Propensity for participative decision making in Latin America: Mexico and Peru

Increased subordinate participation in management decisions has been a recognized trend in developed Western organizations in recent decades. This study examines a manager's propensity for engaging in participative decision making (PPDM)in two emerging Latin American nations, Mexico and Peru. Although these two nations possess some degree of cultural similarity, two key differences were identified. First, Mexican managers who believed that PDM reduces a manager's power base were also likely than others to see a positive link between PDM and organizational effectiveness. In contrast, Peruvian managers who believed that PDM reduces a manager's power base were less likely than others to see a positive link between PDM and organizational effectiveness. Second, Mexican managers operating in participative organizational cultures were less committed than other managers to participation as a management philosophy and to their organizations. In contrast, Peruvian managers operating in participative organizational cultures were more committed than other managers to participation and to their organizations. Conclusions and directions for future research are also presented.     

Participative management is an ethical imperative

Sashkin presents a model of participative management and contends that when value biases are absent and the need for skillful application and management are taken into account, participative management is effective. When properly implemented, participative management fulfills three basic human work needs--the need for autonomy or control over one's behavior, the need for completion or achievement of a whole task, and the need for interpersonal contact in the context of work. Failure to fulfill these needs can have serious consequences: Employees may be harmed both psychologically and physically. Thus organizations may be killing their employees--but not with kindness. Sashkin argues that it is unethical to manage in any way but participatively if one adheres to the fundamental values of Western civilization. Thus participative management is an ethical imperative. With this in mind, he provides some action guidelines for managers, organizations, and management educators.     

Management roles in the implementation of participative management systems

Although participative management supposedly cures the ills of low morale and productivity, managers in these organizations are often frustrated with their jobs. Part of this frustration may come from not understanding their changing roles in participative work systems. In this paper I introduce a model of the cycle of participative management which outlines the stages of organization maturity and the appropriate management roles for each stage. I also discuss how the manager acts as a Leader, Facilitator, Enabler, and Coach. My purpose is to help Human Resource Managers understand how management roles will change as the organization evolves to a mature participative work system and to show how they can support this challenging transformation.     

Have the lecturers lost their voice? Involvement and participation in the devolved Further Education sector

One of the key principles underpinning Further Education (FE) college ‘incorporation’ was the notion that good management resides only in the private sector. Hence, if decision-making responsibility were decentralized to local levels, FE managers would have the freedom to experiment with practices borrowed from the private sector such as TQM and HRM. Examining the validity of this assertion, this paper explores: the extent to which participative management approaches (central to TQM and HRM) have been adopted in FE; the antecedents that explain the approach taken; and consequences of the emergent approach. In the event we found no evidence of participation beyond the perceptions of some members of the Senior Management Team (SMT). While obstacles to a more participative approach included the stringent funding regime, work intensification, proletarianization, casualization, remoteness of the SMT and general management competence, role-overload at middle management level was found to be particularly influential. A non-participative management style was also seen as deleterious to the functioning of the college as senior managers were failing to draw on repositories of creativity and expertise lower down the organizational hierarchy.     

Employee Participation: Problems for the Shop Steward

In spite of the extensive coverage given to employee participation and industrial democracy, important areas have been neglected. Mick Marchington and Roger Armstrong gather evidence concerning shop steward involvement in participative bodies, in response to the absence of a comprehensive analysis of steward attitudes and behaviour to participative schemes.     

The Effect of Culture on Management Style

Abstract

U.S. and Indonesian managers were surveyed to evaluate cross-cultural differences in managerial style. Four variables were compared and analyzed: autocratic and participative management, and individualism and collectivism. Indonesian managers endorsed a more autocratic style than U.S. managers and valued collectivism more than U.S. managers, while U.S. managers valued individualism more than the Indonesian managers. Additionally, a positive relationship was found between participative management style and individualism. There were no significant differences in the value both groups placed on participative management; both endorsed this concept positively. Results suggest that while there are differences between the preferred management styles of Indonesian and U.S. managers, both groups endorse similar management ideas. This paper concludes that culture affects the ideologies that managers are willing to endorse, and further study is needed to see if it similarly affects the management styles they actually exercise.     

Sharp interpersonal skills: your key to business success.

