A Social Information Processing Model of Employee Participation

Abstract

This paper explores employee participation from a social information processing perspective. The model draws upon social exchange theory, which depicts social interactions in terms of the relative influence of actors, and upon categorization theory, which considers how information relating to social interaction is cognitively organized and processed. While the social arena can be categorized along any number of dimensions, the core proposal of the model is that, in the interest of reducing the complexity of the organizational world, people employ a schema (i.e., cognitive map) in which social interactions are categorized according to the relative influence of actors. The schema for participation is posited to be an individual-level knowledge structure with a strong shared component. The consensual aspect of the participation schema varies across cultures and subcultures, accounting for the wide cross-cultural variation in attitudes, norms, and values about participation. The model further proposes that the participation schema resembles the structure of much other world knowledge in that it organizes social situations into increasingly abstract and inclusive categories. Finally, the participation schema is posited to link to both emotion or affective information, as well as to action-oriented knowledge. Schema-based processing reduces the cognitive complexity of a workplace interaction because it enables individuals to 1) efficiently determine their relative influence in a workplace situation; 2) respond efficiently to the situation on an emotional level; and 3) call upon scripted sequences of appropriate behavior. Implications of the model for research are proposed.