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Worker Participation and Teams: New Evidence from Analyzing Organizational Ethnographies

Ohio State University

Most large organizations are today experimenting with heightened employee involvement, including self-monitoring teams, joint programs with unions and limited degrees of worker ownership such as those based on employee stock ownership programs. In spite of the widespread adoption of such programs, relatively little is known about their consequences for employee behavior and attitudes. In particular, little is known about the relative strengths and limitations of different programs. The current article evaluates a range of programs involving heightened employee involvement using data derived from content coding program characteristics, worker behaviors and worklife experiences from the existing set of book length organizational ethnographies (N = 122). The results suggest that all forms of worker participation offer improved worklife experiences and reduced workplace conflict relative to the absence of these programs. Self-monitoring teams, however, perform no better than joint union-management programs or than more traditional work teams along the dimensions of worker autonomy, pride, satisfaction and cooperation. The sole unique contribution of contemporary self-monitoring teams appears to be a lowering of strike probabilities.

Key Words: employee involvement • organizational ethnography • teams • work groups • worker participation

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