In today's more participative work environments, it is more important than ever to have strong interpersonal skills. Several recent studies cite interpersonal skills as a critical element in the selection of leader's in today's organizations. No longer are we relying upon power and control, but rather on empowerment and commitment. This article deals with building interpersonal working relationships, the type that helps to create synergy and teamwork within a workgroup or organization.     

Differences in Organizational Factors by Lean Duration

The aim of this paper is to explore whether employees’ perceptions towards perceived organisational support and participative decision-making vary by lean duration (i.e., the duration of lean production in operation), and whether managers’ perceptions towards propensity for participative decision-making vary by the lean duration. For the study, quantitative research methodology was used and data was collected from 616 shop-floor employees and 129 middle level managers engaged full-time in export-apparel manufacturing firms that have implemented lean production systems in Sri Lanka. It was found that participative decision-making and propensity for participative decision-making significantly differ by the duration of lean production in operation.     

试论航道员工培训管理与创新

近年来我国航道事业随着社会经济的快速发展越来越被重视,航道作为水路运输的重要组成部分,其管理状况对水运发展起着直接影响作用。本文通过对航道现行体制与管理情况探讨,结合员工培训管理与创新分析,提出加强航道管理水平的策略,以实现水运交通事业快速持续健康发展的目标。     

An improved subordinate appraisal of bank manager's competence

The three-factor, forty-five item instrument measuring manager's competence in retail banking returns a poor comparative fit index when modelled as an orthogonal or oblique model. Revisiting the original scale development study published in 1996 with a new data set and following a revised research design yields a considerably improved model. A second-order factor, overall managerial competence, is demonstrated to capture a meaning common to the five first-order factors, namely, entrepreneurial style , interpersonal skills , intellectual capacity , participative management style and emotional maturity . The revised model with substantially improved construct validity and reconfirmed instrument reliability can now be used with more confidence by human resource managers. The revised instrument can become a diagnostic tool in identifying areas of incompetence in management, as well as an instrument of feedback to the manager from subordinates. Allowing subordinates to voice their opinions about their immediate supervisor can become a welcome addition to the practice of participative management. The emergence of interpersonal skills and participative management style as the key factors explaining overall managerial competence indicates the importance of assessing managerial candidates on these factors.     

Strategic human resource management and firm effectiveness in industries experiencing decline

Unstable economic conditions, in conjunction with other external and internal influences, have prompted attempts to understand the nature of organizational decline. While a number of issues have been carefully considered in recent theory and research, little effort has been made to consider the implications of human resource management practices for firms in declining industries. The present study examined human resource practices in three industries that experienced decline, and investigated the relationship of organizational performance with effective human resource management.     

A CROSS-NATIONAL STUDY OF LEADERSHIP: PARTICIPATION AS A FUNCTION OF PROBLEM STRUCTURE AND LEADER POWER

This study explores the effects of task structure and leader power on participative leadership across Australian, African, Papua-New Guinea and Pacific Island managers. Managers in all national groups are more participative in situations of low structure and low power than for high structure and high power, respectively. Participation in situations of low structure and low power declines in the order: Australia, Africa, Papua-New Guinea, Pacific Islands. It is argued that this effect is an instrumental effect of managerial education, rather than being culturally determined. the Vroom-Yetton leadership methodology is used to measure participation levels. Subjects are a total of 150 middle-level managers attending management education courses.     

Effect of participative intervention on organisational justice perceptions: a quasi-experimental study on Finnish public sector employees

Changes in the perception of organisational justice have received limited attention in earlier studies. The purpose of this study is to examine whether a 2-year large-scale participative intervention had an effect on justice perceptions among employees. We conducted surveys in three towns (two case towns, one control town) on a total of 1584 municipal employees in 114 work groups that were observed before and after the interventions. Multilevel regression analysis showed that the participative intervention approach was associated with improvement in employees' justice perceptions. Moreover, the employees' evaluation of the implementation of intervention played an important role. Only among those who evaluated that the intervention had been successful, there was an improvement in their perceptions of interactional and procedural justice. The changes in organisational justice were seen at both individual and work group levels.     

The effect of participative management on organizational performance: the case of Taiwan

The aim of this study is to investigate the impact of participative management on the behaviour of employees and the financial effectiveness of the enterprise. The analytical data are based on the survey of 308 Taiwan enterprises. Multiple regression results show that both suggestion system and labour-management committee have a positive impact on employees' behaviour in terms of turnover and absenteeism rates. Likewise, the quality control circle (QCC) and profit sharing have a positive impact on organizational effectiveness as seen in profit and revenue growth rates. However, employee stock-ownership plans and grievance-handling systems have negative effects on both performance indicators - employee behaviour and organizational effectiveness. The practical implications are also discussed.     

