A study on the elusiveness
and charm of empowerment via the managerial lens
Joseph Kim-keung Ho
Independent
Trainer
Hong
Kong, China
Abstract:
The
empowerment notion, albeit being around for many years, has been described as highly
elusive, loose and attractive in the academic literature. Its intellectual
influence spans both the business management and non-business management
domains. In this paper, the empowerment notion is examined based on a
literature review, including newspaper article study, and a Facebook-based
questionnaire survey on its perceptions in Hong Kong. By doing so, it further
clarifies the essence of the empowerment notion as well as informs learning and
practices in the business and non-business sectors. Overall, the paper mainly
examines the empowerment notion from the managerial perspective. Finally, it
recommends mastery of literature review skills, e.g., on learning empowerment,
to strengthen an individual’s managerial intellectual learning capability.
Key words: Delegation; Empowerment; Facebook-based questionnaire
survey; Literature review; Newspaper article study
An earlier version of the paper appears
in the journal of European Academic Research as
Introduction
From time to time, the notion of empowerment comes up in the
literature of business management as well as other social sciences, e.g.,
housing studies. It catches the writer’s attention in his teaching activities,
especially with one of the writer’s student doing a final-year dissertation on
this topic. On top of that, as an intellectual concept, empowerment is said to
be “highly elusive”, “attractive” and “loose” (Lincoln et al., 2002). This sets up the context that motivates the writer
to conduct a literature review and a Facebook-based questionnaire on
empowerment. Specifically, the paper aims at:
(1) reviewing the essence of the empowerment notion
(2) examining people’s perceptions on and experience with the
empowerment
Achieving these two aims should inform the theoretical
development of the empowerment concept as well as students in social sciences,
e.g., management and housing studies, to learn this concept. The two aims are
also related: knowledge on the essence of the empowerment notion enables a
better evaluation of people’s empowerment perceptions and experience. The present
study, nevertheless, is done mainly via the managerial lens so as to make the
scope of study manageable.
The empowerment notion and
its associated concepts
According to Lee et
al. (2014), the empowerment notion, can be traced back to the work of Kurt
Lewin in the 1940s. In the business management field, the notion is part of the
management trend that challenges Taylorism and scientific management (Collins,
1995). For such a rich concept, the academic publisher Emerald has a journal
called Empowerment in Organizations
from 1993 to 1998 and another one called Participation
and Empowerment in 1999. Regardless, the concept is definitely influential,
with derived research themes such as empowered culture (Bagali, 2002; Sigler
and Pearson, 2000), employee empowerment (Appelbaum et al., 2014; Pelit et al.,
2011), and empowering leadership (Lee et
al., 2014; Sims Jr. et al., 2009).
Its significance is also evidenced by contemporary newspaper articles related
to it in the business management domain, for examples:
South China Morning Post news
1: “Firm takes creative steps to retain staff” by (Gyopos,
2008): “..The focus at AXA is to
engage each employee and enhance their sense of belonging and pride in the
company… by offering employees the unique AXA Employee Value Proposition, which
comprises the key elements of empowerment, reward and recognition, learning and
development, and respect and values…”
South China Morning Post news 2: “Building trust with staff is a must”
(Wong, 2007): “Five ingredients to being an effective
middle manager… Passion Attitude …Integrity …Creativity …Empowerment Middle
managers need to give directions and provide guidelines that lead staff to take
action on their own… Edge in a competitive environment…”.
South China Morning Post
news 3: “Smooth flight out of turbulent
skies” (Taylor, 2005): “Drastic plan
… returns beleaguered carrier to profitability.… The board approved the plan …
giving Mr Hogan a mandate to implement changes across the business… This would
require … the empowerment of employees to restore pride in their jobs….”.
At
the same time, the empowerment notion also comes up often in non-business
management domains, for examples:
South China Morning Post
news 4: “Rising Asia is letting its women
fall behind” (Tuminez and Desai, 2012): “..Rising prosperity has narrowed the gender gap in many countries. Women
are making progress on health and survival, educational attainment, economic
opportunity and political empowerment..”.
South China Morning Post news 5:
“Sisters still waiting for respect” (Shamdasani, 2004): “Empowerment has come
a long way, but more work lies ahead. Women have made considerable progress in
their quest for equality... But nowhere in the world have they achieved
equality in terms of respect, opportunity and status…”.
