PARTICPATORY MANAGEMENT AND EMPLOYEE PERFORMANCE

Writer addressing participants
in a conference

One of the significant concepts in contemporary management is participatory management (PM), which is traced by most writers in the academic literature to the post-World War II writings of scholars, such as Kurt Lewin, Douglas McGregor, Chris Argyris, H. Igor Ansoff, and Michael Porter (Kaufman , 2001). However, a number of management scholars have also written at more length on the origins and history of PM, such as Carroll and Schuler (1983) said that participatory management can be traced to the early 1960s, the writings of behavioral scientists, such as Douglas McGregor and Rensis Likert. Furthermore, Stanton (1993) believes that the origins of PM to two behavioral scientists, Lester Coch and John French, who wrote in the late 1940s but on the issue of organizational change (Kaufman, 2001).

Different level of leadership styles leads to different levels of job satisfaction. Subordinates feel more satisfied when leaders show high levels of consideration and supportive behavior. However, not all or a particular type of management style will result in effective and efficient employees performance.  In any organization, leaders should fit their leadership styles to fit the daily demands of the organization.

Participatory management is a practice that managers use as an attempt to satisfy employees and increase productivity (Yohe 2003). By ‘participatory’ means various types and degrees of involvement of employees in, control over, and decision making in an activity (Vernooy, Qiu, and Jianchu 2008) “Participatory management, rooted in the management approach, focuses on decentralization of educational decision making and sharing of power” (Sidener, 1995). As the term of participation becomes famous, the definitions and meanings of the term have grown diverse and each research concentrated on some of the specific dimensions of this concept (Somech 2002). All of the areas, methods and forms of participation illustrate the fact that participatory management is a multidimensional concept (Nykodym et al. 2008).

As much as we see participatory management as an effective way towards productive and effective employee performance, there are a number of factors that derail its positive outcomes. One is organizational politics or what is commonly referred to as ‘office politics’. ‘Office politics’ are petty, demotivating and poisonous to individual employee performance, morale and focus on the overall achievement of the organizational goals. For example, why would a manager focus on the type of car that a staff drives? That is likely to result into a feeling by the employee that his or her integrity, honesty and trust are in question by the manager. Thus, regardless, the manager being best in participatory management, the employee is likely to not give his/her best under such an environment.

Second, another factor that can lead to derailed positive outcomes of participatory management is rumors. Rumors in an organization are as poisonous as a black mamba. Most of the managers are very poor in communication, which is a key element of participatory management, and the lack of proper communication thorough proper channels, creates a favorable environment for grapevine growth. Allowing the growth of grape vine growth in an organization brings about uncertainty, job insecurity and bad relationship among the employees. Again, this highly affects the employee performance. Bottom up and top down communication in an organization where the top level managers constantly communicate to the employees and where the employees are allowed to air their views to the top management without any form of discrimination  is therefore very important in the positive productivity of the staff and the ultimate achievement of the organizational goals.

In most of the organizations, managers have failed to effectively apply and roll out the participatory management skills because they have been negatively bound by the management vice of favoritism, which I consider as the third that derails the positive outcomes of participatory management in an organization.   What do I mean by favoritism? Favoritism can take a wide dimension depending on the culture of an organization and the relationship between a manager (s) and the employee (s). Nonetheless, the most common type of favoritism that I have come across many organizations is that of demeaning the skills and expertise of one employee in favor of another. What we need to learn is that employee A and employee B will never necessarily have the same set of skills to perform the same or similar task. For example, if employee A is good in marketing, and analysis, that doesn’t mean that employee B who excels in analysis shouldn’t be tasked and allocated to perform marketing analysis. Overwhelming employee A with the tasks of marketing and analysis not only leaves employee B with nothing to do but makes employee B feel unwanted and sidelined. This is what I refer to as favoritism. The end result of this is on one side, an overwhelmed employee and on the other end a demotivated employee which results in both not achieving their set work objectives and the overall organizational goals.

In conclusion, participatory management is only effective when we bring the employee on board. It’s only effective when we treat the employee equally and communicate effectively and efficiently among the employee. It’s only effective when managers shun grapevines and work discrimination. Otherwise, participatory management will remain just a management theory in paper.

I acknowledge all references cited in this article.