Empowerment Theory, Research, and Application

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Perkins, D.D., & Zimmerman, M.A. (1995). Empowerment theory, research, and
application. American Journal of Community Psychology, 23, 569-579.

EMPOWERMENT THEORY, RESEARCH, AND

APPLICATION

Douglas D. Perkins1

University of Utah

Marc A. Zimmerman1

University of Michigan

1
Correspondence regarding this special issue or this introductory article may
be sent to either Doug Perkins [Link]@[Link] or Marc
Zimmerman marcz@[Link].

Abstract: This introduction to the special issue briefly reviews the meaning and
significance of the empowerment concept and problems associated with the
proliferation of interest in empowerment. We identify some of the topics not
included in this issue and relate those to the many broad and diverse areas of
psychological empowerment theory and community-based research and
intervention that are covered. We present synopses of each article along with
some of the themes and lessons cutting across the frameworks, studies, and
applications. These include a wide diversity of settings, fairly representative of
empowerment interventions, and, at the same time, improved clarity (if not
unanimity) of definitions and measurement, which has been a problem in much
empowerment research and intervention.

Key words: psychological empowerment, community empowerment,

community psychology

The Concept of Empowerment

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Empowerment is a construct that links individual strengths and

competencies, natural helping systems, and proactive behaviors to social policy
and social change (Rappaport, 1981, 1984). Empowerment theory, research
and intervention link individual well-being with the larger social and political
environment. Theoretically, the construct connects mental health to mutual
help and the struggle to create a responsive community. It compels us to think
in terms of wellness versus illness, competence versus deficits, and strengths
versus weaknesses. Similarly, empowerment research focuses on identifying
capabilities instead of cataloging risk factors and exploring environmental
influences of social problems instead of blaming victims. Empowerment-
oriented interventions enhance wellness while they also aim to ameliorate
problems, provide opportunities for participants to develop knowledge and
skills, and engage professionals as collaborators instead of authoritative
experts.
Definitions of empowerment abound. We did not ask the authors in this
special issue to adhere to any particular definition. We did, however, ask them
to carefully consider their own conceptions of empowerment and to make their
definitions as clear as possible. Although we urge the reader to compare each
article's conceptualization, they all imply that empowerment is more than the
traditional psychological constructs with which it is sometimes compared or
confused (e.g., self-esteem, self-efficacy, competency, locus of control). The
various definitions are generally consistent with empowerment as "an
intentional ongoing process centered in the local community, involving mutual
respect, critical reflection, caring, and group participation, through which
people lacking an equal share of valued resources gain greater access to and
control over those resources" (Cornell Empowerment Group, 1989) or simply a
process by which people gain control over their lives, democratic participation
in the life of their community (Rappaport, 1987), and a critical understanding of
their environment (Zimmerman, 1992).
Theories of empowerment include both processes and outcomes,
suggesting that actions, activities, or structures may be empowering, and that

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the outcome of such processes result in a level of being empowered (Swift &
Levin, 1987; Zimmerman, in press). Both empowerment processes and
outcomes vary in their outward form because no single standard can fully
capture its meaning in all contexts or populations (Rappaport, 1984;
Zimmerman, 1993). A distinction between empowering processes and
outcomes is critical in order to clearly define empowerment theory.
Empowering processes for individuals might include participation in community
organizations. At the organizational level, empowering processes might
include collective decision-making and shared leadership. Empowering
processes at the community level might include collective action to access
government and other community resources (e.g., media). Empowered
outcomes refer to operationalizations of empowerment that allow us to study
the consequences of empowering processes. Empowered outcomes for
individuals might include situation specific perceived control and resource
mobilization skills. When we are studying organizations, outcomes might
include development of organizational networks, organizational growth, and
policy leverage. Community level empowerment outcomes might include
evidence of pluralism, the existence of organizational coalitions, and accessible
community resources.
Empowerment suggests that participation with others to achieve goals,
efforts to gain access to resources, and some critical understanding of the
sociopolitical environment are basic components of the construct. Applying
this general framework to an organizational level of analysis suggests that
empowerment includes organizational processes and structures that enhance
member participation and improve goal achievement for the organization. At
the community level empowerment refers to collective action to improve the
quality of life in a community and to the connections among community
organizations. Organizational and community empowerment, however, are not
simply a collection of empowered individuals.
A Growing Yet Unfocused Literature on Empowerment
Interest in empowerment as a research topic started gradually. A search

