"The Empowerment Effort That Came Undone" is an interesting article dealing with a company that is on the economic downfall of its life. In an attempt to swing the success of the company in the opposite direction, the company's CEO began a phase of empowerment in the company-however this effort fell through. This failure raises many questions: Why did empowerment not work? What could have been done differently to change the outcome? Is there still hope?
             In order to answer these lingering questions, one must understand what has already occurred. From the first mention of the empowerment that was about to spread throughout SportsGear, George Marlow, vice president of manufacturing, supported the notion completely. However many people believed the idea was "bologna" and had no place interfering with their work. One of these people was Harry Lewis, a good friend of George's. No matter what George said to try to win Harry's support, it simply could not be done.
             Still yet, George pushed forward. He became the leader of the team in the manufacturing division and the group seemed to have great success. They did much research and developed many ideas they felt could be successfully implemented. When the day came to make a presentation to the department heads and the company CEO, things began to fall apart. First Martin Griffin, SportsGear CEO, was forced to leave due to important matters. Next came the confrontations presented by the opposing department heads. They began finding many reasons why the team's ideas could not, or should not, be put into effect. The team had ran into a brick wall, and felt that all of their hard work had been for nothing. Harry felt that he had only a few options, the most drastic of which being the leave the company altogether.
             So why didn't empowerment work in this company? I feel the major reason is the fact that they tried to im...