The Impact of Employee Empowerment on Job Engagement: Evidence from Jordan

Abstract

The objective of this study was to investigate the impact of employee empowerment (i.e., structural and psychological empowerment) on job engagement (i.e., physical, emotional, and cognitive engagement). A quantitative approach was adopted in order to achieve such a study aim, and the data was collected via an online questionnaire. The sample of this study consisted of 300 employees from the Aqaba Special Economic Zone Authority (ASEZA), one of the biggest Jordanian organisations in Aqaba, with a total of 293 questionnaires retrieved and 7 excluded due to their being invalid for statistical analysis. This yielded a total of 286 accepted questionnaires, or 95.3% of the total questionnaires provided. Moreover, the Statistical Analysis Package for Social Science (SPSS) was used for data analysis, the results of which indicating that the level of implementation of employee empowerment dimensions had a medium rate amongst ASEZA’s employees, as the structural empowerment was applied more than the psychological empowerment. Furthermore, the level of present job engagement dimensions also had a medium rate amongst the surveyed ASEZA employees. The results also indicated there to be a significant statistical impact by structural and psychological empowerment on physical engagement and cognitive engagement, whilst there was no significant statistical impact made by structural empowerment on emotional engagement compared to psychological empowerment, which had a significant statistical impact on it. In light of the findings of this research, ASEZA managers must pay more attention to the role of empowerment of employees in promoting work engagement, since this enhances the organisation’s ability to achieve the appropriate strategy and gain a comparative advantage.