Empowerment: A Book Review About Fulfilling Your Destiny Using Eight Personal Steps

Many of us want to improve, grow, and succeed in life. Although we cannot change our circumstances, our circumstances should not stop us from reaching our destiny (Hall, 2020). Everything we want out of life is within our reach. We just cannot give up. These topics are the essence of what Hall discusses as she takes us on a journey through eight steps of personal empowerment. We have to go through trials to come out on the other side. Based on these eight steps of empowerment, Hall discusses how these steps will guide us to our next chapter in life. We have the power: the power to choose how personal experiences can ultimately impact our personal, work, and professional relationships.

Strategic Empowerment in Human Resource Management

Empowerment is considered one of the best managerial approaches to foster employees’ effectiveness, creativity, commitment, performance, and other positive work-related attitudes and behaviors while providing an essential tool for leadership development and succession planning. Empowerment involves delegation of authority, sharing of information and resources, and allowing employees to participate in decision-making processes. Empowerment practices result in positive outcomes through psychological empowerment, which comprises meaning, impact, self-determination, and competence. However, empowerment should be exercised with care, and before doing so, leaders should understand their employees’ competences, willingness, and characteristics, as well as the organizational culture and industrial dynamics. With the increasing use of information and communication technologies, inevitable influence of globalization, and continuously changing dynamics of interconnectedness among industries, the business environment has become more volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA). In order to survive in this environment, companies try to increase diversity in their workforce to make the best use of a broad variety of skills, experiences, and opinions, thus boosting creativity and innovativeness, which makes leadership more difficult than ever. With empowerment, the concept of delegation of power is important. Therefore, comparing the concept of personal empowerment with managerial empowerment helps in understanding that these concepts are different, although interconnected. Delegation of authority ensures that the manager transfers decision-making authority to subordinates under certain conditions. In delegation, authority is retained by the manager, who has the ultimate responsibility. On the other hand, in empowerment, authority is fully transferred to the person who is already doing the job, with all the rights and responsibilities to take the initiative as necessary. Empowerment is also closely related but different from the concept of motivation. In motivation, decision-making authority and control stays with the manager. Empowerment, on the other hand, gives employees the opportunity to participate in management, solve problems, and participate in decision-making processes. In this context, the concepts of delegation of authority, motivation, participation in management, and job enrichment are the domain dimensions of personal empowerment, and thus they are interrelated, yet different. It is important to create a common vision and to have common values in order to establish the empowerment process. Subordinates and supervisors need to trust each other, and empowerment needs to be seen as a philosophy, not a technique. It is necessary to create business conditions that enable the development of knowledge and skills in personnel empowerment. These conditions affect the perceptions and attitudes of the staff, such as, support, loyalty, identification, and trust. Empowering employees promotes organizational commitment, increases engagement, and reduces turnover intentions of key personnel. Because empowerment involves encouraging participation of subordinates in the decision-making process, it also helps to enhance the effectiveness of the decisions and reduce decision-making time. In the VUCA world, limited decision making could be a critical obstacle to establish and maintain sustainability in highly competitive business environments.

Head’s Leadership Styles and Effectiveness of School Teams: Exploring the Role of Motivational Mechanisms

The literature reveals that participative leadership style (PLS) is overwhelmingly advantageous over the contrasting directive leadership style (DLS). Therefore, the key objective of this study was to find out the relative effect of a PL style as compared to a DL style on the motivational mechanism (organizational commitment and empowerment) and effectiveness (innovation and in-role performance) of school staff teams. However, the mediating role of motivational mechanism in the relationship between school heads’ leadership styles and effectiveness of school staff teams had also been studied. The data were collected through a questionnaire based cross-sectional survey. The data were collected from the 402 teachers working in 80 academic teams. The SEM results revealed that DLS was significantly related to teams’ in-role performance and organizational commitment. While, PLS was significantly related to in-role performance, team’s innovation, organizational commitment and personal empowerment. Teachers’ personal empowerment partially mediated the relationship between heads’ PLS and team innovation. But, organizational commitment fully mediated the relationship between heads’ PLS and teams’ in-role performance. However, organizational commitment partially mediated the relationship between heads’ DLS and teams’ in-role performance. It is suggested that heads might concurrently combine participative and directive leadership behaviors to make their school teams more effective.

