Title

Work Satisfaction Under Yugoslav Self-Management: On Participation, Authority, and
Ownership
Author(s): Patricia A. Taylor, Burke D. Grandjean and Niko Tos
Source: Social Forces, Vol. 65, No. 4 (Jun., 1987), pp. 1020-1034
Published by: Oxford University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2579021
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Work Satisfaction Under Yugoslav Self-
Management: On Participation, Authority, and
Ownership*
PAT R I C I A A. TAY L O R, University of Virginia

BURKE D. GRANDJEAN, University of Virginia
N I K O T O ?, University of Ljubljana
Abstract
After reviewing the history and current practice of self-management in

Yugoslavia, we examine net effects on work satisfaction from being a self-manage-
ment delegate, a manager or supervisor, or the owner of a private business, along
with other variables. Data are from a 1983 probability sample in the most indus-
trialized of Yugoslavia's six republics. Consistent with U.S. studies, older, more
educated, female workers, those in the majority ethnic group, and nonmanual su-
pervisors are more satisfied; the effects of age and education are indirect, through
income. However, occupational prestige has no effect, and owners, managers, and
manual supervisors are no more satisfied than workers. Delegates are highly satis-
fied, but further results suggest that satisfaction with work (or with self-manage-
ment) leads to service as a delegate more than the reverse.
Worker self-management in Yugoslavia, now in its fourth decade, has

been called "one of the most interesting social experiments of the post-war
world" (Singleton & Carter 1982, p. 13). Yet, like other experiments in new
forms of economic life in Marxist societies, it has not received adequate
research attention in the U.S. (Lenski 1978). This paper has two objectives.
First, since the workings of Yugoslav self-management are unfamiliar to
*We acknowledge with thanks the useful comments and other assistance of Peter Jambrek,
and the suggestions of James Clawson and two anonymous referees. The analysis reported
here was undertaken while Taylor and Grandjean were in residence and visiting researchers
at the Faculty of Law, University of Ljubljana (Yugoslavia), supported by Fulbright grants and
by funding from the Intemational Research and Exchanges Board. The survey analyzed was
conducted by the Research Institute of the Faculty of Sociology, Political Science and Journal-
ism, of which Tog is Director. Opinions and interpretations are those of the authors and do
not represent official positions of any of these organizations. Address correspondence to
Patricia A. Taylor, Department of Sociology, Cabell Hall, University of Virginia, Charlottes-
ville, VA 22903.
? 1987 The University of North Carolina Press
1020
Yugoslav Work Satisfaction / 1021
many American sociologists, we provide an overview of its history and

current practice. Second, using 1983 data on a large probability sam-
ple from one of Yugoslavia's six constituent republics, we examine how
worker control over the work process affects job satisfaction. We focus
throughout on three types of worker control: membership on self-manage-
ment councils, supervisory authority, and private ownership of small
business.
Self-Management: Principles and Practice
BACKGROUND
Worker self-management in Yugoslavia came about as part of a radical

