Participative Management in Organizational Decision-Making: A Study in a Developing Country

Abstract

Workers’ participation in management, regardless of its dissension and conflicts, is being increasingly embraced in different countries, both in capitalist and socialist, predominantly in the European countries, and in the Third World, as an ultimate approach of industrial democracy. In Bangladesh several attempts have been made through legislation to introduce joint consultation-type participation schemes but all are in vain. The failures are attributed, in the main, to the non-enforcement of laws, illiteracy of workers and apathy of management. No empirical research has been carried out to find out the real reasons. In the present study an attempt has been made to elicit the attitudes of the actors in the industrial relations system, i.e., workers, management and government, towards workers’ participation in management as a whole and to make an objective analysis of the same. The study found that there is considerable scope for introduction and development of appropriate workers’ participation program in the public sector industries if certain preconditions are met. It is, in fact, an attitudinal study in a large nationalized industrial enterprise in Bangladesh.