Review article
Josip Obradović
Abstract
Two groups of research: one concerning the influence of participation in decision making process on the humanistic variables and another concerning the power distribution in Yugoslav industry pointed indirectly to a fact that the general inclusion of all the members in the self-management system has not been achieved yet. Owing to this we decided on an observation of the decision making process at the workers council meetings in order to assess a real distribution of participation and the determinants of its intensity.
The observation stated in 1966. After a pilot study in four companies consisting of a six months period, the observation was extended to twenty companies in four republics: Bosnia, Croatia, Macedonia and Serbia. Each workers’ council meeting in these companies was observed three years — the course of each session being registered according to an elaborated code and uniform methodology. Participation was defined in five dimensions: 1) frequency of discussions, 2) duration of discussions, 3) frequency of explanations, 4) frequency of original proposals, 5) frequency of proposals accepted. After pooling all the observations a group of eight economists and psychologists grouped them according to the content into 15 categories: 1) problems concerning the market, 2) cooperation with other companies, 3) internal economical problems, 4) distribution of wages, 5) technological problems, 6) personnel policy, 7) human relations on the group level, 8) human relations on the individual level, 9) social standard and social welfare, 10) problems pertaining to the organization of the company, 11) organization of work, 12) external and internal policy, 13) normative activities, 14) operative problems, 15) miscellaneous.
By this study it is attempted to assess the impact of some independent variables such as: 1) educational level, 2) membership in the Communist League, 3) membership in the workers’ councils, 4) functional organization and 5) place in the hierarchy of the company, on the intensity of participation in the first four categories. The results obtained point to a dominance of the individuals of a higher educational level in all four fields, although the differences between the fields exist too. Also, the results show that the majority of active participants are the members of the Communist League, being also most frequent in giving the proposals accepted afterwards. The majority of active participants come outside of the workers councils — nonmembers being most frequent in giving proposals, explanations and accepted proposals.
The functional organization of the company proved to be very significant for the participation, the most active being the individuals from the management and central expert services. Hierarchical place in the company strongly determines the intensity of participation.
In general, the results obtained confirm the hypothesis that the proportionate participation of different socio-professional groups has not been achieved, but it depends heavily on the educational level, functional organization and the individual's place in the hierarchical structure of the company.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
156524
URI
Publication date:
31.3.1972.
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