departure from Soviet-style centralized planning. The immediate stimulus
to that departure may have been a bitter split with the Soviet block in 1948
(Lydall 1984). Its roots can be traced at least as far back as the Nazi occupa-
tion of Yugoslavia during World War II, when difficulty in communicating
made centralized decisionmaking an impossibility for the resistance fight-
ers (Kardelj 1978). Whatever the reasons, Yugoslav leaders turned sharply
away from Stalinism to their own interpretations of Marxism, with major
consequences for the political, economic, and organizational dynamics of
their society.
Politically, the most important departure from the Soviet model has
been a substantial decentralization of power within the one-party state.
Each of the six republics (and two provinces) making up the Yugoslav
federal system enjoys considerable autonomy, and local governments ex-
ercise significant powers as well (Lane 1976).
Economically, the Yugoslav interpretation of Marx has sought to
balance the benefits of planning with responsiveness to market forces,
both at home and in international trade. This "market socialism" is evi-
dent in a vigorous private sector employing about a third of the labor force
(Lydall 1984). Agriculture is by far the largest component of the private
sector. Peasant landholders and workers number 94 percent of the agricul-
tural and 29 percent of the total labor force. Private farms are limited by
law to a 25 acre maximum (or 40 acres in the mountains). Most are well
below that maximum, and suffer acutely the inefficiencies of small size.
Cooperative arrangements providing economies of scale are fairly com-
mon, often involving both peasant farms and state-owned agricultural en-
terprises (Pasic, Grozdanic & Radevic 1982). Such arrangements, along
with market incentives for productivity, may account for Yugoslavia's suc-
cess in avoiding the food shortages common where Soviet-style collective
farms predominate.
The rest of the private sector consists of owners of small businesses
1022 / Social Forces Volume 65:4, June 1987
in construction, personal services, crafts, food services and the like, plus
their employees (Lydall 1984). By law, the owner of a business must also
work there, and may hire at most 5 other workers; in fact, half of all
owners employ no outside workers. Sometimes actively encouraged by
the state, at other times merely tolerated, private businesses include about
5 percent of the work force.
The socialized sector of the economy accounts for the remaining
two-thirds of the labor force, and for essentially all industrial production
(Lydall 1984). But even large socialized enterprises must respond to mar-
ket forces, especially in international trade. The Yugoslav government at-
tempts to promote responsiveness by letting many economic decisions
be made at the enterprise level. The commitment to economic decen-
tralization comes and goes as the political climate shifts between a mar-
ket orientation and a planning orientation, but it has never been extin-
guished. And within the enterprise, decisionmaking is further decentral-
ized through worker self-management.
Organizationally, self-management itself represents an explicit de-
parture from the Soviet model of industrial administration. The early Yu-
goslav leaders recognized that social ownership of the means of production
did not guarantee the social control of those means. They sought a way to
protect workers from alienation that did not simply substitute the power
of the state for the power of the capitalist. Under the Soviet model of
centralized state socialism, in their view, the worker risks becoming "a
helpless and hopeless tool in the hands of the state monopoly" (Kardelj
1980, p. 15). Self-management was promoted as a practical step toward
increasing the control workers feel over the work process, which would
lead to greater job satisfaction.
SELF-MANAGEMENT IN PRACTICE
The first workers' councils, through which Yugoslav workers (or their
elected delegates) have a say in the running of their enterprises, were
established in 1949.1 Since that time the institutionalization of self-man-
agement has been reflected in three related trends: its increasing power,
scope, and complexity.
At first workers' councils were involved only in matters of very
general policy, in ratifying the selection of the director of an enterprise,
and in the distribution of a small part of the income of the enterprise
between such broad categories as the aggregate wage bill and the fringe
benefit package. The director retained control over the main business of
the enterprise, including its personnel practices. But a series of statutes
and constitutional revisions, as well as evolving customs, have greatly
increased the power of workers' councils, especially in personnel matters
such as hiring, firing, discipline, and wage-setting (see Horvat 1976; Sin-
gleton & Carter 1982). Today, it seems clear that workers' councils in
Yugoslavia are more powerful than similar arrangements for industrial de-
mocracy in other European countries (IDE Group 1981; Salman 1983).
Whether workers as individuals have experienced an equal increase
in control is less clear. Observational studies suggest that decisionmaking
on the councils is often dominated by managerial personnel (Kolaya 1965;
Obradovic 1977; see also Lenski 1978). Survey data consistently show that
Yugoslavs perceive the influence of workers and of the councils as less
than that of top managers (Siber et al. 1978; Vreg 1984), although the gap
is even greater in other countries (Tannenbaum et al. 1974; Whitehorn
