Fian, Sonny

“Motivation for Achievement and Structural Workplace Empowerment among Palestinian Healthcare Professionals”
Randa Nasser, Ph. D., Belal A. Saadeh, Ph. D., RN

Workers’ empowerment and wellbeing are truly essential ingredients for successful functioning and development of organizations. In the past, organizations have typically not paid much attention and concern for their workers’ wellbeing. Though over the last three decades, the trend has shifted and it has become one of the most popular topics in organizational and sociological studies, it has become a workplace antidote. Many organizations have begun to shine light on the subject of workers’ empowerment focusing on the factors of; creativity, satisfaction, burn-out, efficiency, and commitment. Data was collected from 154 hospital nurses in two major Palestinian hospitals, through a survey designed and self-administered questionnaire. In this research, the main target was to examine the impact of personal and structural determinants of employees’ perceived workplace empowerment, as well as to delineate the mechanisms of their influences. Personal determinants look into the individual’s intrinsic motivation and self-efficiency. Structural determinants on the other hand focuses on employees access to organizational structures and decision making processes, such as opportunities, information, resources, and support. The study contests the structural empowerment claimed by Kanter. Kanter’s theory states that workplace empowerment of both employees and managers is determined more by their positions and the occupational structures of power they wield rather than their personal characteristics and personal relations. This perspective says empowerment is a set of opportunities and constraints within the organization, rather than being embedded in personality characteristics. Though in this study conducted on 154 Palestinian hospital nurses, it argues and contends that structural factors may be important in determining employees’ empowerment and work efficiency though personal factors are also important determinants of empowerment. The hypothesis for the entire study relays around this; personality characteristics along with organizational structural determinants both hand-in-hand influence employee empowerment. The study began with a simple random sample of a total of 181 individuals who have held their positions for over one year from two major Palestinian hospitals: Makassed and Ramallah. Questionnaires were hand delivered to these individuals, though only 84% of them completed and returned it; resulting in 154 nurses. The questionnaires consisted of self-administered closed-ended questions to analyze employees’ perceived workplace structural empowerment and its determinants in their natural workplace environment. The design incorporated the use of dependent and independent variables. This included tools that measure perceived workplace structural empowerment as the dependent variables. For the independent variables, perceived access to formal and informal lines on power and work positions, and demographic and personal variables. Summary statistics show that nurses in the two hospitals scored high to moderate levels on their overall perceived workplace structural empowerment, with a mean of 2.9. Indicating that 50% of the nurses have a higher empowerment score, showing that the study sample accommodates a comparatively empowered group of employees. The nurses also have a high motivation with a mean of 4.1, 68% of the sample enjoy greater motivation. To test the hypothesis, it begins with a multiple regression equation study of all of the personal characteristics on structural empowerment; their thoughts on the significant impact of educational qualifications, work experience, and their attitude on motivation for achievement on workplace empowerment. On this portion, the results support the hypothesis that personal characteristics do have an influence on