Social Representation: perceived identity on empowerment in state and non-state sector workers

Abstract

Empowerment in labor organizations is a learning process based on the participation, autonomy and assumption of power by workers. Knowing how the subjects think about empowerment is the starting point for understanding how they subjectivize this phenomenon at the group level in organizations, which serves as a strategy for transformation in the management of managers. For this purpose, the theory of Social Representations, which theoretical and methodological flexibility allows explaining dissimilar social phenomena, is taken as a reference. The objective of this study is to characterize this representation in its dimensions, information, attitudes and field, in a group of workers of the state and non-state sector of the economy in Cuba. The research is based on a mixed methodology, sequential explanatory, quantitative and quantitative, by means of multiple case studies, with a non-probabilistic sample of typical subjects. A questionnaire, semantic differential, drawing and free composition were used as instruments, which allowed characterizing the level of information, attitudes and the representational field of the sample. In both sectors, the core of representation is associated with the term power, and specifically in the state sector, participation is added. The attitude towards the term is favorable, although direct experience in the organization degrades its intensity, as it is not frequently used as a management strategy.