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This paper aims to clarify the meaning of empowerment concept and determine its role in the HRM‐performance linkage.

A survey of 211 customer‐contact employees at 30 upscale hotels in Lithuania was conducted to study organisational empowerment, as a bundle of HRM activities, and its association with employee attitudes and behaviour.

A distinction was made between organisational empowerment, as a bundle of HRM activities, and psychological empowerment, as an employee work‐related attitude, and their role in the HRM‐performance linkage was defined. Organisational empowerment was positively related to psychological empowerment, job satisfaction, and affective commitment. Psychological empowerment and affective commitment were found to mediate the impact of organisational empowerment on customer‐oriented behaviour.

Data were collected in a single industry in Lithuania; therefore, further research in other services needs to be conducted to make generalisations on the applicability of the proposed empowerment‐performance model to other industries.

In the upscale hotel context, where employee turnover reduction and service quality improvement are critical, organisational empowerment can enhance employee job satisfaction, commitment, psychological empowerment and customer‐oriented behaviour.

The paper provides empirical evidence of the positive effect of employee perceived HRM practices (organisational empowerment) on HR‐related performance outcomes ‐ employee attitudes (psychological empowerment, job satisfaction, affective commitment) and customer‐oriented behaviour. Besides the role of empowerment in the HRM‐performance linkage is defined and empirically tested.

Employee turnover has lately considerably increased in the Lithuanian hospitality industry. Given the fact that organizational commitment is negatively related to employee turnover, the research aim is to determine the level of employee organizational commitment as well as their empowerment, which can be viewed as a possible means of stimulating employee commitment, as well as the interrelationship between employee commitment and empowerment.

A questionnaire survey was carried out among customer‐contact employees of Lithuanian upscale (four and five star) hotels.

The levels of both organizational commitment and organizational empowerment in Lithuanian upscale hotels are rather low, while the correlation between them is rather strong. This implies that improvement of conditions that foster empowerment would lead to a higher level of employee organizational commitment, especially the level of affective commitment that is of greater importance for the organization, as in this case commitment rests on common values and stimulates emotional attachment to the organization.

This paper gives evidence that by developing certain organizational conditions Lithuanian hotel management may raise the level of employee empowerment and commitment, which in turn can lead to a decrease in employee turnover.

The paper presents the state of employee commitment and empowerment levels in Lithuanian upscale hotels, and demonstrates an interrelationship between organisational commitment and employee empowerment.

The goals of the present study are three‐fold. First of all, the paper aims to test the three‐component model (emotional, continuance and normative components) of organizational commitment in the Lithuanian population. The second goal is to analyze the relationships among individual factors (age, gender, personality traits) and organizational commitment. Finally, the paper aims to test the hypothesis if there was a relationship between organizational commitment and intention to leave the organization in the Lithuanian sample.

The participants of the study were 105 employees working in various Lithuanian organizations (41 men and 64 women). The average age was 34.9 (SD = 11.6). The subjects completed the questionnaire that included responses to three‐dimensional measure of organizational commitment, self‐reported measure of temperament, as well as questions about demographic information. Following Meyer et al., intention to leave the organization was assessed with three questions: first, how frequently the employee thinks about leaving his or her current employer; second, how likely it is that employee will search for a job in another organization; and third, how likely it is that an individual will actually leave the organization within the next year. The regression analysis was used to predict the relationships between individual factors and organizational commitment.

The results of the investigation revealed that the three‐component measure of organizational commitment is valid in Lithuanian sample. Contrary to expectations, it was found that there was no significant relationship between personality traits and organizational commitment, but there was a significant relationship between organizational commitment and intension to leave the organization. It was also found that there was a significant relationship among organizational commitment, age, and the level of education.

The design of the study does not allow making causal statements. In addition, the sample is quite small and may not be representative, so one should be careful to make generalizations to other populations. Third, since all measures used are self‐reports, common method variance is a problem, as well as social desirability effects.

Organizational commitment is an important research topic of human resource management, having both practical and theoretical implications. Managers could benefit from understanding the predictors of committed manpower because they can initiate the interventions when the problem exists.

The research contributes to organizational commitment literature by providing empirical findings and theoretical interpretations regarding the role of individual factors in explaining interrelationships among different forms of organizational commitment and employee behaviour.