The five newspaper articles illustrate that the empowerment
notion has indeed been employed in a range of business and non-business
subjects. This point has been duly noted by Lincoln et al. (2002). More importantly, these writers describe the
empowerment notion as attractive, loose and elusive; the empowerment notion is
considered by its proponents as “a humanistic device to improve the quality of
working life for ordinary employees” while conceived as “the latest management
ruse to intensify work and shift risk” (Lincoln et al., 2002). The following are some of the definitions of
empowerment in the literature, which gives an impression of its diverse
meanings:
Definition 1: Empowerment “refers to employees being more proactive and
self-sufficient in assisting an organization to achieve its goals” (Herrenkohl et al., 1999).
Definition 2: Empowerment is “recognizing and
releasing into the organization the power that people already have in their
wealth of useful knowledge and internal motivation” (Randolph, 1995).
Definition 3: Psychological empowerment is “the
perception that workers can help determine their own work roles, accomplish
meaningful work, and influence important decisions” (Yukl and Becker, 2006).
Definition 4: Empowerment refers to “a spectrum
of political activity ranging from acts of individual resistance to mass
political mobilization that challenge the basic power relations in our society”
(Bookman and Morgen, 1988: 4). It is “a
process by which the oppressed may become free” (Lincoln et al., 2002).
Definition 5: Empowerment involves two
constructs. It can be treated as: (i) a relational concept to “describe the
perceived power or control that an individual actor or organizational subunit
has over others” and (ii) a motivational concept which postulates that people
have a need for power. Such a need is met when people’s self-determination and
self-efficacy[1]
belief is strengthened (Conger and Kanungo, 1988).
Definitions 1 to 3 are similar in
meaning with emphasis on motivation; they are different from definition 4 which
is attentive to the issues of power distribution and liberation for the
oppressed. As to definition 5, it is also sensitive to the power issue, but the
two constructs remain managerial in orientation basically. In short,
definitions 1, 2, 3 and 5 are more occupied with employee empowerment[2]
and related management techniques. As a topic of intellectual investigation,
notably with definitions 1, 2, 3 and 5, empowerment is connected to a set of management
concepts and issues from the humanistic or ‘soft’ human resource management
standpoint (Lashley and McGoldrick, 1994). This standpoint is underlined by the
eight critical empowerment principles of Harley, i.e., (i) “protect the dignity
of all employees”, (ii) “manage perceptions, not just the “facts””, (iii) “use
organizational authority to release
rather than inhibit human potential”, (iv) “use consensus decision
making”, (v) clarify vision, mission, objectives, goals, and job descriptions”,
(vi) “unshackle the human desire to be
of service to others”, (vii) “come from values” and, finally, (viii) “provide
the feedback requested by the employees”. In this regard, the writer finds that
two models are especially informative for capturing the main associated
concepts and issues, namely: the integrative model of Robbins et al. (2002) and the process model of
Conger and Kanungo (1988). Regarding the former model, Robbins et al. (2002)’s integrative model
explicitly considers the following concepts and issues:
i.
Organization context
ii.
Intervening perceptions and attitudes, i.e.,
opportunities, support, commitment and trust
iii.
Individual differences
iv.
Local work environment and human resource practices
v.
Psychological empowerment, comprising the four factors
of impact, competence, meaning and self-determination
vi.
Empowered behavior
As to Conger and Kanungo (1988)’s
empowerment process model (the second model), the model process has five stages,
with empowerment concepts and issues noted:
Stage 1: Conditions leading to powerlessness, i.e.,
organizational factors, supervision, reward system, nature of job
Stage 2: Employment of managerial strategies and techniques,
i.e., participative management, goal setting, feedback system, modeling,
contingent/ competence-based reward and job enrichment
Stage 3: Provision of self-efficacy information with four
sources, i.e., enactive attainment, vicarious experience, verbal persuasion,
and emotional arousal, plus elimination of stage-1 conditions
Stage 4: Experience of empowerment by subordinates, i.e.,
strengthened belief in self-efficacy
Stage 5: Empowered behaviors, i.e., heightened initiatives
and persistent task-oriented behavior
These two models of Robbins et al. (2002) and Conger and Kanungo
(1988) synthesize in a comprehensive way the main management concepts and
issues from the academic literature associated with the empowerment notion.
