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Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 15 (2011) 2907–2911

WCES 2011

Relationships between Psychological Empowerment with Work

Motivation and Withdrawal Intention among Secondary School
Principals in Malaysia
Chan Yuen Fooka*, Linton Brintenb, Gurnam Kaur Sidhuc, Foo Say Fooid
ac
Faculty of Education, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia
b
SMK Tun Abdul Razak, Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia
d
Faculty of Educational Studies, Universiti Putra Malaysia, Malaysia

Abstract

This study attempts to investigate factors that influence the psychological empowerment with work motivation and work
withdrawal intention of school principals in Malaysia. The sample population comprised school principals. A total of 101 self-
administered questionnaires were analysed. Pearson product moment correlation coefficients (Pearson r’s) or Point bi-serial (rpb)
coefficients were computed between the psychological empowerment total scores and those of the independent variables (or sub-
variables). Total scores from the four psychological empowerment dimensions and the PE-Overall were correlated individually
with scores from the independent variables of Work Motivation and Work Withdrawal Intention. Results indicated all five
aspects of psychological empowerment (PE-Overall, PE-Meaning, PE-Competence, PE-Self-determination and PE-Impact)
correlated positively and significantly with the Intrinsic Work motivation domain. This study also proves that when withdrawal
intentions increased, the dimensional component levels of psychological empowerment decreased correspondingly.

Keywords: Pychological empowerment; work motivation; work withdrawal intention; leadership; principalship

1. Introduction

Empowerment as a psychological state has been labelled and defined differently. Terms such as self-
actualization, charisma, self-efficacy; locus of control, enabling or synergy have frequently been used (Pinder, 1998;
Zimmerman, 1990). Conger & Kanungo (1988), as well as Thomas & Velthouse (1990) emphasised the importance
of empowerment to elucidate human motivation, particularly in relation to intrinsic work motivation. Subsequently,
Spreitzer (1995a, 1995b), provided a more comprehensive 'model' of intrinsic work/task motivation. In this study,
the work of Conger & Kanungo (1988) has been considered the 'beginning' point of the 'newer' conception of
empowerment as a cognitive concept in relation to intrinsic task motivation.

2. Literature Review

The early work of Conger & Kanungo (1988) that was further extended by Thomas & Velthouse (1990) formed
the building block for the 1995 concept of psychological empowerment developed by Spreitzer. Spreitzer (1995a)
who summarised psychological empowerment as a motivational construct which manifested four cognitions:
meaning, competence, self-determination, and impact. The four dimensions, she argued, combine additively to
create the resultant mindset that is an overall construct of psychological empowerment.

1877–0428 © 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license.
doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2011.04.212
2908 Chan Yuen Fook et al. / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 15 (2011) 2907–2911

With regards to 'motivation' presently, there are numerous conflicting theories of human motivation. However,
Owens (1995) believes that there is a general scholarly agreement, that when the variation in human behaviour in
organisations is observed, at least three motivational features are apparent. First, the pattern of choice in making
decisions; second, the critical indicator of motivation lies in the persistency with which one pursues the chosen
course of action and third, the behavioural factor linked to motivation is the intensity a person adopts when doing
something (Owens, 1995). Davis & Wilson’s (2000), adopted the concept of ‘intrinsic motivation’ as
interchangeable with ‘intrinsic empowerment’. After reviewing the basic postulates of work motivation theories, it
was decided to include motivational elements based on Herzberg’s Dual-Factor Theory of Work Motivation in the
conceptual framework (1966). The researchers believe that this theory has practicalities comparable to most of the
other theories on work motivation. In this study, work motivation (based on Herzberg's conception) was investigated
as the independent variable.

* Correponding author
E-Mail address: yuenfookchan@yahoo.com
Meyer and Allen (1997) when investigating withdrawal intentions and psychological empowerment stated that
employees who feel that they are being forced to maintain membership of an organisation mostly because of
economic, personal and social reasons, might exhibit continuance organizational commitment (Clugston, 2000;
Jaros, 1997). According to Clugston (2000), such employees are people who think they 'should' or 'ought' to work,
not people who wanted to work. By placing formal power and authority in principalship (Hussein Mahmood, 1994),
the Malaysian education system seems to have ‘fixed’ the principal as the one to be held responsible for practically
any eventuality in a school. It is assumed that anyone who takes on the responsibilities of a school principal will be
facing various types of challenges and pressures (Hoy & Miskel, 1996; Jones, 1988). They must, as Leithwood et al.
(1992) suggested, 'become experts' and “make a difference in what happens in a school educationally” (Drake &
Roe, 1986:151).

