Effect of Psychological Empowerment on Employees’ Commitment to Estate Surveying and Valuation Firms in Nigeria

Purpose: The paper investigated effect of psychological empowerment on employees’ commitment to estate surveying and valuation firms in Nigeria. Incessant employee’s turnover in the Nigerian real estate sector is a concern and this has resulted in sole ownership of estate surveying and valuation firms rather than conglomerate practice and this situated could be linked to the empowerment practices being implemented by the firms. Methodology: Primary data were used for the study. Questionnaires were administered on practicing Estate Surveyors and Valuers (ESV) in Lagos, Abuja, and Port Harcourt. 70% of ESVs in each of the cities were selected using simple random technique and 149, 83 and 42 questionnaires were retrieved. Information on empowerment practice were measured using scales developed by Spretzer (1995) and Rajalingam, Jauhar and Abdul Ghani (2015). The data were analysed using regression analysis. Findings: The study showed that psychological empowerment (PE) resulted into 25.3%, 24.4, and 15.8% of normative, continual, and affective commitments of employees of estate surveying in Nigeria, respectively using coefficient of multiple determination (R2). Over all, the implementation of psychological empowerment resulted into 21.8% of employees’ commitment to ESVFs in Nigeria. Originality: The study presents empirical evidence of empowerment practice and its impact on employees’ commitment to ESVFs. The study recommends that ESVFs in Nigeria should embrace and implement psychological empowerment attributes such as meaningfulness and impact to improve employee commitment which could lead to improve service delivery and firm’s performance.