Business Forum

Respond to this discussion forum in 150 words or more.

1 Prerequisites for effective participation are: adequate time to participate, potential benefits greater than costs, relevance to employee interests, adequate employee abilities to deal with the subject, mutual ability to communicate, no feeling of threat to either party and restriction to the area of job freedom. People come out with good ideas but is not very easy to interpret those ideas in the best way possible. In fact, for participation to be effective, some things have meet each other in order to make the idea working.  I would say mutual ability to communicate is one of the most difficult prerequisites to achieve in participation. The reason beyond my opinion is that employees should constantly be informed about the details of the idea and that way they get to know everything about the process of production and about the project they working on. This is sometimes hard to achieve if the employees are not motivated enough to process the given information, and therefore, productivity will decrease. Furthermore, the managers have to ensure that there is no such a feeling of threat to his employees which means the workers are likely to be more productive if they are relaxed and don’t feel any threats from their bosses. Indeed, these prerequisites  help explain why some managers are still relatively autocratic. In some jobs such as working in factories, kitchen, the managers sometimes have to be autocratic because they give orders to the workers and workers have to execute it with no question asked. However, my personal experience tells me that the managers should be a bit more flexible with their employees and that will help to increase the productivity and motivation for the entire organization.

2. Benefits of participation: 

·           Higher output 

·           Better quality of output 

·           Lead to ideas that produce genuine long-run improvements

·           Improved motivation

·           Improved self-esteem, job satisfaction and cooperation with management 

·           Reduced conflict and stress

·           More commitment to goals

·           Better acceptance of change

·           Reduced turnover and absences 

·           Organizational changes can be implemented more rapidly 

·           Establishes better communication\

Participation programs:

Suggestion programs: Leads to higher output, cooperation with management

Quality circles: Leads to more commitment at meeting goals, improved productivity and working conditions.

Total quality management: Leads to better quality of a product, improved self-esteem, job satisfaction and cooperation with management, Long-run improvements.

Rapid-cycle decision making: reduce turnover and absence, better communication, organizational changes can be more rapidly

Self-managing teams: Leads to establishment of better communication, better acceptance of change and improved motivation, reduced conflict and stress

Employee ownership plans:Improves motivation, better acceptance of change, lead to ideas that produce genuine long-run improvements.

Flexible work arrangements: Leads to improved self-esteem,job satisfaction, and cooperation with management, reduced conflict and stress