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of the psychological literature (PsycLit) from 1974 to 1986 identified 96 articles

including the root word "empower..." in the title or abstract. From 1987
through 1993, that number increased to 686 journal articles and 283 edited
book chapters. Other social sciences have experienced a similar or even
greater growth of interest in the topic. A search of sociology-related research
(Sociofile) netted 861 articles on empowerment from 1974 through August,
1994. In educational research (ERIC), the number of articles on the topic rose
from 66 between 1966 and the end of 1981 to an astounding 2,261 from 1982
through March, 1994.
As this surfeit of interest and the present issue both make clear,
empowerment has become a vital construct for understanding the
development of individuals, organizations, and communities (Zimmerman, in
press). Thus, in the last 10 or 15 years, empowerment has evolved from the
new, paradigm-challenging concept (Kuhn, 1970) to become itself highly
popular and mainstream in our discipline and many other fields as well.
We must be wary of restricting community psychology by concentrating
too much attention on a single construct. While empowerment does provide
the field with a useful approach for working in communities and is a compelling
construct clearly in need of further research, it is not the only approach nor is it
a panacea. Efforts to exert control in some contexts may actually create,
rather than solve, problems in a person's life. Consider an individual who lives
in an oppressive society where organizing one's community around a social
issue may result in greater authoritarian control and individual and community
disempowerment. Or consider the analogous situation of an urban teenager
who tries to exert some control in his neighborhood by confronting a local
gang. We need to be more precise about the construct and research it as
thoughtfully as other psychological constructs or it will forever remain a warm
and fuzzy, one-size-fits-all concept with no clear or consistent meaning. This
special issue is an attempt to help further specify the usefulness, applicability,
and definition of the construct.
The papers in this special issue, which initially grew out of a Biennial

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Conference on Community Research and Action symposium (Perkins, 1993),

only begin to address the critical need for a comprehensive collection and
coherent synthesis of current community psychological theory, research, and
application of empowerment. It is our aim, however, to advance our
understanding of empowerment by specifying theoretical models of the
processes by which empowerment may develop, by providing research
examples of the many contexts and levels of analysis in which empowerment
may take place, and by analyzing some very promising empowerment-based
approaches to community and organizational intervention. We hope this issue
will help the reader to distinguish those approaches from traditional ones as
well as the many social programs and policies, both old and new, whose use of
empowerment language is mainly empty hype (Perkins, this issue).
Our goal is to push the field to think more clearly about empowerment
theory, research, and intervention. In introducing the concept of
empowerment to community psychology, Rappaport (1981) offered this advice:
"When most people agree with you, worry" (pg. 3). We are worried, not
because people agree with us, rather because empowerment has perhaps
become so ubiquitous that it is actually difficult to avoid. The construct in one
form or another appears in academic circles, the political arena, the community
development and public health professions, the therapeutic community, and
organizational management, to name just a few. At the same time, the
construct is often inadequately conceptualized and loosely defined. We
believe, however, that this means that we need to tighten our thinking and get
to work on specifying the construct.
It is the popularity of the concept coupled with its casual usage that
provided the impetus for this special issue of the journal. We hope this special
issue helps to clarify the empowerment construct by presenting current
examples of, and future directions for, empowerment theory, research, and
intervention. The issue represents multiple disciplines and levels of analysis by
including papers covering community, environmental, applied social,
industrial-organizational, developmental, public health, and political contexts.

