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    In what ways and to what extent is the global oil and gas industry able to deliver enduring empowerment outcomes for women in Asia-Pacific? : a case study exploring the employment and skills development of Timorese women on Timor Sea offshore facilities : a dissertation presented in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Development Studies, Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2020) Adams, Virginia
    The sustainable development agenda seeks to enlist big business as a development agent to help redress persistent and pervasive conditions of women’s disadvantage in the developing world. Global corporations are being urged, among other imperatives and initiatives, to open decent work opportunities for females, thereby enabling them to traverse the basic empowerment thresholds of enjoying dignity of and in work and of becoming economically self-reliant. Rare to find in the development literature, this case study brings to light a corner of global industry (that of offshore oil and gas operations in the Timor Sea) in which, irrespective of sustainable development’s grand vision for women’s empowerment, opportunities have opened for host-country women to enjoy capabilities gains beyond the crossing of these thresholds. Moreover, the study, atypically to the dis-empowered portraits of women that abound in the development literature, brings to life the existence and experiences of dissident female (Timorese) identities imbued with high levels of agency who have been able to navigate the mesh of patriarchal belief structures and norms in their society and enter, earn respect and realise potential in the nontraditional, historically masculinised job field of offshore oil and gas. The case study has considerable breadth of scope in its pursuit of two main interconnected avenues of inquiry relating to the Timorese females’ work skills development and employment. These are: a) the associated agendas, workplace protocols, decision-making and ensuing actions within the stakeholder organisational networks of the Timor Sea oil and gas projects, and: b) the women’s own aspirations, efforts and achievements. The research methods used, of qualitative, open-ended interviews combined with long-term on-going communication with many of the group have provided a considerable depth of insight into the women’s empowerment trajectories, and a detailed illumination of the human and organisational influences on these within their training and work spaces. Near-40 Timorese women took part in the study along with 20 respondents from the stakeholder companies involved directly or indirectly with their oil and gas industry learning and earning journeys. What this research says helps to construct a more textured narrative around how gender and development is framed. It does this by capturing in multidimensional (personal, relational, social and economic) and multifaceted (cognitive, psychological and practical) ways the meanings of the empowerment gains of women from a male –dominated society who have trained, worked and been well-paid in gender-equal employment spaces. The conceptual lens is shaped using as a starting point Sen’s Capabilities Approach, feminist notions of power, theory on self-determination and around the meeting of employees’ cognitive, psychological and social empowerment needs in the workplace. The dissertation introduces a new methodological tool of the women’s owned ‘human capital portfolios’ (as their offshore-enhanced caches of knowledge, skills, abilities and attributes) to encapsulate the ballast of their capabilities sets as these contribute to their empowerment status. With its main aim being to evaluate not simply the achievement of but, importantly, the durability of the women’s empowered identities into uncertain futures, the knowledge produced in this research provides critical meaning around women’s empowerment often neglected in gender and development discourse.
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    Psychological empowerment as a mediating and multidimensional construct : an empirical examination of key antecedents and consequences within a public health service organisation: a thesis presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Psychology at Massey University
    (Massey University, 2000) Johnston, Peter
    This study continues the work initiated by Spreitzer (1995a) in operationalising and measuring psychological empowerment and examining the construct in relation to key antecedents and consequences. Psychological empowerment was defined as a gestalt of four dimensions reflecting an active orientation to one's work role. These dimensions are meaning, competence, self-determination and impact. Tested hypotheses concerned the relationship between empowerment and interpersonal trust, supervisor support, peer cohesion, access to resources, access to strategic information, conscientiousness (antecedents), job satisfaction, and affective organisational commitment (consequences). The structural validity of the empowerment scale was investigated, as was the mediating role of psychological empowerment in the proposed model. Partial support was found for the hypotheses relating empowerment to interpersonal trust, supervisor support, access to strategic information, job satisfaction, and affective organisational commitment, and strong support was found for the hypothesis relating empowerment to conscientiousness. No support was found for the hypotheses relating empowerment to peer cohesion and access to resources, and limited support was found for the mediating role of empowerment. A principle components factor analysis supported the four-factor model of psychological empowerment. The results highlight the advantages of adopting a multidimensional approach in the study of psychological empowerment. Implications for organisations, study limitations, and directions for future research are discussed.