The level of formal support received by people with severe mental illness living in supported accommodation and participation: A systematic review

Aim: The review aimed to identify and explore the association of level of support received by people with severe mental illness in supported accommodation and participation. Method: The authors conducted a systematic search in MEDLINE, PsychINFO, PsychARTICLES, CINAHL Plus and ASSIA. Searches were restricted to articles published in English and participants aged 18 years and over with severe mental illness. Articles were included based on level of support received in mental health supported accommodation, classified according to the Simple Taxonomy for Supported Accommodation, and three factors of participation: social participation, daily living functioning and personal empowerment. Studies of in-patient settings and nursing homes were excluded. The review protocol is registered on PROSPERO (registration number: CRD42019161808). Results: Six articles were included in the review from USA, Australia, Sweden and Taiwan. Factors of participation for people living in accommodation with moderate support and accommodation with high support were explored. Data indicated an association between level of support and participation showing that people living in accommodation with moderate support had increased participation compared to people living in accommodation with high support. Conclusion: This review identified an association between level of formal support and participation. People with SMI living in accommodation with medium support participated in more community occupations, more activities and had a higher level of personal empowerment than people living in accommodation with high support.

Adaptation, Validation and Translation of the Women Personal Empowerment Scale

Pakistan ranks third in the list of the most hazardous countries for woman's survival. In this study, by using the quantitative approach, the scale adaptation process was conducted in three phases as integration of instruments, generation of items, and generalization of expert reviews. Back-to-Back translation on 40 women was done to determine the understanding of the Urdu language of personal empowerment scale. Sequentially, Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) was performed on the data collected from 360 respondents for the Construct Validity Method (CVM) on personal empowerment Scale-Urdu Version. The results confirmed the validity of the scale. Cross-language validity was also determined. The empirical findings also indicated that women's personal empowerment plays a significant role in improving their quality of life. Theorists and practitioners need to pay more attention to the generalization of the personal empower scale.

The Restoring of a Prophetic Community

The article discusses the future of global pentecostalism, focusing on the context of Australia. It first explores the self-identification of pentecostalism as a prophetic community in continuity with the narrative of Luke-Acts. In particular, the implications of the Isaianic mission of Jesus and the early church are discussed. The socially transformative nature of this mission includes not only miracles and healing, but also concern for the poor and marginalized. From this foundation, the article secondly addresses issues within contemporary Australian pentecostalism of individualism and self-reliance that are incompatible with the Isaianic vision. It presents, thirdly, a vision for the Australian pentecostal community that moves beyond a preoccupation with personal empowerment of the Spirit to participate with God in bringing healing and justice to the world.

Examining Feminist and Critical Consciousness Conceptualizations of Women’s Subjective Well-Being

Feminist and critical consciousness theories, that shaped the practice of feminist therapy, are unique in considering the impact of power and privilege on women’s well-being. We investigated tenets of these conceptualizations cross-sectionally by examining relations of critical consciousness, feminist collective action, personal empowerment, and subjective well-being among 247 women recruited via MTurk. We found that critical consciousness had a significant, positive direct link with collective action. Collective action, in turn, had significant, positive direct links with life satisfaction and positive affect. Importantly, critical consciousness via collective action was associated indirectly with greater satisfaction and positive affect. In contrast, critical consciousness was associated directly with lower satisfaction and positive affect. Personal empowerment was associated directly with greater well-being, but only collective action was a mechanism through which critical consciousness was associated with greater well-being. These findings are consistent with theory and support connecting the personal with the political in feminist therapy.