Participative Management A Panacea?

Abstract

The focus of this article is upon the influence of participative management on worker morale and productivity, in a field experiment, groups of workers were exposed to varying degrees of participation in the decision-making process. The groups were not aware that they were taking part in a research project. The investigation raises question relative to some currently held assumptions. Contrary to expectation, the productivity of the work groups did not improve as the degree of participative management increased, in fact, there was some evidence to the contrary. Morale improved in one of three experimental groups. The findings of the study suggest that while participative management techniques may produce more involved, happy workers, it does not necessarily achieve productive results for the organization.