Abstract
M.Tech. (Quality and Operations Management)
God said in the book of Genesis “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” Then God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed; it shall be food for you; and to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the sky and to everything that moves on the earth which has life, I have given every green plant for food”; and it was so. God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good.” (Bible, Genesis 1 v 26 -31) Empowerment is the potential relationships between the organization, its managers, and its employees which consist of elements of trust and a belief in the skills and abilities of the employee in the organization. God “empowered” mankind to take responsibility over all and trusted them to manage His creation. God empowered man by giving him clear instructions with regards to the potential elements of empowerment; the how, the resources or tools, skills and competencies needed to be empowered. Oudtshoorn and Thomas (2008) define mankind as carrying the divine spark, made in the image of God, its nature being fundamentally heavenly and in unity with God. Oudtshoorn and Thomas (2008) further state that human beings are the ultimate example of true empowerment; however this concept of good has often been overshadowed by the belief that man is weak and sinful. Thus the concept of empowerment has been with mankind for a long time. In more recent time though, Davenport (1999) states that the 1990s will be remembered in management theoretical circles as the decade of employee empowerment, a decade in which very few companies dismantled their old “command-and-control” management practices and that organizations all had their own definition of what employee empowerment meant.
The purpose of this research project will be to focus on investigating and defining which employee empowerment programmes and practices could be utilized in the banking sector in South Africa and also to ascertain the potential impact that these practices could have on the bank’s organizational effectiveness.