THE MANAGEMENT OF PARTICIPATION: A COMPARISON OF WORK ENVIRONMENTS IN PARTICIPATORY AND TRADITIONAL MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS IN THE RETAIL FOOD INDUSTRY (PLANNING)

The interest in worker participation by traditional corporations, and the inclusion of Quality of Work Life (QWL) programs and financial incentives in collective bargaining agreements, present new situations that need to be examined in light of existing general concepts of participation and profit-sharing incentives. Exploratory research on these issues was conducted within a chain of supermarkets which had launched an effort to recover from serious decline. Recovery was accomplished through a cooperative labor-management effort, and a collective bargaining agreement resulted which provided for both a QWL program and financial incentives. The design and implementation of the QWL program took the form of Interactive Planning, a systemic planning approach which allows all employees to participate.; The research question was: "Do corporations that use a participatory management system have work environments superior to those of traditionally managed corporations, as evaluated by the employees?"; The Work Environment Scale was used to compare quantitatively employee evaluation of the work environment in the participatory supermarkets versus the traditionally managed supermarkets. Interviews and observations were also used to describe the differences in these management systems.; The Work Environment Scale did not find strong statistical differences among the groups studied. However, the results suggested that participatory management can result in a favorable assessment of aspects of the work environment that are likely to be affected by participatory activities, such as an emphasis on good planning, getting the job done, and new approaches. The qualitative material was useful in explaining why the expected overall difference between participatory and traditional management systems did not emerge clearly from the research instrument.; Independently-owned supermarkets (in contrast to chains), probably because of decentralized ownership and the small size of the companies, experience many of the benefits of participatory management. Paradoxes created by the inclusion of QWL programs in collective bargaining contracts are explored.