to which the use of social media and online health information prompt individuals to use online health services. We draw upon a combination of sociology and communication studies and integrate relational maintenance assumptions regarding the quality of online social relationships to promote the importance of health empowerment factors–socio-demographic characteristics, internet attitudes and health status models to predict the likelihood of using online health services. The study’s sample consists of 1406 individuals using the Internet, including 633 individuals using the Internet and social media to look for health information. The study’s results provide evidence that (a) online health information empowers most of the examined individuals to use online health services; (b) among all social media only those that offer consulting have a significant effect on the likelihood of using online health services. The implications of these findings support that a conceptual integration of CMC and social media use theories along with health empowerment assumptions, is a promising theoretical framework to test the effectiveness of social media use in prompting use of online health services. The practical applications for health management are highlighted as well. Finding practical and affordable ways to support the use of social media and encourage access to online health information and use of online health services could improve health literacy and self-management of health at the individual level and increase the efficiency in the provision of health services at the institutional level.

Assessing and Redesigning the Outreach Services with Street-Based Prostitutes in Coimbra, Portugal

Traditional studies tend to research on sex workers and to focus on the relationship between prostitution and epidemiology. Prostitutes are rarely involved in the design, implementation and evaluation of projects that concern them. Usually, these are run by NGOs and focus mainly on harm reduction and HIV prevention. We aim to assess and understand their opinions about the service, and any inherent discrimination, provided by the outreach teams. As the first, planning, step of an action research project, this study has adopted a descriptive and analytic qualitative methodology to answer the following research questions: 1) What is the prostitutes´ opinion about the traditional epidemiological services provided by outreach teams? 2) How may their opinion be a factor of empowerment? Data were collected through participant observation, informal interviews (field notes), and 12 semi- structured interviews. We concluded that outreach is essential for the respondents, who emphasize the need to control STI. The intervention suggestions made by the respondents reveal the empowering effect of including them in socio-educational projects. More participatory research with the target public of support projects is required, as a way of empowering individuals and taking action on their priorities.

A Structural Equation Model of Transformational Leadership for Industrial in Thailand

This study attempted to investigate and search for the appropriate structure model of leadership in industrial organization of Thailand by comparison between leadership of two industry groups. The study relied on the data collected from 338 managers in Group awarded TQA / TQC (Thailand Quality Award / Thailand Quality Class) and Survival industries group according to the classification of the NESDB (Office of the National Economics and Social Development Board). A questionnaire 5 scale was used to collect the data which was analyzed using AMOS program v.18.0, the total response rate is 97.04 %. The study revealed that there is significant different of leadership between groups. Furthermore, the results light out that the transformational leadership is positively influenced with organization performance especially finance area. In the same line, transformational leadership is found to be not only positively effected with organization commitment but also as stronger effect on empowerment factor. The finding also shows the indirect effect between transformational leadership and organization performance via mediating factors. With believing of different leadership level and its effect, future study can be conducted in different research context. This research has figured out the weakness of empirical study in organization management literatures by connecting the leadership behavior, empowerment, and how they are associated to employee commitment to increase organization performance. In the same way, it has provided a guideline for the public sectors in general and particularly in industrial context on how to successfully implement change phenomena as well as how to get effective and efficient leadership with change management.

Factors of collective psychological empowerment of active users in the online health community med.over.net

