Unit -2

Participative Management?
Participative management is a collaborative leadership style that involves employees at
all levels in decision-making. It fosters commitment and creativity within teams by
delegating power and encouraging shared problem-solving. This approach values open
communication, trust, and cooperation among team members.
Participative management also called management by participation where managers
value the input and ideas of their employees, recognizing their importance in serving
customers and staying competitive in the market.

Elements of Participatory Management

Recognizing the mechanisms by which participative leadership influences performance

will help practitioners better designing training and development programs aimed at
enhancing participative management. There are five broad dimensions of participatory
management: the decision domain, degree of participation, structure, target area, and
rationale.

Decision Domain:

This dimension relates to the actual contribution of the participation. Employees can
participate in setting organizational goals (as in OKRs), designing the job (for example in
Jobs-to-be-done), making operational decisions around resource allocation or the
distribution of human resources, solving client-oriented problems (which involves
defining the issues and/or setting alternative courses of action), impacting evaluation and
development efforts, and in making organizational changes (such as setting company
policies that might involve hiring, layoffs, profit sharing or investments).

Degree of Involvement:

The degree of participation ranges in a sliding scale from suggestions all the way to
ownership of outcomes. The higher the degree of participation, the greater the impact of
this management style but also the greater the difficulty in implementing it. If we are to
imagine a continuum of involvement we could identify four degrees, moving from
individualism to collectivism:

• Informational. Where a two-way flow of information is established,

• Consultative. Where final decisions are revised in group before

implementation,
 • Democratic. Where problems are analyzed together and mutually acceptable
solutions are decided on, and

• Collective. Where the collective benefit outweighs the needs of the

individuals.

Structure:

Though participation can have no informal structure, higher degrees of involvement

require explicit rules and procedures concerning who participates, the expected
citizenship behavior (how the participation occurs), and what are the deliverables of
participation. From the beginning, ground rules and boundary conditions need to be
established. When participation is confined to informal structures, employee role tends to
be limited to giving suggestions or advice. Too many choices can be frustrating, and the
fewer constraints placed on a team, the more time they will spend defining their structure
than accomplishing the task. Agile methodologies provide ample examples of structures to
incite participation.

Target Area:

It is also necessary to clearly define which areas should participation be limited to, and this
can also serve as a roadmap for the expansion of the program as participants become more
versed. These are the areas which are common to most environments:

• Technical. Refers to contributing in the area of domain knowledge of the

employee

• Social. Regarding hours of work, rules and regulations at the workplace,

welfare measures, workers’ safety, employee welfare, health and sanitation.

• Financial. Such as methods of value creation, cost cutting, mergers and

acquisitions, and lay-offs.

• Personnel. Recruitment and selection, work distribution, promotions,

demotions or transfers, succession planning, grievance handling, settlements,
and voluntary retirement.
Objectives of Participative Management
The following six are the major objectives of participative management.
• Encouraging employee involvement in decision-making.
• Fostering a collaborative and inclusive work environment.
• Harnessing diverse perspectives and ideas for better problem-solving.
• Increasing employee motivation and job satisfaction.
 • Enhancing employee commitment to organizational goals.
• Improving organizational performance and productivity.

Collective Bargaining – Meaning

The term Collective Bargaining Agreement was first coined by Beatrice and Sidney
Webb, the economists, in 1989. Late President John Kennedy granted Federal
employees the right to unionize and bargain collectively with the employers. The
opportunity to bargain is recognized as a basic human right in 2007. This right raises
the dignity of human beings and a rightful place in the establishment of rules at work
place.
This right was assured by the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) enacted in 1935
by the United States Congress in Washington, D. C. This particular act stresses certain
procedures and a selection of a labor organization to represent the employees in the
bargaining process with the employer.
The employer is prohibited from any act that will interfere with the selection of union
to represent the employees in the bargaining process. These rules can be
substantiation Rules which imply the terms and conditions regarding pay and salary,
work conditions, hours of work and holidays. The procedural rules regulate the
methods of substantive rules are interpreted and the methods of resolving workplace
conflicts and problems.
Collective Bargaining is a right and a process to conduct negotiations between
employer and the employees represented by a bargaining unit. The focus is to reach
amicable settlements that regulate conditions at work.
The objectives of collective bargaining process are:
i. To settle issues and disputes between employer and employees in the matters
related to wages and salaries and working conditions.
ii. To protect the interests of workers in work related matter
iii. To settle the differences between labor and management
The agreement reached by the union representatives and the employer representatives
include the following areas:
1. Wages:
i. Wages and salaries
ii. Working condition
iii. Hours of work
iv. Overtime pay
v. Retirement benefits
vi. Incentive payments
2. Hours:
i. Overtime
ii. Vacation benefits
iii. Holidays
iv. Shift work and payments
v. Maternity leave
vi. Flex time
3. Employment Conditions:
i. Job descriptions
ii. Layoff conditions
iii. Promotional criteria
iv. Seniority rights
v. Safety
vi. Grievances
vii. Selection of employees
viii. Health matters
ix. Participative rights
x. Matters directly or indirectly affecting employees.

