Power relinquishment versus power sharing: Theoretical clarification and empirical comparison of delegation and participation.

Abstract

This article presents a theoretical and empirical comparison of delegation and participation. Although the two processes have sometimes been treated as interchangeable, delegation and participation have evolved from two different theoretical perspectives and are used by managers under different sets of conditions. Two studies are reported that examined these differences. The experimental study examined situational factors in Vroom and Yetton's (1973) leadership model that predict differences in managers' reported preferences for delegation or participation. Results indicated that decision importance, subordinate information, and subordinate goal congruence explained 23% of the variance in managers' preferences. The correlational study examined similar situational predictors of supervisors' reported use of delegation and participation with subordinates. These results largely confirmed the findings of the experimental study and also showed supervisor workload as a significant predictor. In addition, objective measures of subordinate performance significantly correlated with the use of delegation but not with participation. The implications of the findings for research on participative decision making are discussed. Research on the distribution of decision-making authority in organizations has been both abundant and diverse. This literature spans a broad range of research topics, from participation in decision making to worker autonomy to structural decentralization. The largest body of literature addressing this issue, however, is the research investigating subordinate participation in decision making (PDM). This research is itself quite diverse and plagued with inconsistencies concerning both the definition and the implementation of participative decision-making processes (Schweiger & Leana, 1986). Participation can vary in scope, content, and degree, in whether it is formal or informal, and in whether it is forced or voluntary (Locke & Schweiger, 1979). Moreover, PDM can take many different forms ranging from subordinate consultation to superior-subo rdinate decision making to participation through subordinate representation. Although these variations in method suggest that little agreement exists on the exact meaning of PDM, participation has commonly been operationally denned by researchers as joint decision making between superior and subordinate (Bass, 1981). Consequently, much of the PDM research has tended to focus exclusively on comparisons between joint decision making and autocratic arrangements in which subordinates are not included in any aspect of the decision-making process. Conversely, research involving comparisons of other methods of in