Izvleček Namen: V članku raziskujemo v literaturi pogosto spregledano vprašanje kolektivnega psihološkega opolnomočenja uporabnikov spletnih zdravstvenih skupnosti. Izhajajoč iz teorij opolnomočenja s področja psihologije skupnosti, preverjamo, kateri dejavniki, ki obenem odražajo pomembne lastnosti spletnih zdravstvenih skupnosti, so povezani s kolektivnim psihološkim opolnomočenjem njihovih uporabnikov. Metode: Vlogo štirih dejavnikov kolektivnega opolnomočenja smo analizirali s pomočjo multiple linearne regresije na podatkih, zbranih konec leta 2010 s spletno anketo na neverjetnostnem vzorcu (n = 235) aktivnih sodelujočih na forumih največje slovenske spletne zdravstvene skupnosti Med.over.net, ki je vključeval 8,5% moških, 49,7% vsaj visoko izobraženih in 41,5% poročenih anketirancev, ki so bili v povprečju stari 35,1 leta (SD = 9,1). Rezultati: Ugotavljamo, da se predstavljeni teoretični model dejavnikov ustrezno prilega podatkom (F = 8,65, df = 8, p < 0,001) in z njim lahko pojasnimo 23,4% variabilnosti občutka kolektivnega opolnomočenja. Občutek pripadnosti spletni skupnosti (β = 0,279, p < 0,001), vključenost v organizacijske aktivnosti skupnosti (0,194, 0,001) in zaznana participacija spletne skupnosti v širšem okolju (0,157, 0,02) vplivajo na kolektivno opolnomočenje uporabnikov spletne zdravstvene skupnosti Med.over.net, medtem ko tega ni mogoče trditi za intenzivnost participacije v forumskih razpravah (0,029, 0,65). Zaključek: Za povečevanje kolektivne komponente psihološkega opolnomočenja uporabnikov spletnih zdravstvenih skupnosti je treba v prvi vrsti graditi na kakovosti odnosov med člani, vključevanju članov v strateške odločitve o skupnosti in na vključenosti skupnosti v širše družbeno okolje, saj sama participacija uporabnikov v spletnih skupnosti še ne zagotavlja njihovega višjega kolektivnega opolnomočenja.

Does a Social Work Degree Predict Practice Orientation? Measuring Strengths-Based Practice Among Child Welfare Workers With the Strengths-Based Practices Inventory–Provider Version

Strengths-based practice (SBP) is one of the primary modalities of social work practice. The literature on SBP does not address a standardized tool for measuring SBP or whether receipt of a social work degree is related to practice orientation. We measure SBP with a provider-based Strengths-Based Practices Inventory (SBPI-P) and examine whether a social work degree is associated with a higher level of SBP among 453 child welfare workers. The results indicate that the SBPI-P is a reliable measure of SBP, with three factors—Empowerment, Community–Culture, and Sensitivity–Knowledge—and that receipt of a social work degree is not associated with SBP. We discuss the potential reasons for the results and make recommendations for future research in the measurement of SBP.

Meaningfulness in Day Centers for People With Psychiatric Disabilities: Gender and Empowerment Aspects

This study investigated the experience of meaningfulness in occupations at day centers among people with psychiatric disabilities from an empowerment and gender perspective. One hundred eight participants, from eight day centers in Sweden, completed instruments measuring experienced meaning, empowerment, psychosocial functioning, and socio-demographic factors. Mixed methods were used, combining statistical analyses and content analysis. Gender differences were found concerning principal occupations performed. These confirmed traditional gender roles. The experience of meaning in day center occupations, particularly the domain of meaning pertaining to personal development, was significantly associated with empowerment. These results may be used in the future development of day centers.

Pemberdayaan Masyarakat dalam Pembangunan Ekonomi Desa

The purposes of this research were to describe the role of government and non-governmental in community economy empowerment and to know the supporting factors and inhibiting factors in community economy empowerment. Research methods used qualitative approach. Techniques analyzing of data in this research used model interactive. The result showed that government policy on Sidoarjo Regency in empowering people, especially duck farmers in the Kebonsari Village, Candi Sub-district. They give duck and facilitate for infrastructure. It shown that the respond of government to train, direct, and control community, as well as opened market especially in outside of local area. In the other hands, the facility is given by government through giving easily to get loan from the bank as capital. Thus, community decided to build duck farmers as empowering activity.

A Research on Competitive Strategies, Environmental Factors and Human Resources Architecture Relations

There is a widespread notion that organizational strategies are the dominant factors in the creation of human resources (HR) management policies in enterprises. This study examines the relation between an organization’s strategies, corporate HR policies and operating performance. At the end of the research, it was observed that (1) The high rate of change of the environment orientates establishments towards a more participative management perception, towards empowerment and flexibility. (2) While innovative differentiation orientates establishments towards participative management, empowerment, and proactive selection and placement policies, competitive differentiation influences only the empowerment factor in a sense of a provision of initiative. The cost leadership strategy does not have any meaningful effect on HR policies. The only meaningful influence of the focus strategy on the HR policies is on the proactive selection and placement policies, and this influence is a negative one. (3) When the results related with the harmony between the competitive strategy and the HR architecture are examined, it turns out that the participative management, the long term training policies, the proactive HR policies, and partly the generous compensation policies are more successful even under different strategies in comparison with the dictating, short term, reactive and ungenerous HR policies. In terms of quantitative performance, to select a differentiation strategy and apply HR policies that are participative, proactive and generous is much more effective than to look for the perfect harmony between strategy and HR policies.

