Empowerment Disparity and Employee Empowerment Model Inventory

1. Abstract

The Empowerment Disparity and Employee Empowerment Model Inventory (EDEEMI) is a psychometric and multi-level assessment system developed by Pattamol Kanjanakan, Pola Q. Wang, and Peter B. Kim (2023) to operationalize the systemic dynamics of managerial empowerment, employee psychological empowerment, and customer-perceived service interaction quality within organizational hierarchies. Specifically constructed to overcome the historical unilateralism of empowerment research, the inventory measures both dyadic and group-level phenomena by contrasting managerial self-reported empowering behaviors with subordinate perceptions of received empowerment, thereby quantifying the novel psychological construct of empowerment disparity. The comprehensive measurement model integrates 38 items distributed across four interrelated domains: (a) Managerial Empowering Behavior (unidimensional measure capturing supervisory delegation and autonomy granting), (b) Psychological Empowerment (comprising four cognitive-motivational dimensions: Meaning, Competence, Self-Determination, and Impact), (c) Relational Psychological Contract (measuring perceived mutual obligation, job security, and reciprocal career development), and (d) Customer-Perceived Interaction Quality (capturing frontline employee service delivery across Attitude, Behavior, and Expertise sub-dimensions).

Administered via a standardized 7-point Likert scale (ranging from 1 = Strongly Disagree to 7 = Strongly Agree), the EDEEMI underwent empirical validation within the service and hospitality sectors in Thailand using multi-source, multi-level structural equation modeling (incorporating managers, frontline service workers, and matched dining consumers). The measurement framework demonstrates psychometric robustness. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) substantiated the structural integrity of the multi-tiered factor model, yielding excellent goodness-of-fit indices: χ² = 893.567 (df = 395, p < .001), Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) = 0.06, Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI) = 0.94, and Comparative Fit Index (CFI) = 0.93. Convergent validity was established with all standardized factor loadings reaching statistical significance (p < .01) and Average Variance Extracted (AVE) values exceeding construct-pair squared correlations (R²), thereby confirming discriminant validity under the Fornell-Larcker criterion. Composite Reliability (CR) coefficients ranged between .83 and .91 across all latent factors, and Harman’s single-factor test accounted for only 33.52% of total variance, mitigating common method bias. The EDEEMI provides researchers, organizational psychologists, and executive human resource leaders with an empirical diagnostic instrument capable of assessing relational disconnects, managerial calibration errors, and downstream organizational outcomes.

2. Keywords

Empowerment Disparity, Employee Empowerment, Empowering Behavior, Psychological Empowerment, Psychological Contract, Interaction Quality, Multi-Level Modeling, Leader-Member Exchange, Organizational Behavior, Hospitality Management

3. Authors

The Empowerment Disparity and Employee Empowerment Model Inventory was developed and empirically validated by an international research team affiliated with the School of Hospitality and Tourism at Auckland University of Technology (Auckland, New Zealand):

• Pattamol Kanjanakan, Ph.D. — School of Hospitality and Tourism, Faculty of Culture and Society, Auckland University of Technology, Auckland, New Zealand. Research expertise spans employee motivation, service leadership, and multi-level organizational modeling.
• Pola Q. Wang, Ph.D. — School of Hospitality and Tourism, Faculty of Culture and Society, Auckland University of Technology, Auckland, New Zealand. Specializes in frontline service encounters, structural equation modeling, and employee-customer dyadic interactions.
• Peter B. Kim, Ph.D. (Corresponding Author) — Professor of Hospitality Management, School of Hospitality and Tourism, Auckland University of Technology, Private Bag 92006, Auckland 1142, New Zealand. ORCID: 0000-0003-1063-5264. Email: [email protected]. Research portfolio focuses on organizational psychology, human capital optimization, empowering leadership, and cross-level service architectures.

