Introduction Creativity And Innovation, Contribution of Employee Empowerment And Asta Brata Leadership.
6
2011. Empowerment is a process through which someone becomes strong enough to participate in a company; it affects hisher life. Empowerment means making someone feel
appreciated by involving himher in the decision making, giving himher an opportunity to participate in the planning process, praising himher, and perpetually giving training and
support to himher Lawson, 2006. According to Noe et al. 2006, empowerment means giving responsibility and authority to an employee to develop a product or serve customers.
Empowerment can make a company close to costumers, able to improve services, send products, improve productivity, and finally, to win competition Wibowo, 2010.
By paying attention to the concept of empowerment in the studies discussed above, it seems that empowerment is analyzed using two approaches; they are organizational
approach, which, according to Sun et al. 2012, is conceptualized as a structural empowerment, and psychological empowerment. Furthermore, Yang and Choi 2009
stated that empowerment is explained in 2 two ways; they are the situational approach and psychological approach. The situational approach gives emphasis on the delegation of
power from the higher level of management to employees by making them involved in the decision making process. Such an approach is also known as the rational approach or
managerial approach. From the structural approach, empowerment focuses on the policy and practice
implemented by the management intended to delegate power, decision making authority, and responsibility to the lower level in an organization. According to
Seibert et al . 2004
in Sun et al 2012, the structural empowerment is the atmosphere of empowerment, representation of the employee perception of the managerial structure, and the policy and
practice which are related to empowerment. In the study conducted by Ayupp and Chung 2010, it was stated that the effective
program of empowerment is paying attention to important factors such as various types of information, implementation of the participatory working environment, and performance-
based appreciation. Furthermore, it is stated that the management should pay attention to communication, partnership, participation, training, and appreciation for the employees to
make sure that they feel empowered. The atmosphere of the structural empowerment implemented in a company allows
it to develop the skill and creativity of its employees. The support from the working environment is needed for mutual interaction and information exchange in order to obtain
creative ideas. In a company the creative ideas tend to vary; the diverse ideas produced and
7
developed by employees and individuals can be combined to complete one another. In this way, the strength and weakness of the ideas produced by such individuals can be
maximized in order to improve creativity, and cope with the problem which the company faces. Isaksen and Lauer 2002 in Wawan Dhewanto et al., 2014, identified the main
factors which give contribution to creativity and collaborative atmosphere, some of which are confidence, team motivation, leadership, and participation in making decisions. It is
also stated that creativity and knowledge are highly important in the implementation of an innovation Wawan Dhewanto et al., 2014, and that creativity is part of an innovation, and
that an innovation is the implementation of the outcome of creativity Alves et al, 2007. Kahreh et al. 2011, in his study, viewed empowerment from to what extent the autonomy
given affects competitiveness from the innovation dimension. Based on what was discussed in the sub section above, hypothesis 2 and 3 can be
formulated as follows.
Hypothesis 2: The better the structural empowerment the better the employee creativity will be.
Hypothesis 3: The better the structural empowerment the better the employee innovation will be.
From the psychological perspective, empowerment gives emphasis on the motivational process of an employee. The psychological approach views that
empowerment is a psychological cognition which contributes to the improvement of intrinsic motivation Yang and Choi, 2009. Furthermore, Spreitzer 1996 in Sun et al.
2012 affirmed that the psychological empowerment is conceptualized into four cognitions; they are meaning, competence, self-determination, and impact. From the
meaning aspect, the psychological empowerment reflects the meaning or value of employment to the employee life objective. From the
competence aspect, the psychological empowerment is related to what extent an employee is confident about hisher ability in
doing hisher work. From the self-determination aspect, the psychological empowerment is
related to the autonomy and independence which an employee has to do hisher work. From the
impact aspect, the psychological empowerment refers to the impact which an employee has to control employment in the organization. Chiang and Hsieh 2012
constructed the psychological empowerment into four aspects which are measured using four indicators. Such aspects of empowerment can be described as follows.
8
1 The psychological empowerment from the meaning aspect can be measured using three
indicators; they are 1 the work I do is very important to me; 2 my job activities are personally meaningful to me, and 3 the work I do is meaningful to me.
2 The psychological empowerment from the competence aspect is also measured using
three indicators; they are 1 I am confident about my ability to do my job; 2 I am self-assured about my capabilities to perform my work activities; and 3 I have
mastered the skills necessary for my job. 3 If viewed from the
self-determination aspect, the psychological aspect is measured from two indicators; they are 1 I can decide on my own how to go about doing my work;
2 I have considerable opportunity for independence and freedom in how I do my job. 4 Finally, from the
impact aspect, the psychological empowerment is measured using three indicators; they are 1 my impact on what happens in my department is large; 2
I have a great deal of control over what happens in my department; 3 I have significant influences over what happens in my department.
As to the relationship between the psychological empowerment and creativity, Sun et al. 2012 proved that the psychological empowerment significantly affects the creativity
of subordinates. This indicates that when an employee feels that hisher job is meaningful or valuable to hisher life objective, and heshe is supported by hisher competence, then
heshe will be made to be creative in doing when heshe is supposed to do by the company. Similarly, when heshe has autonomy and independence, heshe will feel motivated to do
what heshe is supposed to do. As stated by Wawan Dhewanto et al. 2014 that creativity and knowledge are highly important when implementing an innovation. Furthermore,
Alves et al. 2007 affirmed that creativity is part of innovation, and that innovation is the implementation of the outcome of creativity. Based on the empirical evidences and the
analysis of concepts described above, the following hypothesis can be formulated as follows.
Hypothesis 4: The better the employee psychological empowerment, the better the employee creativity will be.
Hypothesis 5: The better the employee psychological empowerment, the better the employee innovation will be.
9