Introductions

Participative mgmt

Recent increases in competitive demands placed on industries around the world have forced
companies to adopt practices aimed at creating higher involvement and higher performing
organizations. Approaches such as lean production (Krafcik, 1988), total quality management
(Deming, 1986), just in time (JIT) (Abegglen &
Stalk, 1985), and other “best practices” (Shadur, Rodwell, Simmons, & Bamber, 1994) are a few
among many approaches that require organizational managers to consider employee
involvement and the impact it has on organizational performance. The end goal of progressive
management practices, such as those described in
Dertouzos, Lester, and Solow (1989); Womack, Jones, and Roos (1990) and others, is to obtain
market success in an environment of world-class competition

(paper 15)

Participative management has been broadly adopted as a strategy in organizational

development. This is because most people believe that participative management not only
encourages workers to identify with their duties, but also improves their own performance as
well as organizational performance.

Participative management is a kind of management style in which the subordinates

share a signi. cant degree of decision-making power with their superiors (Robbins,
1991: 243). Patterns of participative management vary; they may include activities such
as goal setting, problem solving, direct involvement in work decisions, representation
on policy-making bodies and selecting new co-workers (Cotton et al., 1988). Forms of
. nancial participation such as pro. t sharing and stock ownership are also a participative
management pattern.

It is argued that participative management is one of the most important as well as

most widely utilized strategies for developing organizations. As studies of group
dynamics indicate, participative management encourages employees to contribute their
knowledge and skills to companies, provides a better scheme for problem solving,
strengthens the acceptability of decision making, reduces resistance to organizational
change and promotes employee commitment to organizations.

(Paper 16)

Employee participation in decision-making has long been recognized as a source of enhancing

organizational effectiveness (Taylor, 1947; March and Simon, 1958; McGregor, 1960; Likert,
1961; Argyris, 1964). A number of studies conducted in western countries have examined the
relation between participation and morale (Wickert, 1954), motivation (Baumgartel, 1956;
Patchen, 1970), productivity (Katz et al, 1950; Worthy, 1950; Lawrence and Smith, 1955; Morse
and Reimer, 1956; Tannenbaum and Allport, 1956; Argyle et al, 1958; Patchen, 1970;
Juralewicz, 1974), job satisfaction (Morse and Reimer, 1956; Tannenbaum and Allport, 1956;
Baumgartel, 1957; Vroom, 1959; French et al, 1960; Patchen, 1970; Lowin, 1970; Ritchie and
Miles. 1970; White and Ruh, 1973; Alutto and Acito, 1974; Lischeron and Wall, 1975a; Lischeron
and Wall, 1975b), absence rate of employees (Argyle, 1958) and so on. Some studies have also
shown that employee participation affects the acceptance and effectiveness of organi zational
change (Coch and French, 1948; Levine and Butler, 1952; Bennett, Dr. Pratibha Malavia is Senior
Scientific Officer, Human Relations Division, Ahmedabad Textile Industry's Research
Association, Ahmedabad.
1955; French et al, 1960; Lawler and Hackman, 1969; Scheflen, Lawler and Hackman, 1971). The
consistency in the findings that participation correlates positively with organizational
effectiveness variables led to questions such as: Who participates? Do individuals differ in
participation with differences in age, education, designation, aspiration level, values,
personality configuration (see, e.g., Vroom, 1959; Holter, 1965; Tosi, 1970; White and Ruh,
1973)? It is doubtful if participation would be advantageous in Indian industry as it has been in
western culture, particularly because parental and assertive superior types dominate superior-
subordinate relations in this setting (Kakar, 1971). In fact, some (Myers, 1960; Meade, 1967;
Saxeberg, 1974; etc.) have labelled the system as authoritarian.

(PAPER 3)