4. Purpose

The primary purpose of the Empowerment Disparity and Employee Empowerment Model Inventory is to bridge a longstanding methodological and conceptual gap in industrial-organizational psychology: the implicit, untested assumption that managerial attempts at empowerment are perceived, internalized, and experienced uniformly by subordinates across an organizational unit. In traditional organizational management paradigms, supervisory empowerment was conceptualized as an objective, unmediated behavioral injection: if a leader reported delegating authority, encouraging self-direction, and relinquishing direct control, researchers routinely inferred that subordinates experienced an equivalent rise in psychological agency and autonomous motivation. The EDEEMI was expressly constructed to measure the structural discrepancies, perceptual cleavages, and cognitive distortions that emerge between supervisory self-assessments and frontline employee experiences.

Empowerment disparity functions as a dual-level construct within this measurement system. At the dyadic level, it captures the raw perceptual incongruence between what a manager believes they extend and what a specific employee perceives they receive. At the group or team level, it operationalizes within-unit variance (empowerment divergence), capturing the extent to which leaders display favoritism, differentiate delegation among team members, or generate subjective perceptions of systemic inequity. Measuring this phenomenon is critical across both basic research and applied human resources settings because such disparities can undermine the expected psychological benefits of delegative leadership. When a manager believes they are highly empowering, but employees perceive micromanagement or arbitrary boundary enforcement, organizational cynicism, emotional exhaustion, and psychological contract breach proliferate.

In applied organizational and clinical-occupational contexts, the EDEEMI serves several vital diagnostic and intervention functions:

• Managerial Calibration and Self-Awareness Diagnostics: It provides organizational development consultants and executive coaches with empirical gap-analysis profiles comparing managerial self-ratings against direct-report aggregated feedback, pinpointing whether leadership suffers from blind-spot overestimation or disengaged under-delegation.
• Early Detection of Psychological Contract Violations: The scale identifies relational attrition where employees feel their discretionary effort and emotional investment are not matched by structural autonomy, career advancement pathways, or organizational support.
• Multi-Level Operational Auditing: By tying frontline employee internal states (meaning, self-determination, competence, and impact) directly to external consumer evaluations of interaction quality (attitude, behavior, expertise), the inventory maps the psychological mechanisms linking executive leadership behaviors to external revenue-generating service interactions.
• Mitigation of Workplace Inequity and Alienation: The tool allows organizations to quantify within-team empowerment variance, identifying disparate treatment that often correlates with quiet quitting, high turnover intention, workplace friction, and perceived ostracism.

5. Psychological Construct

The EDEEMI operationalizes an integrated model of workplace psychology comprising four core psychological constructs, each detailed below with theoretical definitions and behavioral indicators.

1. Managerial Empowering Behavior (Leader-Reported & Subordinate-Perceived)

Rooted in the behavioral taxonomy of leader delegation, this construct operationalizes the overt behavioral practices through which a supervisor relinquishes authoritative control, decentralizes decision-making power, and cultivates employee self-direction. It is measured unidimensionally using eight operational items adapted from foundational delegative leadership frameworks. Rather than assessing mere laissez-faire non-interference, the construct captures proactive, supportive empowerment. Key indicators include: granting comprehensive operational latitude (“I allow employees complete freedom in their work”), sanctioning independent problem-solving (“I permit employees to use their own judgment in solving problems”), actively soliciting autonomous initiatives, and displaying structural trust by assigning responsibilities without ongoing micromanagement (“I assign tasks, then let employees handle them”).

2. Empowerment Disparity (Multi-Level Derived Construct)

Empowerment disparity represents the focal innovation of the EDEEMI framework. It is operationalized as the systematic divergence between a leader’s self-reported empowering behavior and the subordinate’s perceived empowerment, as well as the within-group dispersion of perceived empowerment across peers reporting to the same supervisor. Drawing upon equity theory and social comparison theory, the construct measures the psychological friction that occurs when managerial intentions fail to translate into felt agency. High empowerment disparity denotes an environment of perceived leadership hypocrisy, inconsistent treatment, or relational favoritism, which depresses intrinsic motivation even when aggregate empowerment scores appear moderately high.

