Re-Examining Employee Participation Through the Lens of Stakeholder Management

Abstract

This paper uses a stakeholder framework to examine the differential outcomes of participatory strategies for a stratified random sample of 1,191 middle managers, supervisors, and workers in a large service organization. Self-managed teams are associated with significantly higher levels of autonomy, satisfaction, employment security, and support of management strategy among workers; significantly lower levels among supervisors; and modest negative effects among middle managers. By contrast, involvement in total quality teams has no significant outcomes for any employees.