h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The word "empowerment" became management's buzz word years ago, when they felt they had to pass the buck to lower level employees. Employees were all "empowered" to do whatever was necessary to achieve their goals. All nonsense, of course, nothing had changed, the boss had the purse strings, the hire/fire option, the everything. But it sounded good to the newbies.

I recall a meeting of middle level managers in my company of several thousand people. The upper middle level boss (a fairly good guy, but "owned" by the company) was talking about the policy of "empowerment" when a colleague asked somthing like "What the hell is that?" This was probably a CLM.