PSYCHOLOGICAL EMPOWERMENT AND EMPLOYEES’ RESPONSES TO NEGATIVE WORK EVENTS IN RESTAURANTS AND FAST FOOD OUTLETS IN BAYELSA STATE
This study examined the relationship between psychological empowerment and employee responses to negative work events among employees of restaurants and fast food outlets in Bayelsa State. The cross-sectional and correlational research designs were employed in the study. A structured questionnaire for psychological empowerment and employee responses to negative work events with Chronbach alpha reliability coefficients greater than .70 was used to generate primary data for the study. The respondents involved 220 drawn from 35 restaurants and fast food outlets in Bayelsa State. Data so collected were analysed with descriptive and inferential statistics. Hypotheses formulated for the study were analysed with the Pearson’s Product Moment Correlation Coefficient (PPMC) at the 0.05 level of significance. The results for all the hypotheses are r = .656, -.887, .716, -.604, .818, -.724, .746 and -.864 respectively for hypotheses 1 to 8 which are all significant @ p = .000 < .05 for all hypotheses. These results indicated that there is a significant relationship between all the dimensions of psychological empowerment and employees’ positive or negative responses to unpleasant work events. Given these findings, it was concluded that there is a significant empirical relationship between psychological empowerment and employee responses to negative work events among restaurants and fast food employees in Bayelsa State. Based on this conclusion, it was recommended among others that managers of restaurants and fast food outlets should therefore focus on crafting work environments that stimulate psychological empowerment by making tasks meaningful, offer prospects for skill improvement, permit job autonomy, and emphasizing the impact of employees’ contributions so as to increase positive responses and reduce negative responses.
Keywords: psychological empowerment, negative work events, meaning, competence, autonomy, impact