1983). Nor can the influence of the Yugoslav Communist Party be ignored,
since Party members who occupy key positions can steer the council's
deliberations in directions established in advance (Lydall 1984). A related
concern is that the real decisions are often made by managers, profes-
sional staff, and executive committees of the councils in the process of
formulating proposals to put before the council for ratification (Vreg 1984).
The great majority of workers have been shown to lack the elementary
business knowledge required to make major decisions without expert
guidance (Novosel 1984). As delegates, workers cannot develop expertise
through long experience, since they are elected for only 2 years at a time,
and may serve at most 2 consecutive terms.2 Delegates complain that the
information they receive from experts is too technical, too restricted to a
single policy option, and too late to be of full use (Vreg 1984). And the
experts whose job it is to provide such information are sometimes more
concemed with their own professional careers than with giving delegates
a sound basis for decisions; in one revealing study of 237 staff lawyers and
economists, over three fourths did not even expect the delegates to read
the materials they prepared (Novosel 1984). If knowledge is power, then
workers and their delegates are at a disadvantage in the decisionmaking
process.
Effective worker control is limited by extemal constraints, as well.
Decisions made through self-management must conform to legal guide-
lines, sometimes rather narrow, set at the national level. They must also
be consistent with agreements governing relations between enterprises,
and between an enterprise and local political bodies. Pay schedules, for
example, are subject to criteria established in these agreements. Con-
strained by such criteria, a relatively small number of typical pay sched-
ules tends to predominate in a locality, with any given enterprise likely to
vary in only minor ways from one of the typical pattems. Yet another
extemal constraint is Party influence on the banking system, and therefore
on investment capital (Lydall 1984).
Despite such caveats, there can be little doubt that as an institution,
the workers' councils have gained in power over decisions made at the
enterprise level. And, in a second major trend, self-management has also
become much more widely applied over the past 35 years. At first, work-
ers' councils were required only in state-owned manufacturing enter-
prises. This requirement was gradually extended to any enterprise with
more than 5 employees (Singleton & Carter 1982). An employer in the
private sector may choose to enter into a self-management agreement with
workers as well. Even those who do not must operate their businesses
within the constraints of a legal, social, and political climate heavily influ-
enced by the principles of self-management.
Worker self-management has also been applied to more and more
areas outside of strictly economic activities. The guiding principle has
been that "the de-alienation of economic life requires ... organizing all of
social life on the basis of the self-govemment of the direct producers"
(Petrovic 1975, p. 364). Thus, as early as 1953, local government was reor-
ganized to include delegates from manufacturing enterprises in each lo-
cality on the legislative body of the community. Over the years, similar
arrangements have developed in education, health, and other tertiary in-
dustries (Pasic, Grozdanic & Rodevic 1982). For such activities, the deci-
sionmaking body includes representatives of the "community of interest,"
both providers of the services (e.g., teachers) and delegates from enter-
prises in the production sector of the economy. Owners of small busi-
nesses may also have representation in local governments and communi-
ties of interest, either on their own or jointly with other small proprietors.
As workers' councils have grown more powerful, and as the princi-
ples of self-management have been extended throughout Yugoslav society,
the system has become much more complex (Lydall 1984; Singleton &
Carter 1982). In the early years most enterprises in Yugoslavia employed
fewer than 30 workers, and by law the workers' council in such an enter-
prise was simply a committee of the whole. Even in large enterprises to-
day, there are still some decisions taken up in an assembly of the entire
workforce, or ratified by majority vote in an enterprise-wide referendum.
In the main, however, direct participation in decisionmaking has been
superseded for the average worker by the election of delegates at the level
of the work group or unit. The work group delegation, in turn, elects
delegates to higher bodies, which may also elect delegates to yet other
bodies (Pasic, Grozdanic & Radevic 1982). Thus, the individual worker is
often several steps removed from the representational body that takes part
directly in the most significant decisions of the enterprise.
The complexity of the current system is evident in the great variety
of self-management bodies. Workers' delegates to local governments and
to the communities of interest by which social services are administered
have been mentioned. In addition, there are now self-management ar-
rangements both within subdivisions of an enterprise and between sepa-
rate enterprises. Each work unit (or "Basic Organization of Associated
Labor") has its own workers' council, which also sends delegates to higher
bodies. And, when separate enterprises wish to coordinate their activities