3. Psychological Empowerment (Cognitive-Motivational Dimension)

Based on Spreitzer’s (1995) seminal multidimensional operationalization of psychological empowerment in the workplace, this construct assesses the internal, gestalt motivational state manifested in four cognitive dimensions:

• Meaning: The congruence between an individual’s personal values, beliefs, and standards, and the requirements of their work role (e.g., “The work I do is meaningful to me”).
• Competence: An individual’s self-efficacy and belief in their capability to perform task activities skillfully (e.g., “I am confident about my ability to do my job”).
• Self-Determination: An employee’s subjective sense of having autonomy, freedom, and choice in initiating and regulating task processes (e.g., “I have significant autonomy in determining how I do my job”).
• Impact: The degree to which an employee perceives that their behavior can influence strategic, administrative, or operating outcomes at work (e.g., “My impact on what happens in my work is large”).

4. Relational Psychological Contract

Adapting Rousseau’s (1995) psychological contract theory, this construct measures an employee’s subjective beliefs regarding the reciprocal obligations existing between themselves and the employing enterprise. Unlike transactional contracts that focus strictly on monetary exchange for designated hours, the relational contract captures long-term sociopsychological bonds characterized by mutual trust, perceived organizational support, and emotional commitment. In the EDEEMI, this is operationalized through items tapping career trajectory transparency, mutual growth expectations, familial belongingness, and perceived equity in organizational reward mechanisms (e.g., “I feel this restaurant reciprocates the effort put in by its employees”; “I am motivated to contribute 100% to this restaurant in return for future employment benefits”).

5. Customer-Perceived Interaction Quality

To establish external ecological validity, the inventory measures the behavioral outcome of frontline employee empowerment through the eyes of the consumer receiving the service. Adapting interaction quality paradigms, this construct is partitioned into three distinct sub-facets:

• Attitude: The customer’s perception of the employee’s warmth, friendliness, empathy, and genuine willingness to assist (e.g., “The attitude of the restaurant’s employees demonstrates their willingness to help me”).
• Behavior: The tangible operational actions, agility, and proactive problem-solving exhibited by the employee during the service encounter (e.g., “The restaurant’s employees respond quickly to my needs”).
• Expertise: The customer’s assessment of the employee’s technical competence, task knowledge, and procedural proficiency (e.g., “I can count on the restaurant’s employees to know their jobs”).

6. Theoretical Framework

The EDEEMI is embedded within an integrative theoretical architecture that unifies Self-Determination Theory (SDT), Social Exchange Theory (SET), and Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) Theory into a coherent multi-level paradigm.

Self-Determination Theory (Deci & Ryan)

Self-Determination Theory provides the foundational macro-theory explaining how external environmental supports translate into intrinsic motivation. SDT posits that human beings possess three basic psychological needs: autonomy (the experience of volition and self-endorsement), competence (the feeling of mastery and capability), and relatedness (the experience of belonging and security within a social matrix). Within the EDEEMI framework, managerial empowering behavior represents an autonomy-supportive context. When supervisors grant discretion, trust employee judgment, and minimize coercive control, they satisfy these basic psychological needs, directly facilitating the four dimensions of psychological empowerment. However, if a manager’s behavioral delivery is inconsistent, perceived autonomy collapses into managerial abdication or perceived favoritism, thwarting basic psychological need fulfillment.

Social Exchange Theory and the Norm of Reciprocity (Blau, Gouldner)

Social Exchange Theory explicates the psychological bridge connecting empowering leadership to relational psychological contracts and downstream performance. According to Gouldner’s norm of reciprocity, when individuals receive socio-emotional resources, trust, and structural discretion from an authority figure, they incur an internalized psychological obligation to reciprocate with positive attitudes and discretionary effort. In the EDEEMI, employees who perceive authentic managerial empowerment interpret this behavior as high organizational valuation, strengthening their relational psychological contract. This psychological safety net prompts employees to exceed minimal task requirements and exhibit superior interaction quality during customer encounters.

Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) and Social Comparison Theory

Traditional leadership models frequently treat the work group as an undifferentiated aggregate. By contrast, Leader-Member Exchange Theory posits that supervisors inevitably form unique, dyadic relationships of varying quality with different subordinates. Those within the “in-group” experience high latitude, trust, and empowerment, while “out-group” subordinates experience transactional oversight. Applying Festinger’s Social Comparison Theory, the EDEEMI recognizes that employees do not evaluate managerial empowerment in an isolated cognitive vacuum; they compare their received autonomy and delegation to that granted to their peers. High empowerment disparity triggers feelings of relative deprivation, distributive injustice, and cognitive dissonance, disrupting team cohesion and neutralizing the positive motivational effects typically expected from empowering leadership.

7. Validity

The psychometric validity of the Empowerment Disparity and Employee Empowerment Model Inventory was evaluated by Kanjanakan, Wang, and Kim (2023) using rigorous multi-source structural equation modeling. The validation sample comprised three distinct, matched respondent groups across premier tourist destinations in Thailand: departmental managers (N = 104), their direct frontline employees (N = 416), and service customers (N = 832), linked through nested identifiers.

Convergent Validity

Convergent validity was evaluated by assessing factor loadings and Average Variance Extracted (AVE) values for all latent variables:

• All standardized factor loadings for the 38 measurement items were statistically significant at p < .01, with standardized coefficients ranging from .71 to .89 across subscales, well exceeding the conventional threshold of .50 (and the preferred .70).
• The Average Variance Extracted (AVE) for each construct surpassed the .50 benchmark recommended by Fornell and Larcker (1981), demonstrating that the latent constructs capture over half of the variance in their respective indicator sets rather than measurement error.
• Composite Reliability (CR) values for all constructs ranged from .83 to .91, surpassing the standard .70 cut-off and demonstrating strong shared variance among indicators.

Discriminant Validity

Discriminant validity was established via two complementary psychometric tests:

• Fornell-Larcker Criterion: The square root of the AVE for every latent construct was strictly greater than the bivariate inter-construct correlation coefficients for any corresponding pair of constructs. Concurrently, the AVE for each construct exceeded the squared correlation (R²) with all other constructs in the model, demonstrating that each dimension represents a distinct conceptual entity.
• Cross-Loading Inspection: No individual indicator exhibited cross-loadings onto non-target factors that exceeded its designated factor loading, confirming construct separation among the sub-dimensions of psychological empowerment, relational contract, and customer interaction quality.

Construct and Criterion-Related Validity

The nomological network hypothesized by Kanjanakan et al. (2023) demonstrated strong criterion-related and predictive validity. Structural equation modeling confirmed that:

• Managerial empowering behavior positively predicted employee psychological empowerment (β = .48, p < .001) and strengthened the relational psychological contract (β = .42, p < .001).
• Psychological empowerment significantly mediated the relationship between leadership behavior and employee-delivered customer interaction quality (β = .37, p < .01).
• Moderating Effect of Empowerment Disparity: Multi-level interaction analyses confirmed that higher empowerment disparity significantly attenuated the beneficial effects of managerial empowering behavior on both psychological contract strength and interaction quality. In teams with high empowerment disparity, the positive association between leadership behavior and employee psychological empowerment was diminished by more than 40%, demonstrating criterion validity for the disparity construct.

