Participate Management, Employee Motivation and Job Design - Assignment Example

Participative Management, Employee motivation and Job Design 1. Introduction Participation has been accepted as central principle in the strategic decision-making in the recent years all over the world including UK. This has been mainly due to the widespread failure of many projects and programmes based on conventional approaches without considering the opinions of people and local specificities. Hence, it has been accepted that participation can be an effective solution for many challenges existing in the present world. The effectiveness of participative management in decision making is supposed to enhance employee motivation and thereby increase job satisfaction, productivity and organizational performance. This essay discusses various forms of participative management in an organization and its implications in detail. This essay is organized as follows. The second section discusses various forms of participation. Section 3 discusses the effect of participative management on employee motivation. Section 4 discusses the reasons for inevitable implications of participation for job design. Section 5 concludes the essay. 2. Various Levels of Participative Management Within an Organization There are two main different approaches to strategic management. They are the industrial organizational approach and the sociological approach (Coulter, 2005). Agency theory based on the industrial organizational approach deals with the principal agent relationship in the division of labour through a contract (Eisenhardt, 1989). Agency theory focuses on resolving the two problems arising due to the differences in the actions of principal and agents namely risk sharing problem and principal agent problem. The agency theory focuses on the top down approach to strategic management (Asan and Soyer, 2009). This approach means the directions coming from the top executives and then communicates it down for implementation. This school helped to distinguish between functions, skills, roles and management and evaluates its importance. This school focused on the jobs itself and did not give much attention to the role of workers. The main criticism against this approach is that it is appropriate only for stable environments and may not be suited for fast changing competitive environments (Asan and Soyer, 2009). This is because in fast changing environments some of the most successful strategies may emerge from the bottom level informally than from the top level. Human agent theory based on sociological approach has been developed based on the interactions between human beings (Bandura, 1989). based on the human agency theory, the actions of human agents are assumed to be irrational or not logical. Rather it depends on the self-efficacy beliefs. The actions of human agents are affected by the goals they establish themselves resulting in self motivation mechanisms(Bandura and Cervone,1986). It makes use of a bottom up approach to strategic management (Asan and Soyer, 2009). This means managers sharing their power with employees by regularly asking their input and at the same time keeping a minimal rejection on their ideas. This has created an atmosphere of employee empowerment instead of the previous management style whose philosophy was simply deciding what needs to be done and ordering people what to do (Brown et al. 1994).Thus, the importance of employee participation as a business strategy was first found to be important according to this school. The term employee participation first began to appear in management literature in the late 1970’s (Farnham, 1993). Even though these theoretical contributions on participation were done by previous researchers, it was seriously taken in to consideration in mid 1980s’ when major works such as Lawler (1986) started to emerge and made significant contribution on both academic and business circles. These theories of participation were later reconceptualised by Teicher(1992) by categorizing them into four groups, namely psychological theory, organizational theory, political theory, and sociological theory. Psychological theory explained employee participation in terms of psychological satisfaction;. Organization theory emphasized the role of structure of the organization in determining employee participation; political theory focused on advocates the need for a justifiable management decision in employee participation cases and the sociological theory predicted a better educated and highly qualified future work force which will challenge the prerogatives of management Cotton (1993) and Blake and Mount (1981) compiled various forms of employee participation as Quality Circles, Gain sharing, job redesign and employee ownership. The first one is a formal, institutionalized mechanism for productive and participative problem-solving interaction among employees. (Crocker, Chiu & Charney, 1984). Gainsharing is defined as “a category of incentive systems that involves a group of employees in the productivity improvement efforts and shares the resulting gains with the group based on its overall performance improvement or an organizational system of employee involvement with a financial formula for distributing organization wide gains”( Bernolak,2000; Bullock & Lawler, 1984). Job Redesign refers to the process of determining what tasks and work processes will comprise a given job or given group of interrelated jobs. Employee ownership is a formal form of employee participation where employees themselves owned and managed the business (Adams, F & Hansen, G, 1992) based on the argument that a higher level of employee ownership often leads to an improvement