An Investigation on the Relationship between Psychological Empowerment and Organizational Commitment (A Case Study of the Employees of Public Organizations in Kerman)

Empowerment has been considered as the main challenge of managers in the present era. Since, committed and capable work force is one of the crucial prerequisites for efficient performance in modern organizations, managers are required to prepare the organizational circumstances in a way that every individual is capable of getting more empowered. Empowered employees, adopting the components of empowerment, will be able to save the organization from crises, and prove their commitment and loyalty to the organization through creating golden business opportunities. Another challenge of today’s organizations is employees’ organizational commitment and their motivational issues. Considered as the human capital and the most important capital of the organization is the considerable expense on recruiting, hiring, and even training expert staff that these organizations spend annually. The main purpose of the present study is to investigate the correlation between psychological empowerment and organizational commitment of the public organizations employees in Kerman. The statistical population includes the entire employees working at the public organizations in Kerman (1,915 individuals). Considering the size of the population a total number of 310 individuals were, ultimately, selected through stratified random sampling method and Cochran formula. Two questionnaires of psychological empowerment and organizational commitment were applied and their validity and reliability were evaluated. The collected data was analyzed using SPSS and employing descriptive statistics methods (mean, median, frequency tables, and different diagrams) as well as inferential statistics (Pearson’s and Spearman’s correlation coefficients, regression and partial correlation). The results revealed a significant relationship between components of psychological empowerment (competence, meaningfulness, autonomy or self-determination, effectiveness, and trust) and organizational commitment.