3. The study

The target population in this study involved 131 secondary school principals. Self-administered questionnaires
were obtained and analysed from 101 randomly selected school principals. The Psychological Empowerment Scale
or PES developed by Spreitzer (1995a) was first adapted and later administered to principals in Malaysia. The
reliability and validity of the four dimensions of the PES instrument were determined through principal component
analysis, Pearson’s Correlations, and calculation of Cronbach’s Alpha through a test-retest design. The alpha
reliability coefficient for this instrument was regarded as very good as it ranged form 0.78 to 0.83 (DeVellis, 1990).
The SPSS 12.0 was used to analyse the descriptive statistics. Pearson product moment correlation coefficients
(Pearson r’s) or Point bi-serial (rpb) coefficients were computed between the psychological empowerment total
scores and those of the independent variables (or sub-variables) of Work Motivation and Work Withdrawal
Intention in the study. Total scores from the four psychological empowerment dimensions and the PE-Overall were
correlated individually with scores from the independent variables (or factors) of Work Motivation and Work
Withdrawal Intention.

4. Results and discussions

4.1 Relationships between psychological empowerment and work motivation variables

The Educational Work Components Study Questionnaire (EWCSQ) assessed the motivational variables in the study.
Basically there are six dimensions comprising the ‘Work motivation’ (WM) construct as theorised by authors of the
original EWCSQ (Miskel & Heller, 1973). In addition, the six dimensions have been classified into two larger
domains of motivational variables (or sub-variables): the intrinsic component and the extrinsic component.
Consequently, nine different total scores can be created from the EWCSQ, one for each six dimensions, one for the
two larger domains, and a total score for the work motivation construct as a composite (Table 1).
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Table 1. Pearson correlations between total scores on psychological empowerment

and work motivation variables

Work Motivation variables PE-Overall Self-determination Meaning Competence Impact

WSR .089 .144 131 .084 -.064
CDRS .270* .125 .263* .245* .264*
SC .176 .104 .117 .159 .205
TWP .185 .075 .234* .211* .094
CS -.108 -.061 -.127 -.096 -.077
PPCD .158 .217* .218* .088 .000
Intrinsic domain .262* .206* .319* .241* .101
Extrinsic domain .025 .017 -.025 .025 .068
Work Motivation-Overall .228* .178 .256* .212* .112
*p < .05 (two-tailed).

WSR: Willingness to Seek Reward in spite of Uncertainty versus Avoidance of Uncertainty.

CDRS: Competitiveness Desirability and Reward of Success.
SC: Surround Concern.
TWP: Tolerance for Work Pressure.
CS: Conservative Security.
PPCD: Potential for Personal Challenge.

The magnitudes of correlations between the two sets of variables (psychological empowerment and work
motivation) ranged from .017 to .319 (Table 1). These values indicate ‘very low to small’ degree of linear
relationships between the bivariate variables. The overall results also suggested that the majority of the work
motivation variables tend to exhibit negligible to low linear relationships with the psychological empowerment total
scores. A number of these bivariate correlations are significant. For example, bivariate correlation between total PE-
Overall and total Work Motivation-Overall is .228, p < .05. At the dimensional levels, Meaning and Competence
registered r value of .256, p < .01; and .212, p < .05, respectively with Work Motivation-Overall total score. Four
sets of total scores on PE also had r values reaching statistical significance with CDRS: PE-Overall, r = .270, p <
.01; Meaning, r = .263, p < .01; Competence, r = .245, p < .01; and Impact, r = .264, p < .01. Out of the five sets of
total scores on PE, only Impact did not show significant linear relationship with the Intrinsic domain of motivation
(comprising WSR, CDRS, TWP and PPCD). However, the entire total scores on PE (PE-Overall, Self-
determination, Competence, Meaning, and Impact) have insignificant to very low correlations with the Extrinsic
domain of work motivation (comprising SC and CS).

These results tend to support the theory that employees who experienced a high level of psychological
empowerment were generally more intrinsically motivated than their colleagues who perceived themselves to be
disempowered (Rose, 2007; Spreitzer & Quinn, 2000; Thomas, 2000). In addition, the results further indicated that
certain motivational elements should be added to the work situation of school principals with the hope of increasing
the levels of psychological empowerment. The strengths of the significant linear relationships were, however,
mostly considered ‘weak’ according to the ‘rule-of-thumb’ by Elifson et al. (1998). In a similar vein, the results
showed that the same motivational variables might not have significant linear relationship with all the dimensions of
psychological empowerment. This situation would imply that altering certain motivational variable might not
change the magnitude of scores on certain PE dimensions. In other words, though intrinsic motivational factors tend
to have positive and at times significant linear relationship with psychological empowerment variables, there are
exceptions.

