Abstract
This study examines the nature and relationship between psychological climate, psychological empowerment and empowered behaviour in a hotel setting. It collects data on employees perceptions of these constructs in a luxury hotel group located in the UK Psychological climate is measured with a questionnaire which was criterion driven (Schnieder and Salvaggio 2002) and evolved from a number of previous scales that captured different dimensions of the construct. The study focuses on psychological empowerment as a tool to manage the quality of service delivery and psychological state of the empowered individual. It uses Spreitzer's (1995) conceptualisation of the psychological empowerment construct rather than Menon's (2001) conceptualisation. Empowered behaviour is conceptualised as a one-dimensional construct and is measured with a questionnaire developed from the literature. The data revealed that the employees were relatively well educated, worked fulltime and there was a relatively low labour turn over. A series of Exploratory and Confirmatory Factor Analyses revealed that the psychological climate comprised four dimensions (customer orientation, managerial support, information and communication and internal service). These were identified to enhance employees feelings of psychological empowerment (meaning, competence and influence), and subsequently employees perception of their ability to deliver empowered service to their customers. The data also indicated that psychological empowerment was conceptualised as having three dimensions (Dimitriades 2005; Hancer and George 2003; Fulford and Enz 1995), rather than the original four dimensions (Spreitzer 1995b). It also indicated instances of perceptual differences in the perceptions of the three constructs and their dimensions. Implications of the study for theory, management and future research were advanced.