The effects of employees' empowerment on job satisfaction: empirical analysis of the demand-control model.

The paper investigates the effects of employees' empowerment on different forms of job satisfaction in British workplaces, while controlling for the presence of job demands. Using the 2011 Workplace Employment Relations Survey (WERS) and conducting logit estimations, we explore the demand-control model, a widely used model in organizational psychology. The model proposes that imbalances between the demands placed on employees and the control they have in their job negatively affects employee wellbeing and health. Re-evaluating individual forms of employee involvement practices in the context of the demand-control model, we examine the individual effects of job demands and job control on nine forms of job satisfaction, as well as the effects of the types of jobs identified by the model based on the degree of imbalance between demands and control. In addition, we test whether these effects are moderated or amplified by the presence of equality policies in the firm, which may affect employees' sense of control. The results suggest that employees are more likely to be satisfied in low-strain jobs (i.e. jobs with low demands and high control) than in high-strain jobs (i.e. jobs with high demands and low control). On the other hand, employees in passive jobs (i.e. jobs with low demand and low control) are less likely to be satisfied with achievement and influence than employees in low-strain jobs. Importantly, we find that equality plans moderate the negative effects of job demands and strengthen the effects of job control