Effect of employee empowerment on job satisfaction of employees: A study at hotel establishments

As a strategy to be employed to gain competitive advantage and superiority, well-functioning employee empowerment applications will provide enormous contributions to fulfilling the objectives set by the establishment and thus paving the way for reaching their targets. This is of great importance for hotel establishments operating at labor-intensive sectors. On the other hand, views put forward in the related literature on the effect of employee empowerment on the attitudes of employees towards their job makes it necessary to bring up the issue in such a manner that it should be investigated more. In this scope, the objective of this study is to find out the impact of employee empowerment on employee job satisfaction. To serve this purpose, a detailed literature review study has been performed and using a multi-stratified sampling method, a questionnaire survey was conducted for 1854 employees employed at 5 star hotels in 7 regions of Turkey. The validity and reliability studies of the scale employed were implemented; following this the questionnaire was applied between May 1 and November 31 to the sample population. Data obtained were analyzed through ?frequency?, percentage?, ?t-test for independent sampling?, ?t-test for correlation measurements?, ?one-factor variance (ANOVA) analysis?, Tukey (HSD) test?, ?correlation?, ?simple and multi linear regression? analyses.According to the findings of the study, the most negative factor for job satisfaction of employees is wage factor, as the most positive physical conditions (heating, lightening, and air-conditioning) and relations with colleagues. Another result of the study is the fact that the perception of the employees on psychological empowerment is more positive than the perceptions of behavioral empowerment. The perceptions of employees on psychological and behavioral empowerment and empowerment in general terms are significantly different according to individual features (age, educational level, duration of employment in the sector), department, ownership status (domestic chain, foreign chain, independent hotel establishment) and locations of the hotels (city/summer resort). Similarly, there were found to be significant differences in terms of the level of job satisfaction of the employees according to individual features (age, educational level, duration of employment in the sector), department and locations of the hotels (city/summer resort). The results of the analyses of the hypotheses of the study suggest that psychological and behavioral empowerment have a significant effect on job satisfaction of the employees, on the other hand as a result of the taking the empowerment as a whole (behavioral and psychological) this effect is much more, which was put forward through the analyses of correlation and regression. As a result of the findings of the study, pertaining to employee empowerment, the effect of this has been emphasized and some recommendations were made related to issue in terms of hotel establishments.Keywords: Power, empowerment, employee empowerment, job satisfaction, hotel establishments.