by Ryszard Stocki
Submitted for publication
Participation always has three aspects: physical, legal and cognitive - related to the cognitive structures of persons... more
Participation always has three aspects: physical, legal and cognitive - related to the cognitive structures of persons involved in participative behavior. The trouble of proving the effects of participation lies in the mismatch between the three aspects. In economic studies we usually rely on the physical or legal aspects and real participation's consequences can hardly be measured, as they do not necessarily coincide with the declarations. In our studies, we decided to construct a formal model of ownership, assuming that the relation „A owns B” is only one of 10 similar relations on a spectrum from „A is a part of B” - greatest involvement to „A does not know about B” - the least involvement. Participation in management may be described by means of this model as various instances of „ownership spectrum” where „A” and „B” take different values of: a person, an institution, a community, a group, an object (material, energetic, informational, purchasing).
Once formalized we can view the studies in participation from one, system theory point of view, and formulate the hypotheses related to both aspects of ownership as it is revealed in a variety of participation forms. In our studies we have applied multiple measures of both participation and effectiveness. We measured various aspects of organization functioning, we also asked employees to fill in questionnaires related to their perception of various forms of participation. We also conducted similar studies in non-profit organization, where there is no possibility of legal ownership, yet different levels of cognitive ownership may be noticed. The possible consequences of this approach to participation for future research and managerial practice will be presented.
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