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Authors were encouraged to go into lessons learned from their own particular
empowerment-related research to give their papers and the issue as a whole
more depth, clarity, and practical relevance. As Perkins (this issue) points out,
much of the writing done about empowerment often neglects to connect theory
with research, and often leaves empowerment-focused interventions without a
framework for organizing our knowledge.
The Special Issue
This special issue provides three significant contributions to the
empowerment literature. First, it includes papers that integrate empowerment
theory and research. This may be the one area in the empowerment literature
that is most lacking. Second, most of the authors in the issue provide
compatible guiding principles and models for researchers and practitioners
interested in empowerment research and intervention. Third, the special issue
enhances our understanding of the construct across several contexts and levels
of analysis so that we can more rigorously study empowering processes and
develop relevant measures.
Given the wide diversity and sheer numbers of empowerment researchers,
we do not pretend to cover the extent of the literature in a single issue. Even
so, one of our aims in selecting articles to develop for this issue was to fairly
represent the breadth of the empowerment literature relevant to community
psychology. We received no less than 30 article idea proposals for this special
issue. Those not selected for development overlapped substantially with
articles that appear here (e.g., workplace empowerment, health promotion,
coalition building, environmental action, and empowerment theory). Thus,
based on the ideas submitted to us, we feel that the issue reflects a wide
sample of empowerment research and theory in community psychology.
Readers will undoubtedly find gaps in the topics presented, but empowerment
research cannot be covered adequately in a single issue of a journal. We refer
readers to additional collections of empowerment-related articles (e.g., Florin &
Wandersman, 1990; Rappaport, 1984; Serrano-Garcia & Bond, 1994;
Wallerstein & Bernstein, 1994). An analysis of empowering aspects of

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collaborative research methods also deserves special attention elsewhere (see,

for example, Fetterman, Wandersman & Kaftarian, in press). Nevertheless,
empowerment methodology is represented in many of the articles in this issue.
The articles included in this issue cut across not only a wide range of
content areas, but all stages in the applied research process (conceptualization
to research to application). Zimmerman's article focuses on the development
of empowerment theory and measurement. He points out that, as an
open-ended construct, psychological empowerment takes on different forms in
different contexts, populations, and developmental stages and so cannot be
adequately captured by a single operationalization, divorced from other
situational conditions. He argues that efforts to develop a universal, global
measure of empowerment may not be a feasible or appropriate goal. He
begins with a theoretical discussion of the differences between empowerment
values, empowering processes, and empowered outcomes, which may provide
the clearest and most specific criteria for measuring empowerment. This
general framework cuts across individual, organizational, and community levels
of analysis. Zimmerman recognizes the interdependence of these levels but
emphasizes (individual-level) psychological empowerment because it is a goal
common to all levels of intervention. The framework presented includes
intrapersonal, interactional, and behavioral components. Research from two
different empowering voluntary organizations is used to illustrate both their
idiographic measurement differences and their nomothetic theoretical
commonalities.
The remaining articles examine various empowerment-based social or
organizational interventions. Spreitzer's article separates Zimmerman's
concept of intrapersonal empowerment into the four dimensions of meaning
(e.g., beliefs, attitudes), competence, self-determination, and impact (or
efficacy) and applies it to the field of organizational management. Her
research focuses on the specific organizational (work unit) structural and
cultural antecedents of workplace empowerment and on empowerment-related
outcomes (e.g., innovative behaviors and role effectiveness) for individual

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middle managers. Her results suggest that the creation of an empowering

workplace is not a straightforward proposition. Since business organizations
operate differently than voluntary ones, it is critical that the many
management scholars and business practitioners interested in workplace
empowerment engage in more careful and systematic research as Spreitzer
has done.
Maton and Salem's paper views empowerment in general terms as a
process enabling individuals, through participation with others, to achieve their
primary personal goals. Such a definition appropriately emphasizes individual
motivations but also collective action and allows the process to be examined
across a variety of community groups, organizations, and settings. They apply
this framework in an in-depth analysis of three different types of settings (a
religious fellowship, a mutual help organization for the severely mentally ill,
and an education program for urban African-Americans) in order to identify
some of the qualities of those settings which appear to empower their
members. In each case, both ethnographic and quantitative research
methodologies were used to identify four key empowering organizational
characteristics: motivating and challenging positive group belief systems,
meaningful opportunity role structures which capitalize upon members'
different strengths, an impressive array of economic and social supports, and
organizationally and interpersonally talented leaders. The authors note that,
especially for settings which are different from the mainstream culture,
combining ethnographic with quantitative methodology is important to
facilitate collaborative, culturally valid, multi-level, and ecologically sensitive
research.
The article by Rich, Edelstein, Hallman, and Wandersman takes a
multidisciplinary perspective in describing the different processes that
determine the community empowering or disempowering impact of
environmental threats, such as negligently operated landfills and industrial
plants. They bring an extensive number and variety of environmental
protection cases to bear in developing a model of environmental