Their models convey in a broad way the
essence of the empowerment notion, primarily in the management context. Indeed,
much empirical research effort has been made by researchers to figure out the
cause-effect relationships among all the concepts and issues identified in
these two models and then reported in academic journals. On the negative side,
the empowerment notion has been complained as passive, i.e., “passive roles are
ascribed to those supposedly empowered” (Collins, 1995). This indicates
controversy around the concept in the academic community. As this paper mainly
examines the empowerment notion via the managerial lens, the literature review
on definition 4 of the empowerment notion is not further pursued here.
On the relationship and
differences between empowerment and delegation
It has been the writer’s personal observation in his working
and teaching experience that many managers and students have difficulties to
tell the difference between the empowerment concept and the delegation concept.
Thus, explaining the differences between them also helps in clarifying the
empowerment notion itself. Simply, delegation is “the assignment of
responsibility or authority to another person (normally from a manager to a
subordinate) to carry out specific activities... Delegation empowers a subordinate
to make decisions” (Wikipedia, 2015). For Gazda (2002), there are two types of delegation,
namely, delegating for results and delegating for employee development. When
effective, delegation is able to boost up “morale”, “manager productivity” and
“organizational success” (Gazda, 2002). The nature of delegation is further
manifested in Myrna (2010)’s progress accelerator model of delegation. The
Myrna model involves four steps:
Step 1: agreement;
Step 2: accountability;
Step 3: action; finally,
Step 4: assessment.
It makes up an ongoing managerial control and enabling
learning loop. From these writings on delegation and the literature review on
the empowerment notion, the writer offers the following 3 propositions on the
relationship and differences between empowerment and delegation:
Proposition 1: Delegation can be considered as a relevant example on
empowerment practice. It is, like management by objectives and employee
involvement, a forerunner of the empowerment concept (Lashley and McGoldrick,
1994).
Proposition 2: As a concept, delegation is simpler than empowerment;
delegation has much fewer associated concepts and issues than empowerment. The
concept of delegation is basically not that “elusive”, nor “loose” when
compared with the empowerment notion.
Proposition 3: The delegation notion is compatible in a crude way with
the organizational metaphors[3] of
machine, culture and psychic prison, while the empowerment notion makes use of
a much broader range of organizational metaphors in a more sophisticated way.
Having done a literature review on the empowerment notion, this
paper moves on to present and discuss some findings on people’s perceptions on
the empowerment notion based on the writer’s recent Facebook-based
questionnaire survey.
Findings from a
Facebook-based survey on perceptions of the empowerment notion and experience
with empowerment in Hong Kong
A Facebook-based questionnaire survey was conducted by the
writer with his “friends” on his Facebook. Most of them have been or are the
writer’s students. The survey questionnaire was constructed using
Kwiksurveys.com’s survey tool, which is free of charge. A review of the
Facebook-based questionnaire survey method was provided in Ho (2014), thus not
repeated here. At the time of the survey, there were 1,574 “friends” on the
writer’s Facebook. With invitation to participate in the survey via Facebook messages,
the writer was able to collect 103 questionnaire replies from April 18 to 23,
2015. Male respondents make up 46.6% of the total while female respondents
represent 53.4% (re: question 1 of the survey; see appendix 1). 72.9% of the respondents either have an undergraduate
degree or a post-graduate degree (re: question 3). 82.5% of them are within the
age range of 28 to 47 (re: question 2). The survey questions and response
statistics are provided in the appendix of this paper. Briefly, there are 14
questions in the survey questionnaire (appendix 1). Questions 1 to 4 covers the
basic profile of the respondents, while questions 5 to 14 learn the
respondents’ perceptions and experience related to empowerment. Below are the
main findings from the survey. They include basic findings as well as
additional findings via data analysis with the Excel function of data filtering[4].
(i)
Findings from basic survey statistics
Finding 1 (re: questions 5 and 6): While 82.1% of the
respondents are either familiar with the concept or have some vague idea about
it, 62.7% of the respondents either strongly feel or mildly feel that the
empowerment concept is complicated. This reflects the elusiveness of the
empowerment notion.
Finding 2 (re: question 7): 59.8% of the respondents either
strongly or mildly feel that the empowerment concept is controversial and 20.6%
of the respondents express no idea on this question regarding controversy.
Again, the elusiveness of the concept is felt by many of the respondents.