4.2 Relationships between psychological empowerment and withdrawal intentions

The results in Table 2 indicated that total scores on psychological empowerment (dimensional or overall) have
negative linear relationships with Intention to Quit (WIS-IQ) scores for the school principals with r’s ranging from -
.121 to - .376. Significant relationships were observed between scores of Intention to quit and PE-Overall, r = - .253,
p < .05, and between Intention to quit and Meaning (PE-ME), r = - .376, p < .01. However, relationship between
Self-determination (PE-SD), Competence (PE-COM), or Impact (PE-IM), and Intention to quit scores, was found
insignificant. The results seemed to suggest that the degree of variations in the psychological empowerment, overall
or at dimensional level, might not be influenced highly by intentions to quit among the school principals in the
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study. The results also indicated that the overall and dimensional levels of PE for the study sample were negatively
associated with the intentions to quit the Education Services.

Similar pattern of results was found for scores on psychological empowerment when they were correlated with
scores on the Intention to Relinquish position (WIS-IR) scale. All the r’s have negative values ranging from - .142
to - .286. However, significant linear relationships were observed between scores of WIS-IR and PE-Overall, r = -
.206, p < .05, between WIS-IR and PE-IM, r = - .206, p < .05, and between WIS-IR and PE-ME, r = - .286, p < .01.
Based on the criterion suggested by Elifson et al. (1998), the magnitude of these linear associations ranged from
weak to definite. Neither the relationship between PE-SD and WIS-IR, nor that between PE-COM and WIS-IR
scores, was found to be significant. Therefore, there is no co-variation between the school principals’ Self-
determination or the Competence dimension of psychological empowerment, with Intention to Relinquish their
positions. Similar pattern of results was also found for scores on psychological empowerment when they were
correlated with scores on the overall Withdrawal Intention Scale (WIS-Overall). All the r’s have negative values
ranging from - .181 to - .373 indicating that as the mean scores for Intention to Quit and to Relinquish position
decreased the mean scores for PE-Overall and its dimensions will increase.

Table 2. Pearson correlations between total scores on psychological empowerment and scores on
withdrawal intention variables

PE Total score Overall intention To Quit To Relinquish

PE-Overall -.284* -.253* -.249*
Self-determination -.181 -.178 -.142
Meaning -.373* -.376* -.286*
Competence -.178 -.121 -.192
Impact -.211* -.166 -.206*
*p < .05 (two-tailed).

Similarly, significant linear relationships were only observed between scores of WIS-Overall and PE-Overall, r =
- .284, p < .01, between WIS-Overall and PE-IM, r = - .211, p < .05, and between WIS-Overall and PE-ME, r = -
.373, p < .01. Neither the relationship between PE-SD and WIS-Overall, nor that between PE-COM and WIS-
Overall scores was found statistically significant. The above results seemed to indicate good support to the argument
to include Withdrawal Intentions as a set of variables in the study. In addition, other studies reviewed had also
suggested that Withdrawal Intentions tend to cast significant influence on employees’ PE levels.

The results showed that the overall psychological empowerment scores, all the three Withdrawal Intention
variables were negative and significantly correlated. However, the strengths of these linear relationships could only
be considered as small to moderate (Elifson et al., 1998). This justifies that principals who believed they were
capable of doing their jobs or perceived they had sufficient autonomy in doing their work might not systematically
experience intentions to withdraw (O'Neill & Arendt, 2008). On the other hand, principals who valued or found their
work personally meaningful would be more likely to feel significantly disempowered whenever their intentions to
withdraw emerged. This observation is another indication that the PE construct exhibits multi-dimensional
properties.

5. Implications and conclusion

In conclusion it can be said that this study had succeeded in showcasing the importance of psychological
empowerment among school principals in Malaysia. The results of the study indicated that all the five aspects of
psychological empowerment (PE-Overall, PE-Meaning, PE-Competence, PE-Self-determination and PE-Impact)
correlated positively and significantly with the Intrinsic Work Motivation domain. The study has also helped to
provide evidence to further refine the concept of PE and to add empirical data in understanding employee
empowerment from a non-western work environment (Eylon & Bamberger, 2000). By adding elements contributing
to Intrinsic Work Motivation into their jobs, the principals might possibly experience improved levels of
psychological empowerment. Efforts to reduce the feelings of wanting to leave the Education Service or to
relinquish positions as school principals there are probably other possible ways to help overcome, or reduce the
 Chan Yuen Fook et al. / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 15 (2011) 2907–2911 2911

principals’ sense of being disempowered. Reducing feelings of withdrawal is considered important because the
study indicated that when withdrawal intentions increased, the overall or dimensional component levels of
psychological empowerment decreased correspondingly. To reiterate, this study, through its findings has contributed
to literature on psychological empowerment in a meaningful way.

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