Employee empowerment and customer satisfaction: an investigation from a UAE banking sector perspective.

Abstract

This article reflects the results of a pilot study conducted in connection with an analysis of the antecedents and consequences of empowerment on the service quality for UAE Banking customers and the banking sector in general. The research focuses on the six constructs of a Proposed Study Model of empowerment and whether they have an influence on the empowerment of customer contact employees. The pilot study employed a mixed methods approach (quantitative & qualitative) providing data triangulation to test and validate the hypothesis and data collection methodology. The study will progress into the larger scale empirical phase having identified the existence of the gap in the knowledge base. The pilot study has also produced new findings relating to cultural issues and others related to bureaucratic rules, which require further investigation; for example, while Emiratization laws have pushed domestic and foreign banks to increase their employment of UAE nationals, expatriates still dominate the banking sector employment numbers. NOTE: publisher link not currently working (checked 2019-01-29)