Finding 3 (re: question 8): 42.2% of the respondents either
strongly or mildly feel that the empowerment concept is the same as the
delegation concept while 42.3% of the respondents do not feel this way. The
rest of the respondents (15.5%) have no idea on this question about empowerment
and delegation.
Finding 4 (re: questions 9 and 10): 56.8% of the respondents
either strongly or mildly feel that they have experienced psychological empowerment
in their work settings, while 22.5% of them do not feel this way (re: question
9). On a related topic (re: question 10), 55.4% of the respondents either
strongly or mildly feel that their organizations have an empowering culture
while 29.1% of them do not feel this way.
Finding 5 (re: question 11): 73.7% of the respondents think
that an organization with an empowering culture has higher organizational
effectiveness. The rest, at 26.3%, either do not feel so or have no idea. In
this case, the empowerment notion looks attractive to the majority of the
respondents.
Finding 6 (re: question 12): 65.1% of the respondents either
strongly or mildly feel that it is desirable for their organizations to adopt
empowerment practices. The rest, at 34.9%, either do not feel this way, or have
no idea, or feel that the question is not applicable to their cases.
Finding 7 (re: question 13): 64.1% of the respondents either
strongly or mildly feel that the empowerment concept is highly applicable in
non-business management settings. The rest, at 35.9%, either do not feel this
way or have no idea with the question.
Finding 8 (re: question 14): 80.4% of the respondents either
strongly or mildly feel that they are interested to learn more about the
empowerment concept in the near future. The rest, at 19.6%, either do not feel
so or have no idea with the question. This reflects the attractiveness of the
concept to most of the respondents.
The survey figures portray the
respondents’ overall perceptions on various questions related to the
empowerment notion. The figures are more revealing when compared across the
questions raised. For example, while 73.7% of the respondents think that an
organization with an empowering culture has higher organizational effectiveness
(re: finding 5), 65.1% (which is less than 73.7%) of the respondents either
strongly or mildly feel that it is desirable for their organizations to adopt
empowerment practices (finding 6). That means that some respondents have some
reservation on the desirability of implementing empowerment in their
organizations. It would be interesting to find out the respondents’ specific
concerns in this case. As another example, with 82.1% of the respondents either
familiar with the concept or having some vague idea about it (finding 1), 80.4%
of the respondents remain either strongly or mildly interested to learn more
about empowerment in the future (finding 8). This suggests that many respondents
are interested in managerial intellectual learning.
(ii)
Additional findings with the Excel analysis tool of
data filtering
Finding 9 (re: questions 1 and 9): The following table examines
whether gender (question 1) affects respondents’ experience with psychological
empowerment in their work settings (question 9). The figures in the cells
represent number of people while those in brackets are percentage figures with
reference to each row. For example, 24% (for male who feel strongly) is 10/ (10+21+7+4)
x 100%. The table (re: Table 1) indicates that female respondents experience
less psychological empowerment than male respondents. The finding reveals
issues that are associated with empowerment definition 4 as well as South China
Post news 4 and 5.
Table 1
|
Gender
|
Feel strongly
|
Feel mildly
|
Do not feel so
|
No idea
|
|
Male
|
10 (24%)
|
21 (50%)
|
7
(17%)
|
4
(10%)
|
|
Female
|
3
(6%)
|
24
(47%)
|
16
(31%)
|
8
(16%)
|
Finding 10 (re: questions 4 and 9): The
following table (re: Table 2) examines whether employment sector (question 4)
affects respondents’ experience with psychological empowerment in their work
settings (question 9). While more respondents in the private sector feel
strongly that they experience psychological empowerment than those in public
sector, more respondents in the public sector feel mildly that they experience
psychological empowerment than those in the private sector. The reasons behind
the pattern of the figures need to be further investigated via future research
works.
Table 2
|
Employment
sector
|
Feel strongly
|
Feel mildly
|
Do not feel so
|
No idea
|
|
Private
sector
|
10
(15%)
|
32
(49%)
|
16 (25%)
|
7
(11%)
|
|
Public sector
|
1
(7%)
|
10
(71%)
|
1
(7%)
|
2
(14%)
|
Finding 11 (re: questions 12 and 14): The
following table (re: Table 3) examines whether perceived desirability to adopt
empowerment practices (question 12) affects respondents’ interest to learn
empowerment in the near future (question 14). The figures indicate that those
who strongly feel that it is desirable for their organizations to adopt
empowerment practices also tend to have a strong interest to learn empowerment
in the near future. As to those who have no idea whether it is desirable for
their organizations to adopt empowerment practices, they also have no idea
whether they would be interested to learn empowerment in the near future.
