Roles of Employees' Social Capital in the Relationship Between Empowerment and Cynicism

Year 2020, Volume: 20 Issue: 1, 43 - 55, 30.01.2020

Anil Boz Semerci

https://doi.org/10.21121/eab.539372

Cited By: 3

Abstract

This paper aimed to explain the relationship between organizational
cynicism, empowerment and the individual's sense of social capital in terms of
gender. In this direction the
obtained data were analyzed by structural equation model. The results indicate
that structural and psychological empowerments have reducing effect on
organizational cynicism, and social capital has a moderator role between
psychological empowerment and organizational cynicism for both women and men. However,
women with high social capital have a greater reduction of psychological
empowerment on organizational cynicism than men with high social capital. These findings offer few
recommendations for managers and employees. Managers to decrease employees’
negative attitudes and to ease cynicism may use empowerment. However, even
employees perceive as psychologically empowered, managers also should consider
some other individual sources such as social capital that can buffer or
strengthen the cynicism. Particularly for women employees, managers can focus
more on psychological and social resources in order to decrease negative work
consequences. Such an investigation
is necessary to reveal the predictors of cynicism as one of the important
concept in organizational behavior and management literature. It is also
valuable to understand to why some people are so much more cynical about their
organizations than others.

Keywords

Organizational cynicism, structural empowerment, psychological empowerment, social capital

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