Participative decision making, defined as joint decision making (Locke & Schweiger, 1979) or in-
fluence sharing between hierarchical superiors and their subordinates (Mitchell, 1973), has
been a fo-cus of organizational research for nearly 50 years. Whereas many researchers have
examined relation-ships between participative decision making and employee outcomes such
as task performance, job satisfaction, and turnover, only equivocal conclu-sions can be drawn
from existing research on the relationship between participative decision making and job
performance. Some quantitative reviews have reported moderately positive relationships be-
tween these variables (e.g., Cotton, Vollrath, Frog-gatt, Lengnick-Hall, & Jennings, 1988; Miller
& Monge, 1986). Other quantitative reviews have not found these positive effects (e.g.,
Wagner, 1994; Wagner & Gooding, 1987a, 1987b). Wagner and Gooding (1987a) inspected the
studies cited by Miller and Monge (1986) and found that 90 percent involved percept-percept
data collection tech-niques (that is, data collected from the same re-spondents using the same
questionnaire at the same time). Wagner (1994) reanalyzed Cotton and his coauthors' (1988)
data using meta-analysis and found that the overall effect of employee participa-tive decision
making on job performance (and job satisfaction) was positive but small, especially when the
unisource studies were omitted. Wagner and his colleagues (1994; Wagner & Gooding, 1987a,
1987b) thus argued that the significant per-formance-related findings published in participa-
tive decision making research were mainly the product of percept-percept artifacts. Although
these inferences about the main effects of partici-pative decision making appear sound, the
inconsis-tent findings concerning the participation-perfor-mance relationship might also be
explained by the absence (or presence) of other moderating vari-ables. Indeed, Wagner and
Gooding (1987b) noted that the moderating effects of other variables could hide a few
noteworthy multisource relationships. The moderating effects of situational variables (work
group size, task complexity, and others) have been well documented (Wagner & Gooding,
1987b).

(PAPER 7)

Entrepreneurship

This recent progress has immediately been reflected in the field of entrepreneurship. In other
words, definitions and the content of entrepreneurship have evolved from personal
characteristics to organizational and cultural aspects. Early conceptualizations of
entrepreneurship merely consisted of several personality traits like innovativeness, risk taking,
achievement orientation, proactive ori entation, etc. (Schumpeter, 1934; McClelland, 1961;
Miller, 1983). However, recent studies evidence a tendency of explaining entrepre neurship
with social and cultural features of the entrepreneurial environment. Gartner (1985) and
Zapalska and Fogel (1998), for example, indicated that there is enough evidence that the social
and cultural characteristics of industrial districts are influencing the behavior of the
entrepreneur. We, therefore, consider entrepreneur ship to be a product of socio-economic
and cultural structure of a given society or community.
The entrepreneur, being a founder, a transformer, a producer, and a reproducer of the
organization with its norms and values, is a central and vital factor of small and medium-size
enterprises (shortly, SMEs). An entrepreneur's ability to set up and realize the relation ship
networks both within and outside of his/her organization and the entrepreneur's capacity to
integrate his/her organization with the local culture are the essential prerequisites for the
organization to survive in competitive markets and to acquire an innovative edge in terms of
both technology and structure.
(Paper 19)

Job Satisfaction

The-concept of job satisfaction is central to many aspects of industrial and organisational

behaviour. This could perhaps ac count for this concept being one of the most researched
topics. The extent to which employees are satisfied with their jobs has, therefore, been of
considerable interest to both scholars and prac titioners. The term job satisfaction is viewed as
a "positive atti tude towards one's work, which is global in nature and which re sults from many
specific job-related experiences" (Sharma and Bhaskar, 1991a).

(Paper 21)
Job-satisfaction is basically an individual matter. Employees search for those aspects of job,
which are related to their value system. Some give more value to income and others attach
more importance to the job situation, or the type of job. Considering that, while individuals
vary in their values, there is moderate consistency in the cherished values of the individuals
within a specific group.

(Paper 22)

Participative mgmt & Job Satisfaction

Participation in decision making has also received considerable attention as a predictor of

employee job satisfaction. Lewin, Lippitt, and White's (1939) work with democratic and laissez-
faire types of leaders, and Tannen-baum and Schmidt's (1958) 7-point continuum from
managerial autonomy to group decision making emphasize the potentially positive effects of
allow-ing subordinates some say in the making of decisions. Participative decision making can
be identified along a continuum reflecting the different access that organization members have
to actual decision making and the amount their influence affects a given decision outcome
(Dachler and Wilpert, 1978). Investigations of the relationship between participation and
employee job satisfaction have produced conflicting results. Early research (Coch and French,
1948; Morse and Reimer, 1956; French, Israel, and As, 1960; Lawler and Hackman, 1969)
demonstrates only partial support for a positive rela-tionship between participation and job
satisfaction, but later research find-ings show a significant and positive relationship (Falcione,
1974a; Falcione, 1974b; Hurt and Teigen, 1977; Falcione et al., 1977; Harrison, 1981). One
theoretical and operational perspective on participation is that it is a commu-nication strategy
with behavior of the supervisor as the referent to participa-tion. Richmond and McCroskey
(1979) demonstrate that employees who see their supervisor's style as more participative
(consults or joins) are more satisfied than employees who see their supervisor's style as
nonparticipative (tells or sells). Thus, participation in decision making apparently contributes to
job satisfaction.