Original scientific paper

Participation: Research Results and Theory

Josip Obradović ; Department of Sociology, Faculty of Humanities and Socail Sciences, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Yugoslavia

Abstract

In this paper we tried to explain the research results on the distribution of participation in the decision making at the workers' council meetings. We put together 15 different areas of participation and tried to analyze the so-called »global participation«. As independent variables were treated: the level of education, membership in the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, membership in the workers councils, functional organization and the position in the hierarchy of the company. The data concerning independent variables were collected from the company administrations. The dependent variable was participation defined in five dimensions: frequency of discussions, number of explanations, number of original proposals given as possible solutions and number of accepted original proposals. In the study two methods of analyzing data were used. The unit of analysis in the first method was one type of interaction: either the frequency of discussion, number of proposals, or number of proposals accepted. In the second approach, the multivariate method was used, more exactly the multiple discriminant analysis, in which the unit of analysis was one participant, or one person. We analyzed data both ways with the objective to find out the global participation of different social groups in the process of decision making. Although these two approaches were different, the results obtained by them were supplementary. When global participation was analyzed in all five dimensions of participation, a skewed distribution of results was obtained pointing to the authoritarian structure of participation. Top management, people with college education and non-members of the workers' councils had the dominant role in the process of decision making. As the corollary of the paper, a theoretical model was built, showing the relationship among independent, intervening and dependent variables. The model was not empirically verified, and it was proposed to be the starting point in the next study, which would apply path analysis and enable the author to state some cause and effect relationships.

Keywords

Hrčak ID:

175180

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/175180

Publication date:

31.3.1974.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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