Workers' Participative Schemes: The Experience of Capitalist and Plan-based Societies

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Helen Tsiganou's study explores the enormous diversity of worker participation schemes across national contexts. Using an historical comparative approach, worker participation schemes are examined in two major settings: the developed capitalist countries of the United States, Japan, Sweden, Norway, England, Germany and France; and the centrally planned less developed socialist countries of Yugoslavia, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, China and the Soviet Union. Tsiganou addresses the conditions under which participation schemes emerge and the reasons for similarities or differences among these schemes. She first studies the origins and history of schemes within a given national setting. She then draws on specific national experiences and makes cross national comparisons. This is not a systematic, detailed, country-by-country comparison but an explanation of the enormous diversity of worker participative schemes through comparative analysis.

Reviews

"This work provides the reader with an opportunity to learn about the common factors which influence the development of worker participation as a basis for anticipating future patterns of development. I find it written with great clarity and sound logic and so I recommend it to the audience who is relatively uneducated in these matters as well as to experts who have studied the field. Both will enjoy this work and will learn from it."-Severyn T. Bruyn Professor of Sociology Boston College
Economic competition among industrialized nations has led to a search for more productive and efficient methods of organizing work. Toward that end, employers increasingly rely on techniques of worker participation, whereby workers are afforded a voice in decision making within the enterprise. This book examines participative schemes from a global perspective, dividing countries into "market-oriented societies" and "plan-based societies." The first category includes Scandinavia, Western Europe, Japan, and the US; the second focuses on Yugoslavia, Eastern Europe, China, and the Soviet Union. The author's purpose is to analyze participation on a comparative historical basis, tracing the social, political, and economic factors that differentiate the plans in various countries. She concludes that in all cases participation is an issue of political power because it necessarily contradicts bureaucratic authority and the traditional notion that "managers must manage and workers must obey." The study is an excellent survey of participative techniques across a spectrum of diverse circumstances, and it affords a good introduction to the unique issues that arise in the respective countries. Suitable for all levels of readers.-Choice
"Economic competition among industrialized nations has led to a search for more productive and efficient methods of organizing work. Toward that end, employers increasingly rely on techniques of worker participation, whereby workers are afforded a voice in decision making within the enterprise. This book examines participative schemes from a global perspective, dividing countries into "market-oriented societies" and "plan-based societies." The first category includes Scandinavia, Western Europe, Japan, and the US; the second focuses on Yugoslavia, Eastern Europe, China, and the Soviet Union. The author's purpose is to analyze participation on a comparative historical basis, tracing the social, political, and economic factors that differentiate the plans in various countries. She concludes that in all cases participation is an issue of political power because it necessarily contradicts bureaucratic authority and the traditional notion that "managers must manage and workers must obey." The study is an excellent survey of participative techniques across a spectrum of diverse circumstances, and it affords a good introduction to the unique issues that arise in the respective countries. Suitable for all levels of readers."-Choice

Author Bio

HELEN A. TSIGANOU is a Senior Lecturer of Sociology at Northeastern University. Specializing in the sociology of work, organizations, and industry, she is currently conducting a longitudinal study of help wanted ads in the New York Times and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.