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    Sharing the power : knowledge management, empowerment, employee self service and the NZDF : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Information Systems at Massey University
    (Massey University, 2003) Williams, Richard
    This thesis investigated employee views of the Defence Kiosk System (DKS) through a questionnaire, and compared the results with two empowerment methodologies. These methodologies were Spreitzer and Quinn's Five Disciplines For Empowerment, and Horibe's Employee Decision Making methodology. The DKS is the Employee Self Service (ESS) system of the New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF). The DKS is a web-based system that employees can use to access their personal records, thereby empowering employees to access their own personnel information and removing the need for them to ask human resources related questions of their administration unit. This provides the NZDF with administrative savings and accurate up to date information that can be used for Knowledge Management (KM). The research begins with a literature review. The literature review established links between Empowerment, KM and ESS. It found that for ESS systems to provide benefits employees must be willing to use them. A questionnaire was developed and sent to a sample of 1000 NZDF employees who had access to the DKS. The response was 350 completed and returned questionnaires, which exceeded the 180 responses required to enable the results to be generalised for the entire NZDF population. Analysis of the questionnaire responses showed that employees believe that the DKS, as an ESS system, meets their personnel information needs and that they were willing to use the DKS. When the results of the survey were compared with the empowerment methodologies the research supported Spreitzer and Quinn's five disciplines model, particularly the fourth and fifth disciplines. The results raised questions about the suitability of using Horibe's employee decision making methodology in the field of personnel management, especially with the advent of employee self sefvice systems.
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    Empowerment in a New Zealand organisation : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Psychology at Massey University
    (Massey University, 2003) Jones, Katharine
    This research examined the structure and behavioural outcomes of psychological empowerment among a group of non-managerial employees, in a New Zealand workplace. Participants worked for a large, complex, multi-site manufacturing organisation, and responded to a self-report questionnaire measuring dimensions of empowerment, affective commitment, and work performance. The main aims of the study were to investigate a four factor structure of empowerment, and the associated "gestalt" of empowerment formed by the combination of these factors. The remainder of the study was devoted to investigating the extent to which the empowerment construct predicted desirable work-related outcomes, such as affective commitment and work performance. Confirmatory factor analyses were conducted to test the four factor empowerment structure, and the contributions of the factors to the overall empowerment construct, while a structural path model was used to test the predictive value of the empowerment construct. Results of the analyses demonstrated that the four factor structure, combining to form an overall empowerment construct, is a meaningful way to describe empowerment in the New Zealand organisation. Results of the structural path model supported the utility of empowerment in predicting the outcomes variables of affective commitment and work performance in the New Zealand organisation. Future research directions were discussed, with suggestions that researchers could profitably explore cultural dimensions specific to New Zealand, which could be implicated as factors in New Zealand employees' experience of empowerment.
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    Employee empowerment and HR flexibility in Information Technology SMEs
    (Taylor and Francis Group, 17/01/2023) Tretiakov A; Jurado T; Bensemann J
    HR systems in IT organizations need to be flexible to enable them to adjust to the fast rate of technological change. Employee empowerment, often practiced at IT organizations under the banner of agile practices, has been highlighted as likely to enable HR flexibility. Based on a research panel based survey of top managers at 163 IT organizations in New Zealand and Australia, we confirmed positive effects of employee empowerment on four dimensions of HR flexibility: resource flexibility in employee skills and behaviors, coordination flexibility in employee skills and behaviors, resource flexibility in HR practices, and coordination flexibility in HR practices. The results are consistent with the view that, at IT organizations, employee empowerment both promotes employee ability and willingness to be flexible and facilitates the organizational structures and practices that enable flexible use of HR resources.