in organizational productivity or profitability (J Phillips, 2005). According to Oakley(1991,p17) “"Participation is concerned with human development and increases people's sense of control over issues which affect their lives, helps them to learn how to plan and implement and, on a broader front, prepares them for participation at regional or even national level”. Thus, participation consists of involving people who are affected by decisions in the decision making process as well as implementing and monitoring these decisions. The different forms of participatory practices and methods available from the literature are capacity building, community action, community development, community education, community involvement, community work, empowerment, participation and voluntary action (Warburton, 1996). Capacity building includes the various methods like training programmes, which will help the people to develop the confidence and skills required for them to perform effectively (Wilcox, 1994). Community actions include actions undertaken by the people themselves to improve the quality of life within their communities like sustainable development programmes, setting up hosing cooperatives etc (Warburton, 1996).Community development includes activities done by community workers, agencies and others to support community action (Warburton,1996). Many studies see the community development activities as a means of extending and encouraging participative democracy and are concerned with change and growth (Taylor, 1992; Flecknoe and Mc Lellan, 1994). Community education involves learning programmes through which education programmes interact with local people to help develop their skills and confidence needed to achieve their objectives (Fagan, 1993).Community involvement includes involvement in a process or project defined and controlled outside a community like involvement in a woodland conservation project defined and managed by an outside organization(Warburton,1996). According to Warburton (1996, p8), community action is the profession of encouraging and supporting community action irrespective of payment. This study shows many links existing between, community action, community work and community development. Consultation includes seeking advice from people in decision-making process. Empowerment includes authorizing people to do an activity while participation means having a share in an activity (Warburton, 1996). Voluntary actions include activities undertaken by extremely influential voluntary bodies and smaller bodies for the benefits of others (Warburton, 1996). In addition to the various levels of participatory practices, there has been clear distinction between instrumental and transformative participation by various authors (Nelson and Wright, 1995). The former refers to participation as a method for a particular project while the latter refers to participation as the purpose of the project itself. However, studies have shown that for a project to be sustainable, participation need to be both means and end for that project. Arnstein (1969) has shown that though citizen participation is the cornerstone of democracy it need not necessarily mean having the real power to affect the outcome of the decision making process. Emphasizing power as a major issue in participation, he classifies five ladders of power relations in participation. They are manipulation, therapy, informing, consultation, placation, partnership, delegated power and citizen control. The first two are identified as kind of non-participation, the next three represent medium level of participation and the last three represent higher levels of participation with the last one being the highest level of participation. Other ladders have been identified by recent studies like Oakley (1991).These are participation as contribution, participation as organization and participation as empowerment. The first one involves demanding residents or participants to contribute resources rather than passing direction and control to them. The second one includes participation through creating and developing organizations and institutions like trusts and informal groupings. Some delegation of power and control is included in his type of participation (Warburton, 1996).In the third case the relationship between power and participation is made explicit. Two alternative definitions are given for empowerment. One is developing skills and abilities needed by the people for achieving their aims and the other is enabling power for the participants to do a purpose. In both case, there is explicit relationship between power and participation (Warburton, 1996). All the above mentioned ladders of participation thus involve the need for sharing of power through participation. In other words, the benefits of participation can be obtained only through having a say for the employeees in the decision-making and having a feeling of a level of ownership of solutions (Bell, 1995). 