Management efforts to reduce cynicism and enhance employee empowerment can have a large effect on employee engagement, according to a study from the University at Buffalo School of Management.

The study, recently published in Organization Science, investigated officer attitudes and organizational climates at 14 state prisons and found that proactive leadership can reduce cynicism toward change for both individual employees and across an entire organization.

“In prisons, employees face an array of very real and challenging circumstances which can create commitment problems,” explains study co-author Paul Tesluk, Ph.D., the Donald S. Carmichael Professor of Organizational Behavior at the UB School of Management. “Past research has shown that there are extraordinarily high turnover rates of 50 percent in the first year of service and 38 percent overall.”

Tesluk said the study’s findings are useful to managers in a variety of organizational settings beyond prisons.

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