My Account Wish List
Advanced Search
Print - Close Window
www.greenwood.com/catalog/Q423.aspx
All Greenwood Products
Participation Programs in Work Organizations Past, Present, and Scenarios for the Future
(Click to Enlarge)
Aviad Bar-Haim
ISBN: 1-56720-423-6
ISBN-13: 978-1-56720-423-0
192 pages
Praeger Publishers
Publication: 5/30/2002
List Price: $81.95 (UK Sterling Price: £56.95)
Availability: Print on demand
Media Type: Hardcover
Trim Size: 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
Subjects:
Description: Employee participation programs have many faces, many definitions, many forms—and they change all the time. For some people they are meant to solve every problem in the workplace. For others they are ways to reduce resistance to management and its efforts to bring about organizational change. Still others see them as totally redundant and a hindrance to efficency and the implementation of good management practices. To make sense of it all, Bar-Haim integrates—historically, thematically, analytically—the wide but often incoherent knowledge we have about these programs, and in doing so portrays them in a clear, useful, multidimensional manner. The result is a work of scholarship and practical guidance that students, scholars, researchers, and executives will find important, an action-oriented source of vital information.

Bar-Haim shows that participation programs in work organizations have always attempted to solve three basic human problems, problems stemming from industrial democracy and equality, work alienation, and occupational and managerial effectiveness. To do this he uses a rare multidimensional technique. He describes and analyzes the processes and behavior of participation, participants, and organizational forms using a a variety of conceptual and theoretical frames drawn from the social and management sciences. He enhances our understanding of participation programs on micro and macro levels, and then provides practical guidelines from the real-world experience of other scholars and executives. Among the several ironies he discovers are that the roles of enthusiasts, opponents, and skeptics changed during the course of a jubilee of these programs. By integrating a large body of research and suggesting a formal model to evaluate existing employee programs and projected ones, his book attempts to ease the enigmatic ambivalence we have toward worker participation in general. In fact, he shows that by better understanding the dynamics of participation programs, it is possible for those who desire such programs to create, construct, and maintain better ones.
Table of Contents:
  • Introduction
    Participation Programs: Mapping the Field
    Problem Areas and Definitions
    Indirect Representative Programs
    Direct Participation Programs
    Economic Participation Programs
    Worker's Participation: The First Generation
    Major Players of Worker's Participation
    Employee Involvement: The Second Generation
    Major Players of Employee Involvement
    A General Model of Participation Programs
    System Elements of Participation Programs
    A Core Model of Participation Programs
    Applying the Model to Specific Cases
    Future of Participation Programs
    Preparing the Ground for Scenario Construction
    Future Scenarios of Participation Programs
    Epilogue
    Appendix I: Co-Determination in German Coal, Iron, and Steel Industries
    Appendix II: Data for Two Israeli Programs
    Appendix III: "The Challenge of Mondragon" by George Benello
    References
About the Author: AVIAD BAR-HAIM heads the management and economics department at the Open University of Israel, Tel Aviv. He holds a doctorate in industrial sociology and organizational behavior from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and before his present assignment was the Open University's Dean for Academic Development. Among his current research and teaching interests are topics in organizational behavior and human resource management.
LCC Class: 331
All rights reserved. Copyright © 1999-2009 ABC-CLIO
130 Cremona Dr., Santa Barbara, CA 93117 805-968-1911