ABSTRACT
Employee empowerment is said to be a key component in revised approaches to the management of people in service organizations. The more strategic role played by people managers is also a fundamental innovation in those practices known by academics and practitioners alike as human resource management. In addition, earlier chapters have shown that the term ‘employee empowerment’ is used to describe a wide variety of different arrangements introduced by management in different organizations. It is likely that managerial intentions for empowerment are shaped by their perceptions of the nature of the service that their organization offers to clients. Taking the classical normative model, managers determine the strategic service offer 235to their clients and then shape the HRM strategy, including their intentions for and aims of empowerment, on the basis of this rational analysis. Fundamentally, an understanding of the nature of services and identification of key drivers in shaping the amount of discretion which employees need to exercise when delivering services to customers.