Collective Bargaining – Scope

We cannot say that collective bargaining is a panacea for all the ills of labor-management relation.
Effective collective bargaining contributes to solve strategic problems of labor-management
relations at the enterprise and industry levels. It enables the parties to arrive at a joint compromise
on common problems. Management may lose their unilateral discretion on essential issues that
affect the workers, on the one hand, while they can take the workers into their confidence regarding
the problems that affect both of them, on the other.
This would help avoid and avert undesirable situations and direct actions, while it stimulates
productivity. Thus a peaceful working environment is essential for establishing cordial mutual
relations, since both the employers and the employees arrive at a mutual agreement. They come
closer that help them to maintain more cordial relations.
ILO observes, Collective agreements provide the climate for smooth progress. The agreements
spell out the working relationship between employers and workers’ organization in which a
synthesis between the demand for one side and concessions for the other can be given practical
shape.
The trade unions and the workers are better off since their views and interests are taken into
account, while employers are not worse off since they are able to take the workers into their
confidence, which would lead to good employer-employee relations, industrial peace and
prosperity.

Works Committee?

According to the Industrial Disputes Act of India, every employer should form a
works committee if they have more than 100 employees in the organization.

The works committee members should be comprised of equal number of

workmen (employees) and individuals representing employers.

The employer should select the employees in consultation with the Union (if
already formed in the organization).

Features of Works Committee

In this section, we will discuss some of the common features of the works
committee procedure that will help you constitute a committee.

1. The number of members in the committee should be fixed and not more
than 20. Here, it is also specified that the members of employers should
not be more than members of employees.
2. The representatives from the employer’s side should be selected with the
consent of the employer and these people should be associated with the
organization directly.
3. Before the formation of the works committee, the employer should inform
the union if they have one. Further, during elections, two groups should
be formed: one of the union members who want to be a part of the
committee and other non-union members.
4. The candidates added to the committee should have worked with the
company for at least 1 year and should have attained a minimum age of
19 years.
5. The voters who are voting for committee members should be at least 18
years of age and must have worked in the company for atleast 6 months.
Joint Management Councils (JMC):
An idea to form the Joint Management Councils was developed in a labor management
co-operation that was held in New Delhi in 1958. The functions have been divided into
four categories that include general functions, functions with the workers rights,
functions that are linked with the right to receive the latest information and functions
linked to rights for exercising administrative powers.
The important attributes of Joint Management Councils are:
• It can be consulted by management on certain specified matters.
• In certain matters management is expected to share information with members of
council.
• The council has administrative responsibilities.
• Subjects under collective bargaining, such as wages, bonus and allowances have
been excluded from the scope of JMC.
JMC differ from work committee in two major aspects.
• It has wider scope than work committee.
• JMC have administrative responsibility for safety, vocational training and welfare
of workers.
Objectives of JMC:
• Promote healthy relations between management and workers.
• Build trust and understanding between management and workers.
• Improve worker efficiency.
• Provide welfare facilities to the workers.
Pre-requisites of Participative Management
Participative management can best be described as a style of decision making that ensures that
involvement of stakeholders at all levels. This operates at three levels, Problem analysis, strategy
formulation and final implementation of the solution. There are certain prerequisites to be met
before participative management can be put to work.
Participative management first of all requires a willingness from the managers to give up some
charge to the workers and they must in turn be in a position such that the successful participation
of all is ensured. It cannot be successful in any organization unless is carefully planned, timed and
well thought upon.
The resistance is a reflection of the disbelief of the employees that their participation will not be
respected and implemented. The onus here lies on the managers in putting in sincere efforts to
convince them of the usefulness of their role in the decision making. The employees need proof
that their ideas will be considered, discussed seriously and implemented finally if found beneficial
to the organization. This is precisely why participative management needs to be implemented in
phases; this way the employees are able to see proof that their ideas and suggestions hold weight.
It also encourages them to come forth in future and also keeps them continuously engaged in
thinking about the welfare of their organization.

The Role of Government in Collective Bargaining: Scandinavia and the Low Countries-
Abstract

This article compares the role of government in collective bargaining in five small
West European countries. For the period until the second half of the 1970s, a
distinction is made between countries in which government often interfered in wage
bargaining, e. g. Denmark and The Netherlands, and countries in which government
refrained from intervention, like Sweden. Belgium and, to a lesser degree, Norway.
In all countries the tradition of (non)-intervention had already started before the
Second World War. The article reviews some explanatory variables: in Scandinavia
centralization of labour relations is crucial, in the Low Countries the nature of
political verzuiling. Recent developments show that government intervention has
become a characteristic of labour relations in all but one country.