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empowerment. Their model distinguishes between "formal empowerment" (or

what others have called structural or societal empowerment, in which the
larger political decision-making system allows some measure of meaningful
local control), "intrapersonal empowerment" (situation-specific individual
confidence and competence), "instrumental empowerment" (effective action by
the individual via citizen participation), and "substantive" or community or
organizational empowerment (effective action by the group). They examine
the types of public and private policies and institutions that influence both the
ability of a community to mobilize initially and the outcome of empowerment or
disempowerment. Putting the values of empowering collaborative research
into practice, these authors examine the implications of a partnership approach
to community decision making for environmental politics and community
building.
The article by Fawcett and his colleagues is an example of making
community empowerment theory both broadly and specifically applicable, and
thus potentially very practical. They have developed a contextual-behavioral
empowerment model and methodology which identifies four main strategies
encompassing 33 specific enabling activities, or concrete tactics for promoting
community empowerment. Those strategies include enhancing experience and
competence, enhancing group structure and capacity, removing social and
environmental barriers, and enhancing environmental support and resources.
Fawcett's team developed their model to support and evaluate substance
abuse prevention programs and in the present article, use it to monitor the
empowerment process in more generally focused community health coalitions.
One of the most prevalent examples of community health promotion
coalitions are those organized more specifically around substance abuse
prevention. The article by McMillan, Florin, Stevenson, and Mitchell traces the
rationale behind the broad-based community coalition approach to the public
health and primary prevention literature, certain empowerment principles, and
an effort to comprehensively engage multiple social systems (e.g., families,
schools, workplaces, media, civic organizations) in solving seemingly

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intractable social, psychological, and health problems. They then evaluate the
individual and community organizational-level empowerment effects of a
statewide coalition of task forces organized for the prevention of alcohol and
other drug problems.
Speer and Hughey draw on their experience with a community organizing
network in discussing how the concept of social power and an ecological
perspective can illuminate the reciprocal and dialectical nature of
empowerment across individual, organizational, and community levels of
analysis. They review certain principles and the cyclical phases of community
organizing and social action for their relevance to power and empowerment.
They then apply Zimmerman's conceptualization (of empowerment processes
and outcomes at multiple levels) and Kelly's ecological principles for planning
community interventions (interdependence, cycling of resources, adaptation,
succession) to the field of grassroots community organizing.
The article by Kroeker explores the personal (material and psychological),
organizational, and societal goals of empowerment in the context of an
agricultural coöperative in Nicaragua. Her findings are based on seven months
of participant observation focusing on the experience of the worker-residents,
internal program functioning and structure, and relations to local organizations
and to national political forces. The coöp met the immediate needs of the
community and its structure allowed for broad participation in decision making.
Sense-making and consiousness-raising processes were also used to facilitate
psychological empowerment. The impact on empowerment at higher levels
was less clear. Kroeker notes that local service providers often found the coöp
to be poorly organized and not sufficiently empowered. The relationships
across levels of organization are complex and not always reciprocal. Despite
evidence of empowerment within the organization, the opinions and behavior
of outsiders and, at the time of data collection in 1989, the macropolitical
context had generally detrimental effects for empowerment.
The article by Perkins focuses on the use of empowerment theory in the
kinds of micro (community) level settings discussed throughout this issue and

