An Investigation of the Relationship Between Employee Empowerment and the Performance of hotels in Mombasa County, Kenya

Abstract

Employee empowerment has been among the most influential management concepts for the past twenty years. If you pick any popular periodical nowadays, you will read about reshaping of the relationship between managers and those they are supposedly responsible of managing. This research paper looked at employee empowerment as an independent variable that affects organizational performance. It explores employee empowerment, performance and how they relate. Competition in the hospitality industry that necessitates quick decision making has been emphasized as the basis of desired employee empowerment. This leads to the main study objective, "Establishing the relationship betweenemployee empowerment and performance in the hotel industry in Mombasa County". The paper explores the theoretical and empirical review of employee empowerment and performance. Further, it looks at employee empowerment initiatives and the benefits associated with employee empowerment. The conceptual frame work is based on the input-output model and depicts that employee empowerment; an independent variable influences performance with other organizational factorsacting as moderating factors. A descriptive survey design was adopted for the study. The population comprises of all employees working in the hotel industry in Mombasa County. Data was gathered through a predetermined questionnaire. The field data was analyzed using descriptive statistics of the mean and standard deviation and inferential statistics of correlation analysis was used. The data collection challenges includedmanagers and supervisors attitudes towards filling the questionnaire and others refused to fill the questionnaire. Chapter four presents the analysis of data findings on relationship between employee empowerment and performance in "one to five star hotels" in Mombasa County. Out ofthe 22 hotels identified as the population of study, 4 hotels belonging to African Safari Club were closed. The questionnaires were thereforedistributed to 18 hotels. Out of the 18 hotels, 4 did not respond. A total of 72 respondents, 51 questionnaireswere returned out of which 41 were fully filled. This makes a response rate of 71%.