(e.g., from raw material, to finished product, to marketing), a new set of
self-management bodies must be established, including delegates of the
constituent enterprises. Small wonder, then, that at the time of the survey
analyzed below, nearly half of the respondents were actively serving on
one or more self-management bodies for their enterprises, their local com-
munities, or both.
DOES rr woRK?
A thoroughgoing social experiment, not simply an economic one, worker

self-management has developed in Yugoslavia with the twin aims of en-
hancing both labor productivity and worker satisfaction. In the words of
one of its principal theoreticians, Edvard Kardelj, self-management is in-
tended to provide "as much freedom of self-expression and creativeness
as possible, so that [the worker] can freely work and build for his own
happiness" (1978, p. 17).
With one of the fastest rates of development in the world in the
1950s, the economic portion of Yugoslavia's experiment appeared to be a
major success. In the second half of that decade, industrial production
rose more than 13 percent annually. Since then, the nation's economic
performance, and hence the evidence regarding the economic effects of
self-management, have been decidedly more mixed (Singleton & Carter
1982; Vojnic 1986). Internal inflationary pressures fueled by the interna-
tional recession of the 1970s and by foreign debt have brought on govern-
ment intervention in pricing and foreign trade, occasional rationing of
consumer items (such as gasoline), and heavy taxes on imported goods.
Direct evidence regarding the effects of self-management on job
satisfaction is also inconclusive. Some of the confusion in the literature
can be resolved by giving systematic attention to the mechanisms through
which self-management can be expected, on theoretical grounds, to affect
satisfaction. This theoretical clarification then provides direction for our
empirical analysis to follow.
First, self-management creates opportunities for social interactions
among workers in the Basic Organizations of Associated Labor, outside
their normal work routines. It also promotes communication between
workers and superiors. Such opportunities may be regarded as pleasant,
therefore satisfying, without regard to their effectiveness in asserting
worker control over organizational decisions (Lane 1976). A test of this
first mechanism is beyond our present data, since it would require directly
comparing workers in a self-managed system with a matched sample of
workers under conventional management. Whitehorn's (1983) research
does show higher job satisfaction in Yugoslavia than in Canada, consistent
with this mechanism, but his samples may not be representative.
More germane to our analysis is the premise that self-management

should increase workers' control over their own work. The prediction that
control over work in turn enhances satisfaction receives both theoretical
and empirical support from the human relations tradition of organiza-
tional studies (Argyris 1973). Workers often dislike rules over which they
have no control, and are more satisfied when they believe they can affect
their working conditions. Hence self-management should increase satis-
faction to the extent that it increases a worker's control (cf. Greenberg
1980).
In Yugoslavia, workers may exercise control in at least three so-
daily and legally sanctioned ways, each affected differently by self-man-
agement. The first of these is active participation as a delegate to one of
the many self-management bodies. Whatever the real power of the work-
ers' councils, delegates should experience more of it than non-delegates,
and should therefore be more satisfied. Obradovic (1978) finds the ex-
pected positive relationship, though Lydall (1984) doubts that the average
Yugoslav worker really wants to participate in organizational decisions.
Siber et al. (1978) suggest that the positive association may actually reflect
the reverse causal order, with dissatisfied workers refusing to serve as
delegates.
Supervisory and managerial positions in an organization provide a
second avenue for control of work. People in managerial positions would
influence policy issues in personnel and production, while those in lower
and middle level positions would more likely have authority limited to
supervising the immediate production process. Authority is generally
found to relate positively to satisfaction in U.S. studies (Glenn & Weaver
1982; Glenn, Taylor & Weaver 1977), and in Yugoslavia (Whitehom 1983).
However, there is some evidence that top managers in Yugoslavia are dis-
satisfied by limits on their authority that result from the power of workers'
councils, or from external political influences (Jenkins 1973; Lydall 1984;
Tannenbaum et al. 1974; Whitehorn 1983).
The third way to exercise control is through private ownership of a
small business. A proprietor makes all the usual business decisions: what
products to use and produce, working hours, whom to hire, etc. Within
limits set by law, the proprietor also has considerable control over the
pay of employees through the evaluation of their work, even when there
is a self-management agreement. If control contributes to satisfaction, we
would expect owners to be more satisfied than the average Yugoslav
worker, as in the U.S. (Kohn & Schooler 1973).
No previous research in Yugoslavia has addressed this last predic-
tion. We turn now to the second major task of the paper, an exploratory
empirical analysis to shed light on this question and on the others just
raised about the effects of participation, authority, and ownership on job
satisfaction under Yugoslav self-management.
Research Design
SAMPLE
A stratified random sample of the adult population of the Republic of