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the use, instead, of empowerment ideology at the macro level of social

program planning and policy-making. His review covers citizen participation in
community development and other local grassroots voluntary associations,
competence-building primary prevention programs, participatory workplace
democracy and other organizational management reforms, institutional reforms
in health promotion and public education, legislative and administrative
policies at the local, state, and federal levels, and the coöptation of
empowerment by conservative ideologues. Perkins then examines some of the
obstacles social scientists face in improving the organizational and policy
application of empowerment theory and research. He concludes that, despite
the vast proliferation of empowerment rhetoric in the championing of social
interventions, the explicit connections between policy or program development
and empowerment theory and research are in most cases tenuous.
Perkins concludes with 10 recommendations that draw not only on his own
review but all the articles in this issue. In sum, he calls for researchers
interested in empowerment to recognize and analyze the dialectics of
empowerment, to become more familiar and comfortable with the roles and
processes of collaboration with policy-makers as well as community
organizations, and to disseminate more practical, qualitative as well as
quantitative, and culturally-specific empirical information with an emphasis on
the outcomes of empowered behaviors and substantive gains. He finds that
smaller, more locally organized interventions generally provide clearer, and
possibly more effective, examples of empowerment than do centrally-made
policies, even those explicitly allowing for local control. He also argues that
policy-makers, program planners and researchers should pay greater attention
to what models of empowerment work with what populations and in what
settings at what levels (individual, organization, community) and why.
The issue closes with a commentary on its themes and contributions and
future directions for empowerment theory, research and intervention by Julian
Rappaport. Rappaport has been a leader in the conceptualization, research
and practical application of empowerment and related ideas. He has argued

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for the adoption of empowerment as a guiding principle for community

psychology (Rappaport, 1981). This commentary does more than summarize
the themes throughout the issue, although it does that as well. Rappaport
takes stock of the recent theoretical, methodological and empirical work on
empowerment in this issue and elsewhere. He then argues that qualitative
studies of psychological empowerment based on collaborative methods and
communal narratives analyzed at multiple levels can be used to advance our
understanding of the processes by which social and personal change occurs.
He further argues that viewing narratives as a valuable (and, we would add,
renewable) resource might link those processes more effectively with practice
in community psychology. We must create settings that promote empowering
communal and personal stories and listen more carefully to the voices telling
those stories.
In spite of the diversity exhibited in this collection of articles, a few themes
merit emphasis. One cannot read these articles without appreciating
Rappaport's (1987) argument that the empowerment concept provides a useful
general guide for developing preventive interventions in which the participants
feel they have an important stake. The articles apply slightly different models
of empowerment, but several advocate a partnership approach that uses
coalitions of non-profit organizations to bring government and private service
agencies into cooperative relationships with local communities (cf. Fawcett et
al.; McMillan et al.; Rich et al.; Speer & Hughey, this issue).
The partnership approach also applies to the relationship between
empowerment researchers or program evaluators and program staff and
clients/community residents. Although none of the articles in this issue
concentrate primarily on the research process, many empowerment studies
could provide a methodological model for social research, in general, that is
ecologically sensitive (e.g., to social, political, and environmental contexts),
based on careful analysis (ideally using multiple methods of both quantitative
and qualitative data collection), and consistent with empowerment values (e.g.,
informants as valued co-participants in all possible phases of the research

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process, from planning to dissemination). Empowering research methods thus

deserve further attention. For now, we encourage you to read the following
articles for their many encouraging ideas that help to clarify the meaning,
processes, and outcomes of empowerment even as applications of the concept
become more numerous and varied.

References
Cornell Empowerment Group. (1989). Empowerment and family support.
Networking Bulletin, 1(2), 1-23.
Fetterman, D., Wandersman, A., & Kaftarian, S. (Eds.)(in press). Empowerment
evaluation: Knowledge and tools for self-assessment and accountability.
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Florin, P., & Wandersman, A. (Eds.)(1990). Special section: Citizen participation,
voluntary organizations, and community development: Insights for
empowerment through research. American Journal of Community
Psychology, 18, 41-177.
Kuhn, T.S. (1970). The structure of scientific revolutions (2nd Ed.). Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Perkins, D.D. (Chair)(1993). Symposium on "Empowerment Theory, Research
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Perkins, J. Rappaport, M.A. Zimmerman)
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silent ranks. American Journal of Community Psychology, 22, 433-593.

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Swift, C., & Levin, G. (1987). Empowerment: An emerging mental health

technology. Journal of Primary Prevention, 8, 71-94.
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Zimmerman, M.A. (in press). Empowerment theory: Psychological,
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Zimmerman, M.A., Israel, B.A., Schulz, A., & Checkoway, B. (1992). Further
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