Propensity for participative decision-making, job satisfaction, organizational commitment, organizational citizenship behavior, and intentions to leave among Egyptian managers

Multinational Business Review, Spring 2003 by Parnell, John A, Crandall, William (Rick)

PPDM has been found to correlate with a variety of constructs. Crandall and Parnell (1994) recently demonstrated a link with intentions to leave. Specifically, one's PPDM may be composed of one's attitudes concerning PDM techniques and their outcomes. Existing PDM research streams have yielded both positively and negatively correlated relationships between PDM and other constructs.

Specifically, positive relationships have been found between PDM and satisfaction, self-esteem, loyalty, productivity, and positive manager-subordinate relations (Akel & Siegel, 1988). Negative relationships have been found with high costs, inefficiency and incompetence (Hunt & Vogt, 1988; Marchington & Loveridge, 1979).

Numerous conceptual papers have suggested that managers are more likely to employ PDM when they believe that it improves the quality of the decision and does not adversely impact their power relative to others within the organization (Dickson, 1982). Hence, an individual's PPDM has two attitudinal dimensions: organizational effectiveness and power.

First, if a manager believes that PDM enhances organizational effectiveness, he or she will be more likely to employ the technique. This belief may be reflected in the assertion that participation leads to higher quality decisions and greater productivity. Further, there may be a greater tendency to promote participation as a means of obtaining higher quality decisions when it is believed that subordinates prefer the added involvement. This notion has received considerable support in the literature.

A manager's consideration of organizational effectiveness does not only concern decision quality. One's PPDM is also influenced by a second factor-the perceived correlation between participation and productivity. In other words, a manager would likely employ PPDM if he or she believes that it will improve the productivity of the subordinates or the department as a whole. Indeed, much of the literature suggests a positive correlation between PDM and productivity (Dickson, 1982; Driscoll, 1978). For example, Latham and Steele (1983) concluded that an acute positive relationship exists when participation involves the setting of employee goals. Likert and Araki (1985) proposed a "system five" consensus approach, citing the relationship between PDM and productivity. Lovrich (1985) investigated alleged participative management failures in the public sector and found little evidence to support the most typical managerial objections to participation. Managers who expect that PDM positively impacts productivity are less likely to object to its utilization. Likewise, managers who believe that participation is an ethical imperative that improves organizational effectiveness tend to promote PDM with subordinates.

Second, managers who have had negative experiences with participative management or who perceive that the techniques associated with participation result in a loss of managerial power may be less likely to solicit employee involvement. Indeed, some research has supported the assertion that PDM can result in a loss of managerial power (Pollock & Colwill, 1987). On the contrary, others have suggested that power is not a zero-sum phenomenon, but is expandable; employees surveyed usually do not report a desire for limited managerial power, only for increased employee power (Tannenbaum, 1962; Tannenbaum & Cook, 1974). According to this school of thought, when a superior "loses" power by employing PDM, he or she also gains influence (Golembiewski, 1965).