Exploring Empowerment in Construction: Discovering Challenges of self-managed Workers

Traditionally, production planning and control (PP&C) approaches in construction have been hierarchical and rigid. These PP&C approaches have often been reported to insufficiently provide task preconditions in a dynamically changing production environment, ultimately causing stress and dissatisfaction to workers. Modern organizational and management theory promotes more agile and dynamic decentralized decision-making structures. These support workers’ access to the organization’s resources and provide preconditions to implement their individual ideas. Such empowerment is linked to increased subjective well-being and project performance. However, several studies present workers’ perceptions of their own task responsibility and decision-making as empowered, self-managed, and decentralized, while satisfaction remains low and productivity rates stagnated over the last decades. Thus, this research studies qualitatively factors promoting empowerment of workers and what kind of challenges workers face in perceived decentralized work environments. Semi-structured interviews with 14 mechanical, electrical, and plumbing (MEP) workers were conducted and analysed using an empowerment-level framework. This study suggests that leadership dynamics among MEP workers are contingent on the tasks and their preconditions, transitioning from centralized in design stages to decentralized during execution. Empowerment structures mirror this shift, evolving through actions either delegated or seized based on individuals and groups managing task demands effectively. The findings suggest that the level of leadership and empowerment is tacitly and collectively coordinated by management and workers through informal verbal exchanges and situational cues, which often leads to unclear and chaotic situations. In summary, the study highlights the advantages and disadvantages of undifferentiated empowerment structures and emphasizes the need for advanced in-depth understanding and exploration of dynamically changing empowerment and leadership structures.