Workers participation in management: Theory and practice

Worker's Participation drives industrial democracy to achieve ideal goals of organisations. Maxian ideology advocate the idea of worker's participation in management on purely ideological grounds. But some of contemporary researchers conclude that the objectives of organisations profit can be secured by involving the employees in participation in management's affairs. Present paper is an attempt to understand the theoretical and applied part of worker's participation. The management theorists believe that the ideal participation means joint decision making. Researches conducted over the last 80–90 years have indicated to the managements that their long range objectives of continued survival and prosperity can best be achieved through cooperation from the employees on the vital issues. Rensis Likert, an eminent management thinker believes that management goes through many phases, but the last phase genuinely is through participative approach. Trade union leaders also believes to adopt conformational strategy from time to time, where as Government many times had tried to push the legislations to secure votes of workers. It seems a pure vote catching gimmick. But there is always the silver lining on the dark clouds where workers union took up the challenge of running the production based organisation and proved to be milestone. Although, there are enormous possibilities of improving productivity through securing genuine employee participation at every level of organisations.