8. Reliability

The EDEEMI demonstrates exceptional internal consistency across all subscales and constituent factors. In the primary validation study, reliability was appraised utilizing both Cronbach’s alpha (α) and Composite Reliability (CR) coefficients derived from confirmatory factor analytic output:

• Managerial Empowering Behavior: Demonstrated high composite reliability (CR = .90; Cronbach’s α = .89), indicating that the 8 delegative items reliably capture the overarching behavioral construct.
• Psychological Empowerment (Overall): Exhibited a composite reliability of CR = .91, with sub-dimension reliabilities reaching: Meaning (α = .88, CR = .88), Competence (α = .85, CR = .86), Self-Determination (α = .89, CR = .89), and Impact (α = .87, CR = .88).
• Relational Psychological Contract: The 9-item scale demonstrated high internal consistency (CR = .89; Cronbach’s α = .88), confirming measurement stability across items assessing career mapping, mutual reciprocity, and organizational loyalty.
• Customer-Perceived Interaction Quality: Achieved an overall composite reliability of CR = .91, with strong subscale reliabilities across Attitude (α = .86, CR = .87), Behavior (α = .88, CR = .89), and Expertise (α = .84, CR = .85).

Cross-language translation and back-translation procedures (English to Thai and Thai back to English) conducted in accordance with established international cross-cultural testing guidelines yielded high semantic and conceptual equivalence. Split-sample reliability coefficients across regional subgroups in Thailand yielded non-significant variance (all ΔCR < .03), demonstrating measurement stability across diverse demographic strata.

9. Factor Analysis

The factorial structure and dimensionality of the EDEEMI were evaluated through a sequence of exploratory and confirmatory factor analytic procedures.

Assessment of Common Method Variance

Because organizational studies often rely on self-reported questionnaires that risk common method bias, the authors conducted two procedural and statistical tests:

• Multi-Source Data Architecture: By gathering independent ratings from managers (empowering behaviors), employees (psychological empowerment and psychological contract), and customers (service interaction quality), the research design procedurally eliminated common source variance across the predictor, mediator, and outcome variables.
• Harman’s Single-Factor Test: An unrotated principal axis factoring analysis entered all 38 measurement items simultaneously. The single largest extracted factor accounted for only 33.52% of the total variance, well below the conservative 50.0% threshold. This confirmed that common method bias was not an impediment to structural inference.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) Fit Indices

A full measurement Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) was conducted using maximum likelihood estimation in AMOS/Mplus to test the hypothesized multi-dimensional, second-order model against alternative rival nested models. The hypothesized 38-item multi-construct model demonstrated good fit to the empirical data:

• Chi-Square Goodness of Fit: χ² = 893.567, degrees of freedom (df) = 395, χ²/df = 2.26 (p = .000). The ratio of χ² to df fell comfortably below the recommended 3.0 ceiling.
• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): RMSEA = 0.060 (90% Confidence Interval: .055 – .065), satisfying the benchmark of ≤ .06 for acceptable-to-close fit.
• Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI): TLI = 0.94, surpassing the standard .90 threshold.
• Comparative Fit Index (CFI): CFI = 0.93, indicating satisfactory incremental model fit relative to the null independence model.
• Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): SRMR = 0.048, falling below the established .08 cut-off value.

Alternative model testing verified that collapsing the four psychological empowerment dimensions into a single general factor resulted in significant fit deterioration (Δχ²(6) = 412.18, p < .001). Similarly, combining employee-perceived psychological contract items with psychological empowerment items worsened fit (Δχ²(8) = 638.45, p < .001), substantiating the multidimensional structure of the EDEEMI instrument.

