Consequences of empowerment among restaurant servers Helping behaviors and average check size BeomCheol (Peter) Kim and Erwin Losekoot School of Hospitality and Tourism, AUT University, Auckland, New Zealand, and Simon Milne School of Hospitality and Tourism, Auckland University of Technology, Auckland, New Zealand Abstract Purpose – This study seeks to investigate the impact of empowerment on both organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and average check size per customer for individual restaurant servers in the United States. Design/methodology/approach – This empirical study was designed by using three different sources of information: employees’ self-reports, supervisor-ratings and system-generated productivity indexes. The study obtained a final sample of 108 servers who are in charge of table services such as order-taking and delivering food with a point of sales (POS) system. Findings – The results demonstrate that influence, a dimension of empowerment, has a positive effect on supervisor-rated OCB whereas attitude, the other dimension of empowerment, has a positive impact on average check size per customer. In addition, OCB appears to be negatively related to average check size per customer. Practical implications – The findings are important given that few studies have examined the impact of empowerment on organizationally meaningful outcomes since past empowerment studies predominantly related empowerment to attitudinal and/or behavioral outcomes measured by self-reports. The relationship between two consequences of empowerment raises a managerial issue. Given that OCB has a negative relationship with an individual’s average check size, it would be problematic to reward servers individually solely based on objective indicators of performance. Originality/value – This study presents empirical evidence that empowered employees are more likely to demonstrate helping behaviors and generate larger check sizes. Keywords Empowerment, Organizational citizenship behaviour, Average check size, Restaurant servers, United States of America, Service industries Paper type Research paper 1. Introduction Empowering frontline workers is particularly desirable in service industries where employees interact directly with customers to deliver services (Bowen and Lawler, 1995). The practice of employee empowerment helps organizational members to be self-directed and feel entrusted with genuine responsibility for business operations and consequences (Carson and King, 2005). Empirical studies demonstrate that empowerment has positive effects on attitudinal individual outcomes such as job satisfaction (Gazzoli et al., 2010; Lee et al., 2011; Morley and Heraty, 1995), organizational commitment (Kim et al., 2012), and employee perceived service quality (He et al., 2010). The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at www.emeraldinsight.com/0025-1747.htm Consequences of empowerment 781 Management Decision Vol. 51 No. 4, 2013 pp. 781-794 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 0025-1747 DOI 10.1108/00251741311326563