Slovenia in Yugoslavia was surveyed using a sampling frame based on
official population registers. The survey was conducted in May of 1983 by
the Research Institute, Faculty of Sociology, Political Science, and Journal-
ism of the University of Ljubljana. The data analyzed here were collected
through face-to-face interviews by trained student interviewers with 1,223
non-farm workers ages 20-64.
Slovenia lies in the northwest corner of Yugoslavia, sharing interna-
tional borders with Austria and Italy, and an internal boundary with the
Republic of Croatia. As in Croatia, the dominant religion is Roman Catho-
lic; elsewhere in Yugoslavia, the Eastern Orthodox and Muslim faiths pre-
dominate. The Slovene population of almost two million is about 10 per-
cent of the national total. Slovenia is the most industrially developed of
the six Yugoslav republics, with the highest per capita income, lowest
birthrate, and virtually universal literacy (Jambrek 1975).
Restriction of the sample to a single republic is dictated by the diffi-
culty and expense of coordinating a nationwide survey in one of the most
ethnically diverse nations in the world. For example, the Slovene language
is native only to the Republic of Slovenia; indeed, not just different lan-
guages but three different alphabets are in use in various parts of Yugo-
slavia. By limiting the study to a single homogeneous republic, we hold
constant a number of possible confounding political and cultural influ-
ences.
VARIABLES
The dependent variable in our analysis, SATISFACTION, is a 5-category

response (very satisfied to very dissatisfied ) to the question, "Are you
satisfied with your present job?" A multi-item scale would be preferable,
but is not available in the data. There is ample precedent for using a
single-item measure of job satisfaction and for treating it as if it were an
interval scale (Glenn & Weaver 1982).
Control variables in the analysis include demographic characteris-
tics of the respondents (education, age, sex, and ethnicity) and rewards of
the job (prestige and income).3 The 9-category variable, EDUCATION, was
recoded to approximate years of schooling. AGE in years was obtained
from year of birth. SEX of the respondent is entered as a dummy variable
(male = 1), and ETHNICITY is entered as two dummy variables for the two
largest ethnic groups or nationalities in Slovenia (Slovene = 1; Croat = 1).
PRESTIGE of the occupation was obtained by matching reported occupa-
tion to Treiman's (1977) Standard International Occupational Prestige Scale

(see Grandjean 1986). INCOME was converted to the natural logarithm of
regular monthly income (in dinars) received from the respondent's job.
The remaining 6 predictors are dummy variables reflecting busi-
ness ownership, authority position, and delegate status. A person was
assigned a value of one for PROPRIETOR if his or her response to the
occupation question indicated ownership of a small business. Authority
positions were determined by crossing supervisory status with occupa-
tion, so that MANUAL SUPERVISORS were separated from NONMAN-
UAL SUPERVISORS, who were further distinguished from MANAGERS.
The three levels of authority were scored as separate dummy variables
(1 = authority position). Finally, information on self-management delegate
status was obtained from the question, "Are you a member of a self-man-
agement organ or delegation in your work organization? If not, are you
willing to become a member?" The responses to the two questions were
recorded separately, with DELEGATE and WILLING TO SERVE scored
here as dummy variables (current delegate= 1; willing to serve = 1).
ANALYSIS
Using work satisfaction as the dependent variable, we entered the above

controls and predictors in three separate regressions. The first regression
model includes only the demographic variables, and is presented mainly
for descriptive purposes. The second model adds work-related characteris-
tics, including those tapping ownership, authority, and participation in
self-management, the variables of central theoretical interest here. The
final model adds willingness to serve as a delegate, our objective being to
provide additional evidence on the nature of causation between participa-
tion and satisfaction.
Findings
The results of these analyses are presented in Table 1. Four of the 5 demo-
graphic variables in Model I attain a modest level of significance, and the
effects are in the direction expected from U.S. findings (e.g., Glenn &
Weaver 1982; Kalleberg 1977). Older, more educated, female workers and
those from a majority-group ethnic background tend to be more satisfied
than those. with the opposite characteristics.
The effect of education on work satisfaction is the most pronounced
of the demographic variables' effects in Model I (beta=. 075). As Model II
makes clear, however, work satisfaction is not determined directly by edu-
cation but indirectly through income and supervisory status. When the 7
work-related variables are entered, the effects of both education and age
Table 1. MULTIPLE REGRESSIONS PREDICTING WORK SATISFACTION FOR NONAGRICULTURAL

