Effects of Employee Empowerment on Performance in Public Sector: Case of Murang'a Law Courts

Abstract

The study assessed the effect of employee empowerment on performance in public sector: case of Murang'a law courts. Judiciary plays a very important role in delivering justice fairly, impartially and expeditiously, while promoting equal access to justice and advancing local jurisprudence by upholding the rule of law (Mutunga, 2012). This mandate has not yet been fully realized. Consequently, the backlog of cases has been increasing. This has been caused by various intervening factors including one of employee- employer relationships among others. The theory adopted in conceptualizing the objectives was Kanter's structural empowerment theory. The specific objectives were to investigate how psychological, role, organizational and embedded empowerment affected reliability, effectiveness, job turnover and job accomplishments respectively. The   research design for this study was qualitative though with some quantitative data analysis. Target population were be all the fifty two (52) judiciary staff. Primary data was collected using structured questionnaire and was supplemented by secondary data obtained from judiciary and government published reports. Data analysis involved establishment of categories, application of these categories to raw data through coding, tabulation and then drawing conclusions. The process involved establishment of categories, application of these categories to raw data through coding, tabulation and then drawing conclusions. The data collected was checked for completeness ready for analysis then coded. Data was analyzed through the statistical package for social sciences (SPSS version 21) package. Tables and charts were used for further representation for easy understanding and analysis. Inferential statistic was used to establish the relationship between performance and employee empowerment.

The conceptual model used in the study was: Y= β0 + β1X1 + β2X2+ β3X3+ β4X4+ Є