10. Instrument / Measurement Tool

• Test Type: Multi-Source Organizational Inventory / Diagnostic Rating Questionnaire.
• Format: Available in paper-and-pencil inventory format and digital administration platforms.
• Target Respondent Populations: Organizational leaders/managers, direct frontline employees, and interacting consumers/clients.
• Applicable Demographics: Working adults aged 18 years and older (inclusive of young adults 18–29, early career 30–39, and mid-to-late career individuals 40–64+).
• Languages Available: English (original validation base) and Thai (cross-culturally validated via back-translation).
• Total Item Count: 38 items distributed across four substantive instrument sections:
  • Managerial Empowering Behavior: 8 items
  • Psychological Empowerment: 12 items (3 Meaning, 3 Competence, 3 Self-Determination, 3 Impact)
  • Relational Psychological Contract: 9 items
  • Customer-Perceived Interaction Quality: 9 items (3 Attitude, 3 Behavior, 3 Expertise)
• Response Scale: Standardized 7-point Likert scale:
  • 1 = Strongly Disagree
  • 2 = Disagree
  • 3 = Somewhat Disagree
  • 4 = Neutral (Neither Agree nor Disagree)
  • 5 = Somewhat Agree
  • 6 = Agree
  • 7 = Strongly Agree
• Scoring Rules:
  • All items are positively keyed; no reverse coding is required.
  • Subscale Mean Scores: Calculated by summing the item ratings within each specific dimension and dividing by the total number of items in that dimension.
  • Psychological Empowerment Composite: Derived by calculating the arithmetic mean of the four sub-dimension averages (Meaning, Competence, Self-Determination, Impact).
  • Customer Interaction Quality Composite: Derived by calculating the mean of the three sub-dimension averages (Attitude, Behavior, Expertise).
  • Empowerment Disparity Calculation: Operationalized as either (a) the absolute difference score between the manager’s self-reported empowering behavior score and an individual subordinate’s perceived empowerment score ($|Score_{Manager} – Score_{Employee}|$), or (b) the within-group variance/standard deviation of perceived empowerment across employees reporting to the same focal manager.

11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year

• Publication Year: 2023.
• Commercial Status: Non-commercial instrument. The scale is placed in the public domain for scholarly research and educational diagnostic use.
• Fee: There is no fee or licensing cost required for non-commercial academic research, organizational instruction, or pedagogical training.
• Permissions Information: Researchers and practitioners may administer the inventory without prior written permission, provided that full academic citation and attribution are extended to the developers (Kanjanakan, Wang, & Kim, 2023) in any resulting publications, theses, or organizational reports. Any commercial software adaptation or proprietary redistribution requires written licensing consent from the corresponding author, Prof. Peter B. Kim ([email protected]).

12. References

• Blau, P. M. (1964). Exchange and power in social life. John Wiley & Sons.
• Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2000). The “what” and “why” of goal pursuits: Human needs and the self-determination of behavior. Psychological Inquiry, 11(4), 227–268. https://doi.org/10.1207/S15327965PLI1104_01
• Fornell, C., & Larcker, D. F. (1981). Evaluating structural equation models with unobservable variables and measurement error. Journal of Marketing Research, 18(1), 39–50. https://doi.org/10.1177/002224378101800104
• Gouldner, A. W. (1960). The norm of reciprocity: A preliminary statement. American Sociological Review, 25(2), 161–178. https://doi.org/10.2307/2092623
• Graen, G. B., & Uhl-Bien, M. (1995). Relationship-based approach to leadership: Development of leader-member exchange (LMX) theory of leadership over 25 years: Applying a multi-level multi-domain perspective. The Leadership Quarterly, 6(2), 219–247. https://doi.org/10.1016/1048-9843(95)90036-5
• Kanjanakan, P., Wang, P. Q., & Kim, P. B. (2023). The empowering, the empowered, and the empowerment disparity: A multilevel analysis of the integrated model of employee empowerment. Tourism Management, 94, 104635. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tourman.2022.104635
• Rousseau, D. M. (1995). Psychological contracts in organizations: Understanding written and unwritten agreements. SAGE Publications. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781452231594
• Spreitzer, G. M. (1995). Psychological empowerment in the workplace: Dimensions, measurement, and validation. Academy of Management Journal, 38(5), 1442–1465. https://doi.org/10.2307/256865

13. Items of the Scale (Questionnaire)