Transformations  in
Business & Economics

A Comparative Study of Employee Empowerment in Danish and Lithuanian Hotels
Rūta Kazlauskaitė, Ilona Bučiūnienė, Linas Turauskas, Laura Šalčiuvienė

ABSTRACT. The paper looks into employee empowerment from a comparative HRM perspective. A survey of customer-contact employees at upscale hotels in Denmark and Lithuania was conducted to compare and contrast the implementation of organisational empowerment in the two samples and to study the impact of organisational empowerment on work-related attitudes (psychological empowerment, job satisfaction, and affective commitment). As hypothesised, significant differences between the Danish and Lithuanian samples were found in the levels of organisational empowerment and job satisfaction. The levels of organisational empowerment and job satisfaction were higher in Denmark, a country with lower power distance and uncertainty avoidance. No significant differences were found in the levels of psychological empowerment and affective commitment between the samples. Research findings showed a statistically significant positive relationship between organisational empowerment and all three measured attitudes in both samples. Besides psychological empowerment was found to have a positive impact on job satisfaction, while the latter had impact on affective commitment.

KEYWORDS: empowerment, commitment, job satisfaction, upscale hotels, Denmark, Lithuania.

JEL classification: M12, J28.