Designing and Implementing a Didactic System as an Educational Empowerment of Student Collaborative Learning in the University Studies

The two-folded nature of learning, cognitive and social, presents educators with a new problem: creating and implementing the didactic system that empowers learning through collaboration. The purpose of this article is to theoretically substantiate the didactic system which educationally empowers student collaborative learning. Extensive review of literature revealed three factors of educational empowerment: legitimacy – the foundation of the learning paradigm; the collaborative learning competence; and inclusion in the learning process. Four areas are analyzed: context, content, educator, and learners. The findings and results are summarized by illustrating the phases of educational empowerment of collaborative learning and recommendations for its implementation.

A qualitative study exploring facilitators for improved health behaviors and health behavior programs: mental health service users' perspectives.

Objective. Mental health service users experience high rates of cardiometabolic disorders and have a 20–25% shorter life expectancy than the general population from such disorders. Clinician-led health behavior programs have shown moderate improvements, for mental health service users, in managing aspects of cardiometabolic disorders. This study sought to potentially enhance health initiatives by exploring (1) facilitators that help mental health service users engage in better health behaviors and (2) the types of health programs mental health service users want to develop. Methods. A qualitative study utilizing focus groups was conducted with 37 mental health service users attending a psychosocial rehabilitation center, in Northern British Columbia, Canada. Results. Four major facilitator themes were identified: (1) factors of empowerment, self-value, and personal growth; (2) the need for social support; (3) pragmatic aspects of motivation and planning; and (4) access. Participants believed that engaging with programs of physical activity, nutrition, creativity, and illness support would motivate them to live more healthily. Conclusions and Implications for Practice. Being able to contribute to health behavior programs, feeling valued and able to experience personal growth are vital factors to engage mental health service users in health programs. Clinicians and health care policy makers need to account for these considerations to improve success of health improvement initiatives for this population.

Economic Foundations and Practical Results of Transnationalization Processes

In this paper, the authors are assessing the role of transnational corporations in transforming the international division of labor. Two main instruments of action are depicted: foreign direct investments and the new economic internal relationships system. The research work demonstrates the creation of uneven conditions of participation of developed, developing and transition countries to the international division of labour. These circumstances, established during the process of globalization strategy implementation, become constant factors of empowerment of a passive role of the latter countries in this process. A case study on energy transnational corporations acting on the Romanian territory comes to prove the consistency of the alleged conclusions of the previous theoretical approach.

Factors influencing self‐management in patients with type 2 diabetes: a quantitative systematic review protocol

To describe a protocol for a quantitative systematic review, to identify critique and summarize factors that influence self-management education. Self-management education enables patients to manage their condition successfully and it is associated with better self-care, good control over lifestyle and leading the best possible quality of life, notwithstanding the presence of a chronic disease. Type II Diabetes is a chronic disease that requires lifestyle adjustments and disease management to keep glycaemia and long-term complications under control. Education has to be customized and based on an assessment that includes factors influencing self-management, such as personal characteristics that can optimize the educational intervention. The protocol for the systematic review was conducted according to the guidelines of the Centre for Reviews and Dissemination, York (UK). The review question was defined in terms of population, interventions, comparators, outcomes and study designs. The protocol included decisions about the review question, inclusion criteria, search strategy, study selection, data extraction, quality assessment, data synthesis and plans for dissemination. Funding for the review was confirmed on January 2011 by the Centre of Excellence for Nursing Scholarship in Rome. An initial summary will be made by tabulating the data; the review will be reported in a narrative style and be developed according to the PRISMA guidelines. The protocol for the systematic review will allow us to identify, among the factors influencing self-management in people with Type II diabetes, the personal characteristics most relevant to the factors of motivation and empowerment. In addition, the systematic review will also identify an appropriate self-management model.