Table 3
|
Perceived
desirability of empowerment adoption
|
Feel strongly
|
Feel mildly
|
Do not feel so
|
No idea
|
|
Feel strongly
|
19
(76%)
|
5
(20%)
|
1
(4%)
|
0
(0%)
|
|
Feel mildly
|
11
(27%)
|
22
(54%)
|
6
(15%)
|
2
(5%)
|
|
Do not feel
so
|
7
(35%)
|
10
(50%)
|
3
(15%)
|
0
(0%)
|
|
No idea
|
0
(0%)
|
5
(42%)
|
1
(8%)
|
6
(50%)
|
Finding 12 (re: questions 5 and 13): The
following table (re: Table 4) examines whether perceived familiarity with the
empowerment notion (question 5) affects respondents’ view that the empowerment
concept is highly applicable in non-business management settings (question 13).
The figures indicate that those who consider themselves familiar with the
empowerment concept also have a higher tendency to feel strongly that the
empowerment concept is highly applicable in non-business management settings
than those who are not familiar, i.e., those having some vague idea or having
no idea. The answer for question 13 is quite clear based on the empowerment
literature: the empowerment concept is indeed highly applicable in non-business
management settings. Thus, the pattern of figures of the table appears normal,
when viewed with the literature’s knowledge on question 13.
Table 4
|
Familiarity
with the empowerment concept
|
Feel strongly
|
Feel mildly
|
Do not feel so
|
No idea
|
|
Familiar
|
11
(41%)
|
10
(37%)
|
2
(7%)
|
4
(15%)
|
|
Have some
vague idea
|
14
(25%)
|
25
(45%)
|
11
(20%)
|
6
(11%)
|
|
No idea
|
1
(6%)
|
3
(17%)
|
3
(17%)
|
11
(61%)
|
Overall, the majority of the respondents
have some ideas about empowerment (re: findings 1, 2 and 3), how it can be
employed to make sense of real-life organizational practices (re: findings 4,
5, 6, 7) and have expressed interest to learn more about the empowerment notion
(re: finding 8). The findings also indicate that personal profiles and work
settings of the respondents affect their perceptions, learning interest and
experience with empowerment (re: findings 9, 10, 11 and 12). As most of the
respondents are not scholars or scholar-practitioners, it is unrealistic to
expect them to be well informed with the empowerment literature. The survey
findings also indicate that they are not in this case. Nonetheless, it is
argued by Ho (2015) that mastery of literature review skill, e.g., on learning
the empowerment notion, is vital for managerial intellectual learning and
continuous professional development. And, indeed, many of the respondents are
interested in managerial intellectual learning, based on survey finding 8.
Concluding remarks
Via the literature review, the image
of the empowerment notion being “highly elusive”, “loose” and “attractive” is
rendered. It is plausible that the notion, being elusive, is charming to
different people for dissimilar reasons. Admittedly, more literature review
effort can be made on definition 4 of the empowerment notion (as related to the
theme of political activities and liberation) to make the review exercise more
comprehensive. However, since this paper mainly studies the empowerment notion via
the managerial lens, this is not done.
The literature review exercise,
including the newspaper article study, enables the writer to make a more
informed study of the Facebook-based questionnaire survey findings in Hong Kong.
In general, the survey findings are roughly in line with the discussion in the
empowerment literature. The findings also point to the need and expressed
interest by the survey respondents to study the empowerment notion. In this
regard, the paper does not only have some academic value but also delivers pedagogical
value to those who feel that the concept is attractive to learn and apply in
their work and non-work settings. Finally, as a systems theorist, the writer
recognizes the desirability of cross-fertilization of intellectual ideas
between the empowerment and the critical systems thinking fields (see Flood and
Jackson (1991).).
