THE EMPOWERMENT EFFORT THAT CAME UNDONE

By Chameleon

Main Issues
1. A situation where the president of a company empowered a team to deal with
declining sales. The effort fell apart on presenting their recommendations to the
company’s management team.
2. The solutions were criticized as being unworkable. It was found that employees
did not have the authority to make anything “happen”, boundaries were not
clearly defined. Too much was expected to fast without ensuring that everyone in
company knew that empowerment was about.

Main Problem
The empowerment program on SportsGear has not fundamentally changed how the
company uses its human resources to conduct its business.

Case Overview
SportsGear is a leading manufacturer and retailer of recreational clothing and footwear.
SportsGear had a host of problems. Its market share was declining in the face of foreign
and domestic competition. New product ideas were scarce. Department like
manufacturing and sales barely spoke to one another. Morale was low and resume had
been flying out the door.

George Marlow, a manufactirung vice president at SportsGear. Martin Griffin,

SportsGear CEO, was going to proclaim a new era of empowerment at the company. He
was hired to revive the 80-year old publicly held company. He called his team is The
Ranger, adopted by Mighty Morphin Power Ranger.

Martin said that SportsGear need a new ideas, new energy, new spirit to make the
company great and to face the increasing competition. And he also told about new

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empowerment campaign. He said that with a new empowerment campaign the employees
will be getting more information about the company.

Harry Lewis a manufacturing engineering, George’s friend and a SportsGear veteran of

more than 20 years. He was extremely loyal to the company but potentially a huge
obstacle in any empowerment movement. Harry thoughts that empowerment isn’t going
to save one job. Because all that’s going to happen is a whole lot of meetings, costly, and
wasted times. Empowerment isn’t a substitute for hard work and a little faith in the
people who have been with the company for years.

Susan starr, a young consultant from Evans Associates, she will lead the meeting on
empowerment program. For her, empowerment is an act of building, developing, and
increasing power through cooperating, sharing, and working together. She teach
managers the new roles, explaining the team’s assignment and describe how the team
would work by the self-managed team.

When George and other team member presented their oral report over the meeting that
Marting presided, Martin had to excuse himself of a late breaking deal with major
department-store chain. So, the meeting runs without Martin, the departments heads
formed a wall of resistance, they thought the team had made a good start but that more
research and analysis were necessary before any action could be considered.

Case Analysis
In the management literature, effective organizations are characterized as those that
produce excellent results by any measure of costs, quality, or efficiency while
simultaneously enhancing the energy and commitment of organizational members to the
success of the enterprise. The aspirations for empowerment that Martin articulated with
the team called the Rangers sounds great and inspiring because it involves building,
developing, and increasing power through cooperating, sharing and working together.

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Empowerment is a something new in the case of SportsGear, so it is critical that all the
players understand the rules and in an empowered organization, everyone is a player. It is
not enough for a CEO to understand and be committed to an empowerment process.
George as the team leader and he christened the team the Mighty Morphin Power Ranger.
The team member also learned about business by studying marketing, design,
manufacturing, and sales information, visited a number of SportsGear stores, and talked
with salespeople and customers.

Martin said that empowerment can make the company great again because of it puts
authority and decision making in George hands and George’s team was vital for the
success of the change effort in other words we can say that the team can’t be effective
without the support of senior management.

The Rangers working so hard to complete its report on time. They thought their ideas
were innovative but easily achievable:
♣ Permit a manager to follow a product from design through sales to customers
♣ Allow salespeople to refund up to $500 worth of merchandise on the spot
♣ Make information available to salespeople about future SportsGear products
♣ Swap sales and manufacturing personnel for short periods to provide insight into
one another’s jobs
♣ Establish a hot line so that salespeople could keep manufacturing informed about
how SportsGear products were selling
George are so optimistic with his team member but Harry remained skeptical.

What harry said about handling out raises doesn’t empower anybody, but offering
members of an organization a piece of financial action can do wonders. The
empowerment effort was undone and formed a wall of resistance because several reasons:
♣ There’s no truly support from martin to George’s team. If Martin truly support
empowerment, he should meet soon with George’s team and with department
head.
♣ No revision of compensation arrangement from Harry.

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 ♣ Martin left the meeting at which George’s team presented its recommendations
♣ Susan as a consultant (an external person in organization) leading the
empowerment effort and she didn’t give training to managers.
♣ Martin signaled that the department’s head had nothing to value to add to the
rangers’ research process.

Conclusion and Recommendations

Problems with the use of empowerment-oriented approaches have resided primarily in
the over-reliance on a narrow psychological concept. That is, as mentioned earlier,
empowerment was originally seen as a transfer of power from those who had more of it
to those who had less of it. The thinking was that if the less powerful were not acting as
expected when power was transferred, it was because of some internal psychological
processes that interfered with self-perceptions of power.

So, a more realistic goal for organizational empowerment is to actually provide

employees with the power to make decisions, rather than attempting to convince them
individually that they actually have power.

We give some recommendations for this case:

♣ The organization must understand how company defines empowerment, how
teams function, what their mission are, and how those missions related to overall
business strategy.
♣ Organizational leaders must take responsibility for establishing a solid foundation
before introducing any change effort.
♣ Consultant must help their clients understand and carry out their leadership rules.
♣ A CEO must engender understanding and commitment through continuous
training and communication across the entire organization.
♣ The managers must take far more fundamental actions and communications is
absolutely necessary.
♣ Martin needs do three things: sharing information, developing self-managed team,
and creating autonomy through boundaries.

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