Being Our Best: Understanding the Relationship between Empowerment and Employee Engagement among Midlevel Student Affairs Professionals

• Published in: Higher education quarterly Vol. 77; no. 4; pp. 774 - 791
• Main Authors: McNaughtan, Jon, Garza, Tiberio, Eicke, Dustin, Garcia, Hugo A, Bodine Al-Sharif, Mary Ann
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford Wiley 01.10.2023; Blackwell Publishing Ltd
• Subjects: Employee Attitudes; Empowerment; Job Satisfaction; Leadership; Least Squares Statistics; Middle Management; Structural equation modeling; Student Personnel Workers; Work
• ISSN: 0951-5224; 1468-2273
• DOI: 10.1111/hequ.12432

Over the last few decades, there has been a significant increase in the number of student service personnel, yet demand has outstripped this growth leading to turnover and low employee satisfaction. Scholars and practitioners alike have called for increased levels of empowerment of these workers, but the outcomes of this approach need further analysis. We utilize data from a survey of international centre directors in the United States and employ a partial least squares-based structural equation modelling to investigate the relationship between empowerment and employ perceptions including work satisfaction, organizational commitment, perspective of leadership and personal engagement. Specifically, trust meaning and personal consequence are strong components of empowerment in this sample. Our results indicate a positive relationship between empowerment and job satisfaction, organizational commitment and perspectives on leadership. In addition, we find that organizational commitment mediates the relationship between empowerment and personal engagement.