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Appendix
Appendix 1: The Facebook-based survey questions (14
questions) and responses statistics.
|
Survey questions
|
Survey statistics
|
|
Question
1: What is your gender?
|
Male:
48 (46.6%)
Female:
55 (53.4%)
|
|
Question
2: What is your age?
|
18
to 27: 8 (7.8%)
28
to 37: 43 (41.7%)
38
to 47: 42 (40.8%)
48
to 57: 10 (9.7%)
58
to 67: 0 (0.0%)
68
or above: 0 (0.0%)
|
|
Question
3: What is your education background?
|
Not
yet a degree-holder: 28 (27.2%)
Finished
University Undergraduate Degree study: 60 (58.3%)
Finished
Master Degree study: 15 (14.6%)
Finished
Ph.D. Degree study (or equivalent): 0 (0.0%)
|
|
Question
4: What is your employment status?
|
I
am employed in the private sector (full-time): 71 (68.9%)
I
am employed in the public sector (full-time): 16 (15.5%)
I
do not have a full-time paid job: 8 (7.8%)
It
is complicated: 8 (7.8%)
|
|
Question
5: Are you familiar with the concept of empowerment?
|
Yes,
I am familiar with the concept: 27 (26.7%)
I
have some vague idea about it: 56 (55.4%)
I
have no idea what the concept is all about: 18 (17.8%)
|
|
Question
6: Do you feel that the concept of empowerment is complicated?
|
Yes,
I strongly feel this way: 18 (17.6%)
I
mildly feel this way: 46 (45.1%)
I
do not feel this way: 24 (23.5%)
No
idea: 14 (13.7%)
|
|
Question
7: Do you feel that the concept of empowerment is controversial?
|
Yes,
I strongly feel this way: 16 (15.7%)
I
mildly fee this way: 45 (44.1%)
I
do not feel this way: 20 (19.6%)
No
idea: 21 (20.6%)
|
|
Question
8: Do you feel that the concept of empowerment is the same as the concept of
delegation?
|
Yes,
I strongly feel this way: 11 (11.3%)
I
mildly fee this way: 30 (30.9%)
I
do not feel this way: 41 (42.3%)
No
idea: 15 (15.5%)
|
|
Question
9: Do you experience psychological empowerment in your work setting?
|
Yes,
I strongly feel so: 13 (12.7%)
I
have this feeling mildly: 45 (44.1%)
I
don’t feel this way: 23 (22.5%)
No
idea: 12 (11.8%)
Not
applicable: 9 (8.8%)
|
|
Question
10: Do you feel that your organization has an empowering culture?
|
Yes,
I strongly feel so: 22 (21.4%)
I
have this feeling mildly: 35 (34.0%)
I
do not feel this way: 30 (29.1%)
No
idea: 10 (9.7%)
Not
applicable: 6 (5.8%)
|
|
Question
11: Do you think that an organization with an empowering culture has higher
organizational effectiveness?
|
Yes,
I strongly feel so: 43 (41.7%)
I
have this feeling mildly: 33 (32.0%)
I
do not feel this way: 17 (16.5%)
No
idea: 10 (9.7%)
|
|
Question
12: Do you feel that it is desirable for your organization to adopt
empowerment practices?
|
Yes,
I strongly feel so: 25 (24.3%)
I
have this feeling mildly: 42 (40.8%)
I
do not feel this way: 20 (19.4%)
No
idea: 12 (11.7%)
Not
applicable: 4 (3.9%)
|
|
Question
13: Do you feel that the empowerment concept is highly applicable in
non-business management settings?
|
Yes,
I strongly feel so: 27 (26.2%)
I
have this feeling mildly: 39 (37.9%)
I
do not feel this way: 16 (15.5%)
No
idea: 21 (20.4%)
|
|
Question
14: Do you feel that you would be interested to learn more about the concept
of empowerment in the near future?
|
Yes,
I strongly feel so: 38 (37.3%)
I
have this feeling mildly: 44 (43.1%)
I
do not feel this way: 12 (11.8%)
No
idea: 8 (7.8%)
|
Appendix 2: Response
statistics over time, from April 18 to 23, 2015.
[NA]
[1]
Self-efficacy is a psychological term that describes an individual’s
belief in his/her own effectiveness (Lincoln et al., 2002).
[2] Employee empowerment topics can be on employees in general (Nykodym et al., 1994), managers (Newton and
Wilkinson, 1994), disadvantaged employees (Echiejile, 1994) and teams (Brower,
1995).
[3]
Interested readers are referred to Morgan (1986) and
Flood and Jackson (1991) for further discussion on the topic of organizational
metaphors.
[4]
The survey data collected with the Kwiksurveys tool
can be exported to Excel for further analysis.
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