The Success of Participative Management

Participative management is a management practice where employees are involved in making decisions that directly affect how they perform their jobs. It is a management practice that originated from Western countries but it is now globally accepted and practiced. Participative management is more like industrial democracy because workers are incorporated in the decision making process in the organization (Business Dictionary, 2014). According to Aswathappa, (2005) a number of successful companies have adopted this management practice. Some of them are Toyota Corporation which incorporated the suggestion scheme over a decade ago, British Airways also incorporated employee suggestion scheme and greatly benefitted from employee feedback especially with regards to overcoming financial challenges. Indian company Satyam incorporated an employee suggestion scheme across the company which they call “the idea junction” and it is hosted on the company intranet accessible to all their employees.
The organization must first determine the level of employee participation that it wants to implement with regards to employee participation in management. This scope in which employees participle in management decision making can be in a number of dimensions such as:
Social decision making
This covers workplace related issues such as regulations about conduct while at work, working hours, staff welfare regulations, employee’s safety and workplace social amenities. There is a risk of employees taking advantage of this opportunity to unduly influence the decisions being made by the management. Adair (2011) advices that the way to mitigate against this is by use of the principle of limited or circumscribed participation.

Financial or Economics related ...

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...an and Huczynski (2013) mention that when employees’ psychological needs are met by giving them an opportunity to present their suggestions in the decision making process it gives them satisfaction psychologically and results in enhanced productivity.
Another benefit is that this concept can be used to help an organization to retain its best talent because according to Doyle (2003), when employees feel that their contribution matters, they get more loyal to the organization and they are more likely to remain with the organization for longer.
Organizations use this management practice to motivate their employees so that the organization can reach its projected organizational goals. In the industrial setup, giving employees a voice in the decision making process and delegation of authority practices have a great impact on increasing productivity in the organization.