Maintaining Leadership Legitimacy in the Transition to New Organizational Forms

Numerous new organizational forms have been proposed for ensuring the continuous strategic renewal of a firm. In essence, these forms are distinguished by: (1) their emphasis on bottom-up entrepreneurship, and (2) their reliance on a co-operative network that allows these entrepreneurial units to share their competencies with one another. One of the key behaviours required for the success of such an organization is employee empowerment. We argue in this paper that the legitimacy of corporate leadership during the restructuring of a traditional bureaucratic organization is crucial to its eventual transformation to one of the new organizational forms. The current wisdom of a two-stage transformation process, where an authoritarian restructuring precedes the more participative revitalization, is thus challenged. The transformation may get stalled after the restructuring stage because of top management’s inability to empower the firm’s employees at will, having lost their trust during restructuring     

The Role of Participative Leadership and Trust‐Based Mechanisms in Eliciting Intern Performance: Evidence from China

In this article, we investigate the relationship between participative leadership and job performance within the internship setting. Based on two‐waves of survey data obtained from 309 intern‐supervisor dyads, we find that participative leadership has a positive relationship with job performance, and that affective trust mediates that relationship. We also find that although cognitive trust is not significantly related to intern job performance, it mediates the relationship between participative leadership and affective trust. Our findings contradict those of previous research which question the effectiveness of participative leadership in short‐term employment situations such as internships. They also highlight the importance of designing internships to be reflective of typical performance situations, characterized by participative leadership practices, rather than more directive leadership practices. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Climate control? The relationship between leadership,climate for change,and work outcomes

Transformational leadership is seen as one of the most effective leadership styles from which the dynamic context of temporary work agencies may benefit. The current paper presents a theoretical framework that introduces participative leadership as an additional appropriate leadership style. The prediction is that transformational leadership and participative leadership both impact work outcomes via a climate for change. Data from 258 employees working for a large Dutch employment agency support these hypotheses. Results show that transformational leadership and participative leadership are both independently related to work outcomes. Moreover, results support an indirect process from participative leadership to work outcomes, via a climate for change.     

Towards a microscopic analysis of industrial innovations: From diffusion curves to technological integration through participative management

This paper traces the development of ever more microscopic analyses of the industrial innovation process and presents these as progressive stages in a gradual coming to terms with the real-life complexities of this process. Begining with the macroscopic, diffusion perspective inherited from rural sociology, it reveals how more user-centred models have emerged. The changing image of the user is traced from “passive adopter” to “managerial problem solver” and finally, to “innovative designer”. The paper then turns to the difficulties involved in understanding the nature of the firm's infrastructure and the implications it has for innovation management and industrial relations problems. Research in this area is identified as a crucial source of the new management tachniques that are required to solve the growing problems of resistance to technology implementation. A socio-psychological analysis drawing upon the concepts of the ethogenic approach is proposed and seen to recommend a participative management style similar to that used so successfully by the Japanese.     

The impact of racial and gender diversity in management on financial performance: how participative strategy making features can unleash a diversity advantage

How does racial and gender diversity in the management ranks affect the bottom line? Our findings indicate that participative strategy making (PSM) positively moderates the relationship between both racial and gender diversity in management and firm performance measured as return on assets. Specifically, PSM strengthens the positive relationship that exists between racial diversity in management and firm performance. Although no main effect is observed for gender diversity in management, our results reveal that gender diversity in management is positively related to performance when PSM is high. However, we find that gender diversity in management is negatively related to performance when PSM is low, while gender homogeneous management experience superior performance. We offer implications for diversity research to embrace and consider the role of PSM and ‘inclusiveness’.     

‘Doing the right thing’ Organisational structure and process for democratic governance in the firm

Can businesses be viable, effective, and generally democratic organisations? Several literatures bearing on the democratic firm are reviewed, examining democratic governance, participative management, new forms of ownership and how these affect firm performance. A small, espousedly democratic grocery store in upstate New York illustrates characteristic behaviours, structures and processes consistent with financial viability and economic effectiveness.