Explaining Effective Factors on Female's Psychological Empowerment in Information and Knowledge Services

The purpose of this paper is to identify and explain the factors affecting female’s psychological empowerment in the information and knowledge services. This paper is based on applied research and mixed method including descriptive and survey. First by using qualitative approach، for expanding and explaining effective factors of pycholigical empowerment of women librarians and informationist، nine interviews with female managers were done. Results showed that 8 factors were effeted on psychological empowerment، from these factors; professional knowledge، modeling and motivation were added to the conceptual model. Finally assimilation of qualitive results and sprietzer’s model، made conceptual model. In the quantitative approach، the population of study was 137 female employees of Tehran’s public libraries as an information and knowledge centers. The researchers designed the questionnaire including factors for data collection. Cronbach‘s alpha for this questionnaire was 90%. PLS software and structural equation modeling was used for data analysis. The findings indicated that the most effective factor on the female’s psychological empowerment in the information and knowledge services were individual factors including motivation،modeling،knowledge/job skills and self esteem. Then organizational factors including importance of the team، trust among team، perceived team effectiveness، participative decision-making and finally group factors such as role resolution، span of control، access to information، participative climate، access to resources and organizational support were effective on female employees’ psychological empowerment in information and knowledge services.