In management terms, empowerment is the act of giving power and authority to a person to perform his designated tasks in whatever way he wants, and having the power in decision making. Simply to say, a person is allowed to complete his job scope with minimal supervision.
Traditionally, an employee has to seek the permission of a superior before making a decision. In such a system, time is wasted in the process of seeking and waiting for approval. Instead of wasting time in this process, the time can be spent to solve a more critical problem at hand.
After all, time translates to money. As such, an employee should be empowered for the tasks he is very familiar with to begin with.
However, the older generations of management somehow express the difficulty of having to accept such a concept. Instead of giving freedom to their subordinates, they prefer to be involved in every decision to be made. We do see the similarities of this act with the autocratic ruling system where one supreme ruler sits above all.
Those against the concept of empowerment are probably too narrow-minded to accept something new. Either that or they feel more comfortable with the power in their grasp, instead of surrendering it to someone in a lower hierarchy.
Or they simply feel threatened having to surrender part or all of their power to someone else, with fear that the other person might topple him in the near future.
Regardless of the resistant minority, larger companies have adopted this system and the results are somewhat fruitful.
