CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1     BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

Economic changes in recent decades have required employers to seek more efficient and flexible means of production. Deregulation and privatization have also significantly altered the Nigeria’s industrial relations climate, with a decline in trade unions' influence and membership. Mirroring this has been the growth in ‘new' forms of work-related participation by employees, under the banner of human resource management and associated programmes and strategies for partnership and high commitment (Abdel, 2003).

Governments must balance the needs of a competitive economy with the welfare of their citizens. A change in political climate has seen social partnership currently being promoted by all interested parties. Reflecting this change, the inclusion of trade unions in government consultation exercises is significant. (Schuler, 2005)

Employee participation in decision-making has attracted a great deal of interest among management writers, researchers, and more encouragingly, managers in organizations as well. It is generally believed to be instrumental in increasing productivity, as the Japanese has shown, through creating satisfied and motivated employees. Thus in recent years, many participative programmes were introduced in organizations. Among them are quality circles, total quality management, work councils, works teams, and so on (Abdel, 2003).

Employee participation in decision-making has been defined in various ways. Some writers associate it with terms such as influence, involvement, decision-making, and control. Participation can also include indirect forms such as through employee representatives like trade unions and so forth as against the direct form where employees are involved in the decision-making process directly. However, most writers tend to be concerned with the direct form of participation rather than the indirect form.

Participation here is as the degree to which employees perceive they have involvement and/or influence in the decision-making process in their organizations that might have impacts on their jobs, whether such impacts may be direct or indirect. Such decisions may include goal setting, evaluating alternatives which lead to making the final choice, solving problems, "organizational development" and other similar kinds of decisions in an organization, (Schuler, 2005).

The relationships between employee participation and performance as well as with job satisfaction have been fairly well researched in developed countries.

Generally, these studies have indicated that employee participation is positively related to employee performance and job satisfaction. However, one question that arises concerns the generalization of these findings across cultures.

If employee participation were to benefit organizations, then what factors could be considered by management personnel to be implemented successfully in their organizations? In addressing this issue, most studies in the past have examined the effects of individual characteristics on participation.  However, the effect of organizational variables on employee participation has not been thoroughly researched (Schuler, 2005).

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