Improving quality of operations via industry-specific empowerment antecedents: A study of the oil and gas industry

This paper presents a model that identifies accountability, responsibility, and choice as high-level determinants of employee psychological empowerment in the oil and gas industry particularly in relation to improving operational quality. Psychological Empowerment is targeted at influencing the hearts and minds of the individual and can only be said to have taken place when the individual truly believes he is empowered. As such, there is a need to promote highly situated human cognition targeted at creating an empowered state of mind leading to the conviction, commitment, and conversion of the personnel to embracing organizational goals, in this case quality. To examine the relationship amongst the dimensions of psychological empowerment, a survey was administered to 239 oil and gas industry personnel in different countries. The results showed personnel in the industry link high empowerment to accountability, responsibility, and choice when investigated with meaningfulness, mindfulness, competence and impact.