Today I have established a new conservative motto: Distrust Empowerment. Today as I write this post there are exactly four Google hits for "distrust empowerment". I find the following paras appropriate in one of the contexts I found:
Employees may perceive an empowerment strategy as a way for the organization to
unfairly make them more responsible without a commensurate rise in wages and salary. This is a difficult concern for management to address, but failure to at least attempt to address this issue can doom the empowerment initiative (Paul, et al. 2000).
Employees may distrust empowerment initiatives if organizational reward systems are
not altered to recognize the shift in responsibility and authority (Gandz, 1990). Only when
employees perceive that organizational reward processes are fair can this concern be alleviated.
So true.
This is the fundamental crux of the value of the motto. A young population, a naive population can always be exhorted towards change for the sake of change. Their incomplete understanding of the nature and responsibility of power and/or the integrity of organizations deeply vested with human interests can lead them to a false sense of distrust. Yet those who can quickly promise a new order can equally inspire naive trust. Isn't this the very nature of 'revolutionary ideas'?
I am not brought to such a conclusion easily. It has taken most of my life to become the kind of conservative individual I am, but it is easy to coin a motto. If there is any inherent value in the converse motto: 'Question Authority', then I think my point can be equally well taken.
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