Faculty empowerment and the changing university environment Research Paper

Faculty empowerment and the changing university environment - Research Paper Example Empowerment acts as a lubricant in reducing the workloads or job stresses of the employees with respect to their profession. Globalization and Liberalization has increased the requirement of empowerment because of the diversity of workforce working in the current organizations. Leadership styles are changing day by day in organizations because of the immense changes happening in the business world at present. Many of the traditional management concepts were given way for scientific management principles at present. For example, earlier, most of the organizations encourage autocratic management styles in their workplaces in order to derive maximum out of the employees. Moreover, traditional organizations encouraged only the individual works. However, modern organizations adopt democratic style management in their workplaces and they also encourage team work in their workplaces. Relationship building is accepted as the core of every organizational function at present. Without employee empowerment programs it is difficult for organizations to prepare their employees capable of meeting the present and future challenges. Most of the prominent organizations are working at an international environment at present. For example, most of the prominent universities have diverse instructors and students. For example, in many of the American and British universities, both the students and faculties constitute people from all over the world. Many Indian and Pakistani students and faculties are studying and working in these universities at present. Because of such extreme diversity in such campuses, the needs of the local students and foreign students may clash each other. Even the diverse faculties face difficulties in their profession because of the cultural differences between their country and that of other countries. Empowerment is the only way to prepare the faculties capable of meeting their professional challenges in diverse environment. â€Å"Empowerment is the proce ss of increasing the capacity of individuals or groups to make choices and to transform those choices into desired actions and outcomes† (Empowerment, 2009). It is difficult for a person to achieve the desired targets in his personal and professional life without seeking help from other sources. Moreover, the complexity of the job functions are growing day by day and without proper guidance, it is difficult for the employees to complete their tasks independently. Some employees may have better ideas; however, in order to convert such ideas in to practice, empowerment is required. For example, it is difficult for a professor to excel in his profession if he fails to update his knowledge. A physics professor who is around 50 years old may not have many ideas about the current developments in electronics or computer science. The inventions happening in the electronic world is huge and without empowerment or training, that professor cannot update his knowledge. â€Å"Empowerment is a multi-dimensional social process that helps people gain control over their own lives. It is a process that fosters power in people for use in their own lives, their communities and in their society, by acting on issues they define as important (Page & Czuba, 1999) Empowerment is a general term which is applied in almost all the segments of life activities nowadays. It is now applied as a core concept in education, politics and economic circles. Human often tries to improve the quality of all the life segments. The quality improvement of life is not possible without empowerment. For example, nowadays people talk about quality education. Quality education is possible only if the educational aids

Advantages and disadvantages of using mail surveys Essay

Advantages and disadvantages of using mail surveys - Essay Example The respondents also have an interest in the subject of the survey (Mail Surveys, 2005). The person administering the survey should also possess beforehand a mailing list of the respondents (Mail Surveys, 2005). Mail survey is practical to use because the researcher need not consume a lot of time setting an appointment with the respondent for a personal interview or dialing each of the telephone numbers for a phone interview. In a phone interview, there is a possibility that the respondent cannot be contacted due to a number of reasons (e.g. sudden important appointment of respondent, emergency meeting). In a mail survey, once all the letters are delivered to the post office, the burden of delivery is shifted to the postal network (Mail Surveys, 2005). Mailing cost is cheaper (Mail Surveys, 2005) than commuting personally to reach a respondent. This method can reach a wider sample size because there is no personal interaction between the researcher and the respondents (Mail Surveys, 2005). Respondents are not time-pressured to answer the questionnaires but can do it any time at their convenience (Mail Surveys, 2005). Moreover, bias of the interviewer is reduced with lack of personal interaction with the respondent (Mail Surveys, 2005). It is appropriate in soliciting customer suggestions and proposals or feedback on the changes to be implemented by an organization (Mail Surveys, 2004). This is also an effective approach in acquiring sensitive information such as personal feedbacks of respondents who are discontented or disgruntled with a service or organization (Mail Surveys, 2004). Mail survey is disadvantageous because the respondent may simply ignore the questionnaire and not take the effort to answer it and mail it back. In short, there is no assurance that the target respondent will respond to the mail survey (Mail Surveys, 2004). People with low literacy usually have low response rate (around 20