WORKERS AGED 20-64 IN 1983, REPUBLIC OF SLOVENIA, YUGOSLAVIA (N= 1,223)
Metric (and Standardized)

Coefficients
Mean
Predictor (Units) (S.D.)a MQdel I Model ll Model Ill
Education (years) 10.26 .018** -.012 -.012

(2.94) (.075) (-.048) (-.050)
Age (years) 36.84 .004t .001 .002
(9.66) (.051) (.018) (.031)
Male (1,0) .56 -.073t -.116** -.140**
(.50) (-.050) (-.079) (-.096)
Ethnicity:
Slovene (1,0) .89 .153t .160t .152t
(.32) (.066) (.069) (.066)
Croat (1,0) .05 .166 .175 .158
(.22) (.050) (.053) (.047)
Prestige (Treiman) 42.86 .002 .001
(14.54) (.047) (.026)
Mo. income (Dinars) 9.60 .177* .166*
(.35) (.086) (.081)
Proprietor (1,0) .02 -.197 -.117
(.14) (-.038) (-.022)
Authority:
Manual sup. (1,0) .05 -.026 -.019
(.22) (-.oo8) (-.006)
Nonmanual sup. (1,0) .06 .207* .206*
(.23) (.067) (.066)
Manager (1,0) .07 -.032 -.028
(.25) (-.011) (-.010)
Self-management;
Delegate (1,0) .39 .135** .265***
(.49) (.090) (.178)
Willing to serve (1,0) .29 .246***
(.45) (.153)
R2 ,012 .035 .051
aThe dependent v
S.D.=.73.
p<.05; p<.01; p<.001 (all two-tailed)

