Investigation of Relationship between Employees Empowerment and Being a Learning Organization in Guilan Province Universities, Iran

Abstract: The present research tries to investigate relationship between employeesʹ empowerment and learning organization in Guilan Province Universities. Today, organizations must be managed in a completely competitive environment. In such conditions, managers do not have enough opportunity to control employees. Employees will be able to fulfill their duties well only when they have enough skill, knowledge and ability. The tool that helps managers in this case is empowerment process. Learning organization becomes important in these conditions. Learning organization concept was introduced about 20 years agoand its goal was to empower managers and employees in order to achieve competitive advantage and organizational flexibility. The present research is an applied study from its goal viewpoint and its method is descriptive-correlational. Statistical population of the research included 2690 employees of Gilan Province universities which have more than 15 employees. According to Krejcie Morgan Table, 338 people were selected by means of stratified random sampling. Data and information was gathered by means of standard questionnaires of empowerment and being a learning organization. The questionnaires validity was verified by experts and professors and their reliability was tested by Cronbachʹs alpha to be 87% and 96% respectively. Descriptive analysis including frequency distribution, frequency percentage, mean, standard deviation and … and inference statistics including Pearson correlation coefficient and multiple regression and t test were used. Results showed that there is positive and significant relationship between employeesʹ empowerment and being a learning organization. Variables sense of trust, sense of being effective and sense of independence had the greatest influence on the dependent variable (being a learning organization) from empowerment dimensions (sense of competence, sense of independence, sense of being effective, sense of being significant and sense of trust).