The corporate world thrives on turning words and concepts against themselves. Here’s one common way it does that: It begins from a participatory and democratic concept, and then it turns it into something that’s neither of those things. It works this magic on everything from social justice to work itself. Perhaps, dear reader, your boss even wants to ’empower’ you. Beware.
Let’s take a moment to talk about this wicked troll – ’empower.’
‘Empower’: Its Origins
As best I can tell, ’empower’ started as a social justice term. Social justice groups – from Alinskyite to non-profits to member-run groups – strive for the empowerment of some group. They want to take a disorganized group and turn them into a force for social change.
On the left, we see this in the idea of class formation. Leftists want to, for example, take a motley crew of renters and turn them into a class of people who advance their common interests as tenants. They want to take an assortment of workers formerly divided by status, race, gender, and so on, and turn them into a united working class fighting for a democratic workplace.
So, that’s how it goes on the left. We want to empower workers and tenants. And we have certain methods of doing so.
But that’s not what the corporate world has in mind, to put it mildly.
‘Empower’: Corporate Usage
OK, so what does the corporate world have in mind? Here’s a rough definition similar to what one might find in a dictionary or a social justice movement:
empower (v.) – give someone the power or authority to do something.
Clear enough, but here’s something closer to what we might find in the corporate world:
empower (v.) – give someone an assignment to do something they don’t ordinarily do.
On the surface, this sounds innocent enough. But here’s how it works out in practice. In practice, the boss ’empowers’ employees by assigning them extra work without any meaningful worker control over what happens with it, how it fits into company strategy, how it fits with company goals or mission, and how workers might use it as a part of their career development. Furthermore, companies often use intermediaries like middle managers or project managers to do this.
And, most important for our purposes here, they use the language of empowerment to cover over the one-sided relationship.
Real and Fake Empowerment
Most often, employers do the ’empowering’ directly. Bosses assign work – often their own work – to workers. The workers do it, and then the boss takes the credit for it (often in front of a higher boss). Using social justice-flavored language for the process is one way of making it seem less shitty and (extra) exploitative than it is. Sometimes even with the added bonus that the language trick renders extra layers of management involvement unnecessary.
From this deal, the boss gets work done and gets credit for it. They can fill out various metrics, build their résumé, and so on. What does the worker get? Maybe a pat on the back or a pizza party. Maybe another assignment for further ’empowerment.’
Not much, in other words.
As it does with many things, the corporate world takes something real and powerful and turns it into something fake and malicious. As leftists, we should seek to build and empower our class. And when we seek those things in the workforce, it’s a state of affairs we build together. Not something we get from the boss.
