Workers Participation in Management

Participation as a Concept

Participation is the key word these days for the success of any organisation. Be it sharing of results or implementation of a project or framing of policy. What is so important that suddenly participation has been recognised by management in various organisations ? Some of the few advantages of participation are as under :

• it brings high degree of responsibility among the employees;
• it builds up their morale and brings out teamwork and team spirit in its functioning;
• it contributes to better understanding among employees:
• it gives wider acceptance to of the various decisions taken by the management: and it leads to harmonious industrial relations in the organisation.

Participative management, as a concept, emerged in response to the failure of the traditional management tlleory to meet the new challenges of modem industrial enterprises. Traditionally, based on the principles of centralisat~on of power, rigid hierarchy and unilateral decision making with little or no information flowing downward,the traditional theory and its practice could not adequately motivate the industrial workers, resulting in their apathy to work and indifference towards organisational goals. In fact: participation in one form or other has been in existence in the industry from the ancient age although its importance has been realised recently. The process of change from the old to the new, from the traditional to the modem is, however, gradual. Workers participation was initially introduced and experimented in the industrialised nations. As its effectiveness was observed and on the basis of experience gained, it rapidly spread to other parts of the world. Today, the principle of participation has assumed such a sanctity

Industrial Relations
that modern managers seldom, if ever, question its validity and can ill effort to ignore its usefulness. The unprecedented success achieved by the Japanese industries in an intensely competitive world market, is largely due to the effective adoption of participative style of management in the Japanese "Quality Circles". No wonder, there is a craze for initiating the Japanese style all over the world today.

Joint Participation in India
Neither the concept, nor the practice of joint participatiqn is new to our country.The Industrial Disputes Act, 1947 introduced it by making Works Committee, a statutory body. In 1957, the Indian Labour Conference introduced Joint Management Councils which were introduced in many Industries. In 1975 'and again in 1977, the Government of India announced in quick succession schemes for workers participation inmanagement. These schemes were quickly implemented. However, the govenilnent scheme for workers participation announced on December 12, 1983 is by and large inost conlprehensive. It was designed to overcome the difficulties and problems which were encountered during the implenientation of earlier scheilies and to ensure healthy parlicipation of workers in the management of the industries, particularly in tlie Public Sector Undertakings.

Infornlal participation of employees can be seen in tlie organisation in the form of sports club, community puja, colony administration. transport cnmmttee.suggestions committee, etc. Participation of employees is a statutory recluirement in canteen, safety and works committee as a part of legal obligation of management etc.