Participative Management Essays -- essays research papers fc

Participative management is a new approach in the work force today. Job enrichment, quality circles, and self-managing work teams are just some of the approaches. Companies share a common goal of increasing employee involvement. They want to raise the quality, performance, and productivity of their workers.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The questions that follow will be answered in this paper. What is participative management? What are the advantages of participative management? How does it raise quality, productivity, and performance? How can it be successfully started, implemented, and sustained? What are the results of experiments done in the work force? Participative management is a process by which a company attempts to increase the potential of its employees by involving them in decisions affecting their work lives. A distinguishing characteristic of the process is that its goals are not simply acquired, they focus on the improvement of productivity and efficiency, but they are also fulfilling and self-enhancing in themselves. The key goals of employee involvement programs is to enhance the quality of the employees’ working life, management must be responsive to the requests of the employees. The best way to ascertain those requests is to ask employees.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  If workers can be motivated and given the opportunity to participate in the search for improved methods of job performance, and if this motivation and participation can be maintained over time, job performance should improve. Productivity is higher in companies with an organized program of worker participation. Employee participation can and does raise productivity. The most appropriate form will vary from company to company but participation works only when both parties want it to work. The solution to America’s pathetic productivity growth isn’t necessarily more capital spending (Lewis & Renn, 1992). People tend to accomplish what they decide they want to accomplish. Ideas, changes, suggestions and recommendations that are generated by the people who implement them stand a much greater chance of being successfully implemented. In theory, people who have a hand in making a decision are better motivated to execute it. Participation can improve the quality of decision making. Participative management appears to offer tremendous advantages... ...rcles, gainsharing, and self-managing teams because they are trying to change the entire organization, not just a few plants or a few practices (Lawler, 1986). The work place of the future will require greater emphasis on such key human resource factors as participative management, training programs, and teamwork. Employee involvement and participative initiatives are likely to expand considerably over the next several years in United States businesses. If they are to remain competitive in the marketplace and survive with the intense overseas challenges awaiting them, worker involvement and these initiatives must be present. Bibliography Lawler III, E. (1986). High-Involvement Management. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Inc., Publishers. Lewis, J. & Renn, L. (1992). How To Start A Participative Management Program: Ten Easy Steps. Interlochen: Lewis & Renn Associates, Inc. Schuller, T. (1985). Democracy at Work. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sirianni, C. (1987). Worker Participation and the Politics of Reform. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Warner, M. (1984). Organizations and Experiments: Designing New Ways of Managing Work. New York: John Wiley & Sons.