随着世界经济一体化进程的加快，为获低成本、高绩效和高弹性的竞争需求优势，组织授权员工的重要性日益增加。员工授权越来越受到学者和实践者的关注，已成为西方管理学研究的热点问题之一。本文在综合国内外文献的基础上，论述了近二十年来有关授权的系列研究，包括授权理论产生的背景，授权概念和授权三种研究范式，文章最后指出授权未来的研究趋势。

With speeding of world economy integration, it is increasingly important for organizations empowering the employee to obtain the competitive demand advantages for lower cost, higher performance, and more flexibility. The employee empowerment had been receiving more and more attention from scholars and practitioners, and had become one of the most important topics in management studies in the Western. On the basis of understanding foreign literatures in the recent 20 years, the studies of the employee empowerment, such as the backgrounds, conception, theory models, and three research paradigms on the employee empowerment in workplaces, were summarized. Furthermore, the future research direction in this area is put forward.