tp<.05 (one tailed)
disappear. U.S. studies show the same pattern for education, but mixed
results on whether age has direct effects net of job rewards (cf. Glenn &
Weaver 1982; Glenn, Taylor & Weaver 1977; Kalleberg 1977).
The effect of sex on work satisfaction is even stronger with the
addition of job rewards, in Model II, changing from a barely significant
-.073 to a highly significant -.116. Since Model II controls for income
and authority position, this result shows that men's higher job rewards
partially mask their greater dissatisfaction with work.
Being Slovene is modestly related to work satisfaction, a finding
which may reflect the fact that 89 percent of the respondents are Slovene.
Friendship networks on the job are probably tied to nationality, and these
same networks also promote work satisfaction. Minority dissatisfaction
with ethnic prejudice does not seem a likely explanation for the observed
effect. Interethnic relations at work are described as good or very good by
three-quarters of the non-Slovenes in the sample, an even greater margin
of approval than the 70 percent of Slovenes who say the same (results not
shown).
The variables entered in Model II predict work satisfaction from job
rewards and control over work, net of the demographic effects. Income is
significantly related to work satisfaction, and has the second largest beta of
the 12 coefficients in Model II. Unlike the results of U.S. studies, how-
ever, prestige of the occupation is unrelated to work satisfaction (Glenn &
Weaver 1982). The occupation codes used in generating the prestige scores
here are not highly detailed, and so there is probably more measurement
error in our variable than is typical in job satisfaction studies. But the non-
effect of prestige seems to say more than this. Egalitarianism is a pervasive
sentiment in Yugoslavia (Denitch 1976), and may keep workers from tak-
ing much satisfaction in prestige differentials as such. Also, the effect of
prestige on work satisfaction should be partly mediated by authority. We
have controlled for authority positions with finer distinctions than are
commonly used, and we may thereby have eliminated the effect of pres-
tige on satisfaction.
The next 5 variables reflect control of the work environment. From
the theoretical premise that control enhances satisfaction, we predicted
that being a proprietor, having authority as a supervisor or manager, and
being a delegate to a self-management body would all be positively related
to work satisfaction. For only 2 of 5 variables, nonmanual supervisor and
self-management delegate, do these predictions receive support. Effects
of the other 3 variables which concern control and authority (proprietor,
manual supervisor, and manager), are all nonsignificant.
We suspect that a similar mixture of effects and non-effects is hid-
den in U.S. studies that measure authority without distinguishing among
levels of authority, as we have done. The role of the first-line supervisor
is inherently a marginal one, cross-pressured by simultaneous affiliations
with the rank-and-file and with management (Wray 1949). Being a manual
supervisor brings in few extra work rewards beyond income, which is
controlled statistically in our analysis. It may even cause a few lost friend-
ships on the shop floor. A middling level of satisfaction is therefore not
surprising for such supervisors.
Yet unsystematic discussions with Yugoslav managers reveal that
there are also some unique features of the society reflected in these re-
sults. That neither proprietors nor managers are more satisfied than the
average worker suggests that those whose positions of authority deal most
directly with matching organizational policies to legal constraints find lit-
tle satisfaction in their added responsibilities. The exercise of their au-
thority is limited by the power of workers' councils in their own organiza-
tions, by the complexity of self-management arrangements in the larger
society, or both (Jenkins 1973). But their accountability is not reduced pro-
portionally: their self-definitions of success and their economic security
are tied to the success of the enterprise (Lydall 1984). In consequence,
neither managers nor owners are as satisfied as their nominal control over
work would predict.
The remaining category of authority consists of white collar super-
visors, who are in general quite satisfied. Arguably less cross-pressured
than blue collar supervisors, and less accountable for the organization's
performance than top managers, they apparently take more enjoyment
from the exercise of some direct authority. They may even gain some in-
formal influence at the expense of top management by playing off the
workers' councils against their own superiors.
Serving as a delegate is also positively related to job satisfaction, as
predicted. But as Siber et al. (1978) have argued, this is not a convincing
demonstration that being a delegate makes one more satisfied. It could
be that only those workers who are already satisfied become delegates.
And indeed, Model III shows that those who are willing to serve are very
satisfied with their work, only slightly less satisfied than current dele-
gates.
There are two likely interpretations of this last result. First, the
causal order assumed in most of the theoretical literature may simply be
backward: job satisfaction makes people willing to serve; at a given mo-
ment some who are willing to be delegates will not be; but delegate status
per se does not add much to job satisfaction. The second interpretation
gives more credit to self-management: those who are more satisfied with
self-management, who are committed to it in principle and convinced of its
effectiveness in practice, are therefore willing to serve as delegates; their
satisfaction with self-management also makes them more satisfied with
their jobs; but again, participation as a delegate, as such, does not add
much to job satisfaction. Under this second interpretation, a research
question needing attention is why some workers are more satisfied with
self-management than others. It may be nothing more than individual
differences, or it may be that self-management works better in some enter-
prises than in others. There is no solid evidence on the conditions leading
to successful self-management, and our data are silent on such issues.
Discussion
We have already noted several points at which our results diverge from
