Learning from organizational theory to build organizational empowerment

This paper aims to spark interest among community psychologists to become more involved in promoting organizational empowerment (OE) and to recognize that interdisciplinary efforts are required to reach this goal. In this spirit, first we identify for community psychologists OE theory and constructs drawn from the organizational studies literature that we believe provide useful adjuncts to the OE work emerging in community psychology. We find several OE key constructs that are particularly valuable for community psychologists wanting to promote empowering organizations. Second, we describe OE intervention strategies developed by European community psychologists, specifically Francescato and colleagues' (PMOA) Participatory Multi-faceted Organizational Assessment. PMOA integrates theoretical concepts from several disciplines stressing particularly those taken from organizational psychology, to develop theoretically driven methodological interventions to promote empowered and empowering organizations. We conclude by presenting some ideas on why it is particularly important in this era of globalization that more community psychologist get involved in understanding and promoting organizational empowerment.