Abstract
Empowerment is not only currently fashionable ‘management speak’, but also has important material implications for the situation of the workforce. It can be analysed as part of the postmodernist paradigm, as emancipatory, or as a new and more subtle manifestation of traditional managerial control. This chapter explores the discourse and outcomes of empowerment in work organisations, and in particular focuses on the idea as it is applied to telework. The premise of the chapter is that empowerment is being interpreted in many different ways, but is generally related to the ideas of ‘excellence’ held by managers, rather than to unequivocal rights to liberation for the workforce, so that the promise of self-actualisation for workers is at best a secondary consideration compared to ‘bottom-line’ outcomes. Thus it does not follow that empowerment is currently a basis for strengthening employee rights. A discussion is provided of ethical issues as they relate to the empowerment literature and to that on telework.
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© 1999 Christopher Moon and Celia Stanworth
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Moon, C., Stanworth, C. (1999). Ethics and Empowerment: Managerial Discourse and the Case of Teleworking. In: Quinn, J.J., Davies, P.W.F. (eds) Ethics and Empowerment. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230372726_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230372726_12
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