Denton, Keith. (1991). What\'s Wrong

Denton, Keith. (1991). "What's Wrong with These Employees?" Business Horizons

Denton writes on the growing dissatisfaction among employees and middle managers even in large and well-run organizations, such as Nordstrom, and as reflected by the findings of the surveys conducted by the Opinion Research Corporation of 100,000 middle managers, supervisors, sales persons, technical, clerical and hourly workers of Fortune 500 companies in 1988. According to the survey, the confidence of the majority of the subjects in upper management had significantly declined. Denton also points out that participative management or employee involvement can bring on greater understanding and acceptance of decisions by subordinates; greater commitment to the implementation of these decisions; greater understanding of objectives; greater fulfillment of psychological needs and, therefore, greater satisfaction; greater team identity, cooperation and coordination; better ways of settling disputes; and better decisions. Despite these advantages, participative management has not succeeded and he attributes this failure to the resistance shown by middle managers and supervisors. Some companies have come to terms with this reality. Merck, for one, has been re-evaluating its relationship with employees through in-depth interviews in order to assure continued success. It continues to improve employee recruitment procedures, seek out alternate work patters and maintain communication channels within the organization.

Rusak, William K. (1990). "Participative Management and Employee Involvement: Slogans and Reality?" Canada-United States Law Journal

Rusak discusses participative management and employee involvement is the solution to the problem of cutting costs and doing things right the first time. Getting employees involved in decision-making will redound to better products, lower costs, more innovations, improved morale, higher productivity and improved or greater competitiveness. He calls attention to the unprecedented dynamics and complexities of the global business market, which require this radical organizational change in the 21st century, when customers demand quality, price and service at a higher level than ever before. He perceives that the single most important challenge is the optimum utilization of human resources to respond to phenomenal changes through Total Quality Management or TQM. TQM crosses through all the aspects of a truly success business organization that does the right thing right the very first time. The old and traditional hierarchical management style simply is no longer responsive to the times.

He emphasizes that competitiveness requires the best talents and acquiring the best talents, in turn, requires that manpower be motivated intrinsically through meaningful involvement in decision-making. Rusak uses the case of Dominion Textile in demonstrating the effectiveness of participative management.

Mohrman, Susan Albers and Lawler, Edward E. III (1995). Participative Managerial Behavior and Organizational Change." Journal of Organizational Change Management

Mohrman and Lawler perceive that all the resources and efforts expended towards a transition into a high-involvement culture are concentrated on the structural aspect and seem to miss out managerial and supervisory behavior as a lead variable. They believe that it should be the major concern: the managerial role in a participative environment is precisely the primary target of change that must be addressed in the organization. Treating this aspect as a lag rather than as a lead change is likely to undermine all efforts at change and incline the organization to revert to traditional style.

Pojidaeff, Dimitri. "The Core Principles of Participative Management." Journal for Quality and Participation.

Pojidaeff writes that the current business environment demands a new approach to human resources or the workforce. Organizations in the past confronted human resource costs by reducing the workforce but keeping it out of major decisions the organizations made. Current situations bluntly present no alternative to business competitiveness or survival but increased productivity through employee involvement in those decisions. Traditional managers and supervisors resisted a participative management style because they viewed workers as merely replaceable spokes in the business cycle, with narrowly defined job output without meaning to those who perform and produce the output. As such, employees cannot identify with organizational goals and make total and intrinsic commitment to these goals. As a consequence, the company pays them without the devotion they should have and share with management to make the organization competitive. He predicts that private or public organizations that do not adopt the radical change to providing intrinsic motivation to the workforce can no longer survive stiff global competitiveness.

Kaufman, Bruce E. (2001). "The Theory and Practice of Strategic HRM and Participative Management." Human Resource Management Review.

According to Kaufman, strategic human resource management and participative management are not relatively recent developments but trace their origins back to academic writings of the post-World War II period, such as Kurt Lewin, Douglas McGregot, Chris Argyris, H. Igor Ansoff and Michael Porter. But in his study, Kaufman alludes to early antecedents in theory and practice several decades earlier made by industrial relations academic and management practitioners.

Gilberg, Jay. (1988). "Managerial Attitudes Towards Participative Management Programs." Public Personnel Management

Gilberg discusses the findings of his study that the managerial role obstacle is a myth and that most managers actually welcome more chances to practice participation in decision-making. These reveal that managers and supervisors are not threatened by employee participation but, instead, feel that it will, in fact, improve employee morale and minimize resistance to policy and operational decisions made in the workplace.

His study complements those of Halal and Brown in determining and measuring the degree of interest in participative management practices. The findings will also benefit the public sector managers who can borrow participative management techniques from private enterprises and apply these to government settings.