the usual U.S. findings-in particular, the non-effects found here for pres-
tige, ownership, and managerial position. These results show the im-
portance of avoiding culture-bound interpretations of prior theory and
research on job satisfaction, most of which has focused on American
workers.
Another point of divergence concerns the explanatory power of our
models. Explaining only 5 percent of the variance is disappointing, even
compared to the typically very modest explained variances in U.S. studies.
Our single-item dependent variable is partly to blame, since its variation
no doubt includes more random measurement error than would a multi-
item scale. Measurement error would also be increased by any reluctance
on the part of respondents to reveal their true feelings about their jobs.
However, because of the high regard in Slovenia for the University of
Ljubljana and its research activities, plus the greater openness of criti-
cism than elsewhere under Communism, we largely discount this poten-
tial problem. On politically sensitive items, it may somewhat elevate the
nonresponse rate and reduce willingness to select extreme responses, but
its impact on our study is probably slight.
Of greater moment is the fact that our predictors include no purely
subjective variables, such as perceived control over work. Subjective states
should intervene between objective conditions and satisfaction, so their
effects would be stronger than those of the predictors in our models (see
Kalleberg 1977). But a theoretical respecification of the present models will
not add much to their explanatory power unless the Yugoslav cultural and
social context is explicitly taken into account. Our understanding of that
context, and the results here, lead us to suggest that additional predictors
should include perceptions of the self-management system in general,
and its success at realizing effective worker control.
In one area the divergence of our results from previous research
may actually be less than it appears. We conclude that being a delegate, as
such, adds little to satisfaction, while others have reported a positive ef-
fect of participation on satisfaction (Blumberg 1969; Greenberg 1980). Yet
a recent review shows the evidence of correlation to be much more con-
vincing than that for causation (IDE Group 1981), consistent with our
conclusion.
There is some risk that our attempt to tease out the true causal
impact of participation on satisfaction, which appears to be small, may
obscure the fact that satisfaction with Yugoslav self-management is quite
high overall. The first column of Table 1 shows that over two-thirds of the
sample are willing to serve as delegates, or are currently serving. Three-
fourths of the respondents say that the delegations generally deal with the
important issues, and only 4 percent say delegates are not in touch with
the workers (results not shown). These are impressive votes of confidence
in self-management. In addition, the mean job satisfaction is 3.9, near the
upper end of the 5-point scale. Comparing the frequency distribution for
our sample with the General Social Survey (data not shown) confirms that
job satisfaction is quite high, perhaps slightly higher than in the U.S.
By these criteria, then, self-management is a success, even if it is
not participation alone which accounts for the workers' satisfaction. Par-
ticipation as an individual delegate may not confer as much real control,
nor as much satisfaction, as has been supposed. But when self-manage-
ment pervades the social structure, as in Yugoslavia, its effects are true
structural effects on delegates and non-delegates alike. Social interaction
within the Basic Organizations of Associated Labor, communication be-
tween superiors and subordinates, opportunities to air complaints, and
ideological attachment to self-management for its own sake all contribute
to positive attitudes toward the system. Yugoslav workers may also view
their self-managed workplaces favorably by comparison to the alterna-
tives, whether the state-centralized bureaucratic control of the Soviet
model, or the hierarchical inequalities typical of capitalist enterprises.
Notes
1. Throughout, we use the term "delegate" in the general sense of a representative of any
self-management body; its more specific meaning within the detailed lexicon of Yugoslav
self-management is of no concem for our purposes. For simplicity, we also use the term
"enterprise" throughout, although since the 1970s the term "work organization" has been
preferred.
2. As a result, according to Pasic, Grozdanic & Radevic (1982) turnover in the membership of
workers' councils amounts to about one-third every 2 years. On the other hand, they point
out that experienced delegates are often reelected after the required 2 years out of office, a
pattern which would mitigate the problem of delegate inexperience noted in the text.
3. Age squared was initially entered into the analysis, but was deleted since it did not attain
statistical significance. We also looked for sex interactions, as suggested by Glenn and
Weaver's (1982) U.S. results, but found no significant effects.
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Work Satisfaction Under Yugoslav Self-Management: On Participation, Authority, and

PAT R I C I A A. TAY L O R, University of Virginia

After reviewing the history and current practice of self-management in

Worker self-management in Yugoslavia, now in its fourth decade, has

many American sociologists, we provide an overview of its history and

Self-Management: Principles and Practice

Worker self-management in Yugoslavia came about as part of a radical

bodies. And, when separate enterprises wish to coordinate their activities

A thoroughgoing social experiment, not simply an economic one, worker

More germane to our analysis is the premise that self-management

A stratified random sample of the adult population of the Republic of

The dependent variable in our analysis, SATISFACTION, is a 5-category

tion to Treiman's (1977) Standard International Occupational Prestige Scale

Using work satisfaction as the dependent variable, we entered the above

Table 1. MULTIPLE REGRESSIONS PREDICTING WORK SATISFACTION FOR NONAGRICULTURAL

Metric (and Standardized)

Education (years) 10.26 .018** -.012 -.012

p<.05; p<.01; p<.001 (all two-tailed)

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