3. Participative Management and Employee Motivation The human agent theory argued that employee participation would enhance the fulfilment of workers’ basic needs for self-actualization, responsibility and self-esteem. This theory emphasized the weakening of psychological effects of traditional autocratic bureaucracies The famous Hawthorne Studies conducted by Professor Mayo (1933), one of the main proponents of the behavioural school focused on establishing the role of psychological factors like the treatment of workers, their work and the social environment on human productivity. This approach helps to promote the participation of employees in all levels of decision-making. Salamon (1992) defines employee participation as a requirement for obtaining industrial democracy by enabling employees to influence decision making in organizations. This was on the assumption that this type of worker-employer cooperation would highly benefit to both the worker and the organization. This will result in promoting the empowerment of employees. This is well suited for flat organizations. It can also promote creativity and flexibility in organizations. Based on the productivity and efficiency rationale, it is argued that the self actualization needs of employees are satisfied through participative management .This in turn increases employee motivation and thereby job performance. By involving the employees in developing the mission statement, selection and recruitment process, determining perks, salaries etc t, it is argued that the employee motivation is increased which in turn increases morale and satisfaction(Coch and French,1949; Bhatti and Qureshi,2007). Dachler and Wilpert (1978) described four basic theoretical positions supporting worker participation. They are; democratic theory, socialist theory, human growth and development theory, and productivity and efficiency theory. , democratists argued that in a truly democratic society work participation needs to be an extension of political democratic values. . These theorists assume that worker participation would yield certain benefits only for private organizations Socialist theorists argue employee participation ultimately leading to the abolition of wage-labour relationships and the creation of a humanistic society. Human growth and development theorists emphasized that employee participation would enhance the fulfilment of workers’ basic needs for self-actualization, responsibility and self esteem and thus increases employee motivation. This theory emphasized the weakening of psychological effects of traditional autocratic bureaucracies. Productivity and efficient theorists argued that worker participation could be used to reduce worker dissatisfaction, thereby reducing absenteeism, turnover, poor quality of work, and sabotage. More recent theorists who support this theory (Scully etal, 1995) argued that participation is likely to increase organizational productivity and efficiency, whether employees are satisfied or not, to the extent that employees with relevant knowledge and expertise are given the opportunity to influence organizational decision making. According to Rouse (2004),”task is concrete – criteria, measurements, targets, and deadline; and process describes the how – perceptions, attitudes, feelings, and reasoning”. Based on the process thinking, decision of who to be involved in a task and how to they influence the task are made. In the task-oriented approach, the leaders only emphasize on the need to achieve concretized goals like improving productivity. Their focus is on improving productivity and to organizing the subordinates and activities to achieve these goals without considering the needs and interests of the people .In this approach; the people are simply treated as nits of production or means to an end. The only concern is assigning various tasks to the subordinates or imposing tasks on them to obtain the organizational goals. Many studies, however, have shown that this type of approach without considering the personal ideas, needs and beliefs has negative impacts on the job satisfaction and on job performance (Schriesheim and Murphy ,1976).These studies emphasize the need to focus on the process by which leaders can influence the followers and thereby enable job satisfaction and higher job performance. The process for influencing the followers to perform the tasks is described by different theories in different ways. However, most theories agree the role of treating followers like people rather than simply units of production. The need for understanding the problems and interests of the followers are emphasized by these theories for enhancing job satisfaction and performance as suggested by these theories. The relation oriented behavioural theories emphasize the need for sharing decision making power with subordinates in enhancing job satisfaction and performance while situational theories suggest the role of situations in such process. At the same time contingency theories criticised the over importance given to situations in all leadership processes. Based on the contingency theories, the influential process includes maintaining a good relationship between leaders and the followers, breaking up the tasks into goals, methods and standards of performance as well as carrying on the power to the leader to get the job done by the organization (Fiedler, 1997). The new theories suggest the need for motivating the followers by the leaders in order to get the job done. However, Conger and Kanungo (1998) showed that focusing on the process related issues will result in taking risky decisions and can result in serious failure in the future. According to these studies both task related and process related issues need to be given importance in leadership theories. This is because job satisfaction and job performance are equally important in achieving organizational goals. The issues related with tasks like meeting deadlines ,completing targets etc are important in determining job performance .At the same time, decisions on how to get the job done and how to influence the followers are important in determining job satisfaction. Miller and Monge (1986) after reviewing some 106 articles and book chapters of laboratory and field studies, reported mixed results on the relationship between participation and job satisfaction. They found a strong relationship between participation and job satisfaction, but