Author:

Keywords:

empowerment, evaluation, social work, Social Sciences, Psychology, Applied, Psychology, Social, Psychology, improvement, social service organization, PSYCHOLOGICAL EMPOWERMENT, CITIZEN PARTICIPATION, COMMUNITY-DEVELOPMENT, VALIDATION, PERSPECTIVE, PREVENTION, NETWORK, POLICY, SCALE

Abstract:

© 2017, Boom Lemma Publishers. All rights reserved. This study examines how instruments should and can be developed to map and improve social service organizations, as empowering organizations for their employees and as empowered organizations in their societal context. Through the lens of the theoretical foundations within the empowerment approach of the Anglo-American community psychology, the critical appraisal of existing empowerment measures leads to the formulation of quality standards for the development of empowerment evaluation instruments. In a participative process in two social service organizations, the achievability and effectiveness of the quality standards to develop empowerment evaluation instruments are tested. This process indeed leads to applicable instruments to map and improve organizational empowerment, not only by content but also by method of application. For social work practice, this study offers quality standards to judge existing and guide the development of new empowerment measures, a view on the dimensions of organizational empowerment and their components involved and concrete instruments that can serve as theoretically and empirically underpinned inspiration.