a slight link between participation and productivity. Their inference stated that participation enhance productivity through intervening motivational process. That means, first participation fulfills employees’ needs, and the fulfillment of the needs leads to employee satisfaction. Subsequently, satisfaction strengthens employee motivation and the increased motivation leads improvement of worker productivity. Even though researches have shown a positive relationship between employee participation and job satisfaction, the studies have not being widely addressed to public service organizations .Mann (2006) defined public service motivation as the aspiration to make changes, the capability to have an effect on the community, and the feeling of commitment and honor. As such Mann (2006) predicted that people with high public service motivation would not rely on salary, job security, or extrinsic rewards. However, they are more interested in intrinsic rewards like recognition and career advancement. Therefore providing opportunity for employees to involve in decision making process would result an increase in their public service motivation thereby increasing job satisfaction (Brewer, Sleden, and Facer, 2000). Job satisfaction is an important criterion as it affects the quality of service they provide. This is immensely important in the public service where the main priority is providing service to the public with quality and efficiency (Fitzgerald et al. 1994). 4. Participative Management and Job Design Job design is defined “as the function of specifying the work activities of an individual or group in an organizational setting” (ateneonline, 2003, p126). Management of an organization expects particular contributions from its employees for the successful performance of a company including high productivity, high performance and maintaining core values (Tsui et al, 1997). Management literature shows that the expectations of the employers and their responsibilities need to support the distributional, procedural and interactive justice of an organization (Folger and Greenburg, 1985). It mainly includes the fairness of treatment in the workplace to the employees including the fairness of outcomes received by employees and the ways by which employees determine the fairness (Moorman, 1991). Hence to ensure the effective work performance from the employees and to ensure other expectations, the fairness of treatment mainly participative management is an important element. The job design in an organization needs to be in such a way that the participation of employees need to be ensured in decision making programs, selection and recruitment procedures ,establishment of policies and procedures and decision on perks etc. This in turn creates a need for urgency in employees and a motivation to them, which in turn will enhance their productivity and performance. In addition to these, the participative management is obtained to have decreased the employee turnover which in turn enhances the organizational performance(Cotton & Tuttle, 1986; Bluedorn, 1982; Koh and Goh ,1995 etc). According to the informal theories by Campbell and Campbell (1997), labour shortage and bad employee attitudes are the two contributing factors for employee turnover in many companies. Based on the human agency theory, the motivational factors play a main role in contributing to the productivity of employees resulting in low turnover. In addition to these, employee participation and job satisfaction including pay, nature of work and supervision are obtained to have negative relationship with employee turnover in many studies (Cotton & Tuttle, 1986; Bluedorn, 1982; Koh and Goh ,1995 etc). For example in the case of South West Airlines in USA, the employee participation is quite high in the decision making process of the company including in the recruitment and selection of new candidates. This has resulted in high employee productivity and low employee turnover which has been very crucial in the successful performance. The company is reported to have the most productive workers in the industry and also with lowest employee turnover in the industry. Low employee turnover has resulted in the success of this company (Schuler and Werner, 2009). Based on all these, it can be argued that participative management ahs inevitable implications for job design. 5. Conclusion In this essay, the various levels of participative management in an organization, its implications for employee motivation and job design are discussed. The discussion shows that the behavioural theory based on the sociological approach first emphasized employee participation as a business strategy. Various levels of participation are obtained based on various theories. It is argued that participative management leads to enhanced job satisfaction and productivity through the employee motivation process. This motivation can be achieved through ensuring the participation of employees in decision making process, establishment of policies and procedures, recruitment and selection procedures, decision of perks etc. Moreover informing the employees regarding the issues in the organization will also act as a motivating factor for the employee which will in turn enhance the job productivity. The discussion shows that the fairness of treatment to the employees in the work place is very important for better performance form the employees. Moreover, the participative management results in low employee turnover which in turn is critical for a company’s success. Hence it can be concluded that participative management has inevitable implications for job design in an organization. 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