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Last decades scholars in the field of human resource management (HRM) have intensely examined the contribution of HRM to organizational performance. Despite their efforts, at least one major research shortcoming can be identified. In general, they have devoted far too little attention to an aspect of HRM potentially beneficial for organizational performance: worker participation, and especially its indirect or representative forms. In contrast, for academics embedded in the industrial relations tradition, worker participation is a prominent theme, even though less emphasized in its relationship with company objectives. One might defend traditional scholars' reservations by arguing that participations main goal concerns workplace democratization and not organizational prosperity. However, several writers state that industrial democracy involving worker participation can channel conflicts of interest between employees and employers and stimulate desired employee attitudes and behavior, consequently enhancing organizational performance (e.g., Gollan, 2006; Ramsay, 1991; Taras & Kaufman, 1999). And, indeed, several studies have shown positive effects of both direct participation (e.g., European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions, 1997) and indirect participation (e.g., Addison et al., 2000, 2003; Frick & Möller, 2003) on organizational performance.

Nevertheless, to date, the absence of an integrated model explaining the connection between worker participation and organizational performance leads to the following question that still is in need of an answer: how do direct and indirect forms of participation – separate as well as in combination – affect organizational performance? This chapter aims to contribute to the filling of the aforementioned knowledge gaps. In so doing, we focus on direct and indirect, nonunion participation on the firm level, using a Western European and especially Dutch frame of reference.

The relationship between participation quality and commitment has received relatively limited attention in the industrial relations (IR) and human resource management (HRM) literature. This paper seeks to fill some of the gaps in prior research. It aims to answer three questions: How do participation justice and satisfaction influence affective and normative organisational commitment? Does leader‐member exchange (LMX) influence satisfaction and perceived justice with participation? Do the three assumed indicators of participation quality mediate the relationship between LMX and affective and normative organisational commitment?

The research was conducted at three faculties of a Dutch university, and involved faculty staff. E‐mails and online questionnaires were distributed in Dutch. Hypotheses were tested. Three indicators of direct participation quality: satisfaction with participation, perceived distributive justice concerning participation, and procedural justice were included.

It was found that two indicators of participation quality mediate the LMX and affective organisational commitment relationship: satisfaction with direct participation and perceived distributive justice concerning direct participation. As a consequence, it can be concluded that supervisors' skills in fostering direct participation quality contribute to employees' positive attitudes towards the overall employment relationship and thereby perhaps also to organisational performance.

The paper explores the relationships between LMX, direct participation quality, and affective and normative organisational commitment.

The purpose of this study is to examine: direct effects of appearance management and fashion involvement on social participation; direct effects of social participation, appearance management, and fashion involvement on self‐esteem; and indirect effects of appearance management and fashion involvement on self‐esteem through social participation.

A total of 389 females aged 55 and over completed a mail survey measuring appearance management, fashion involvement, social participation, and self‐esteem. Principal component factor analysis was conducted to reduce multi‐items measuring the variables. Path analysis was employed to test direct and indirect effects among the variables.

The results of path analysis showed that social participation and appearance management had direct effects on self‐esteem, whereas fashion involvement had no direct effect on self‐esteem. However, both appearance management and fashion involvement had positive indirect effects on self‐esteem via social participation.

To maintain self‐esteem in old age, individuals should be encouraged to participate in social activities and appearance management activities. The fashion and personal care industry should have an awareness of older female consumers' needs and develop and provide age‐related products and services.

This paper provides important contributions to gerontology, retailing, marketing, and consumer behavior‐related research. Although older adults (55+) are an important market segment, especially for the fashion and personal care industry, little research has included this group of consumers. This study showed that older adult females' self‐esteem was influenced by social participation, appearance management, and fashion involvement. The finding of this study helps marketers developing products targeting seniors.

Much of the current U.S. academic literature on participatory budgeting is preoccupied with direct citizen involvement in budget formulation, reflecting a particular normative theory of democracy. In this essay we suggest that U.S. academics can learn from a contemporary international community of practice concerned with “civil-society budget work”-a quasi-grassroots, quasi-pluralist movement with member organizations throughout the developing world-as well as from the budget exhibits mounted by the New York Bureau of Municipal Research at the turn of the last century. The budget-work movement employs third-party intermediation and advocacy, through all phases of the budget cycle. U.S. academics and budget-work practitioners can learn from each other, and this represents an unexploited opportunity for all concerned. We propose a program of locally based action research and trans-local evaluative synthesis.

The purpose of this study is to examine the direct and indirect effect of high and low‐level local union leaders on various forms of member participation.

Interviews and surveys of the leaders and members of an Educators Association operating in the USA were used to explore these complex relationships. Multiple regression, hierarchical regression, and path analyses were used to test direct and indirect relationship and the amount of variance explained by participatory leadership.

Survey results indicate that a member's perception of the participatory style of the local union president positively related to, and explained a significant amount of additional variance in, union activities that require moderate and high levels of effort. No support was found for the workplace representative's direct relationship with various measures of member participation. The indirect effects of the union president's and the workplace representatives’ participatory style on union involvement highlight the importance of various union leadership roles on developing various union attitudes.

Limitations include the cross‐sectional nature of the study, common method bias, and a small sample size (N=113).

Results of the study highlight the importance of the union president in fostering union attitudes and certain forms of union participation. The findings suggest areas for leadership development and training opportunities of union officials.

Unique elements of the study include an exploration of multiple leadership roles on union attitudes and various forms of union participation.

This study extends prior research by proposing a more complete model of the process by which budget slack is created in the organization. The research model proposed in this study suggests that there is an ex-ante as well as an ex-post process by which budget slack is created. In the ex-ante process, environmental uncertainty and budget participation are linked to managers’ propensity to create slack through job-relevant information (JRI). In the ex-post process, the control system determines the slack in the final budget by providing information to superiors about a manager’s performance capability. Thus, the propensity to create slack determines actual slack to the extent that the organization’s control system fails to provide an effective assessment of the manager’s performance capability.

Contrary to expectations, the ex-ante model indicated that participation has a direct, negative effect on propensity to create slack. The largest effect on propensity to create slack, however, was a direct positive link from environmental uncertainty. In the ex-post process, the link between propensity to create slack and segment slack (actual slack created) was moderated by the organization’s control system capabilities. When propensity to create slack is low (high), control system monitoring has little (a great) effect on segment slack created. This finding is consistent with arguments that publicly available information about a manager’s performance capability motivates a higher budget standard.

There is a growing consensus among human resources researchers and professionals that a participative environment can enhance job satisfaction, commitment, employee motivation and productivity. Moreover, globalization has caused that organizations operate in a huge number of culturally diverse countries. Studies suggest that understanding national culture as a prerequisite to implementing management initiatives such as employee participation in decision-making (PDM) acquires special interest. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of cultural values on PDM in European organisations. The fulfilment of this purpose entails the following specific objectives: to measure the level of PDM in each European country; to examine the relationship between the six cultural dimensions proposed by Hofstede in 2010 (power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism/collectivism, masculinity/feminity, long term/short term and indulgence) and the PDM level of the organisations studied; and to define the national cultural profile of organisations that promote PDM the most and those that do the least.

One factor analysis were applied to test the proposed hypotheses on a sample of almost 25,000 workers in 31 European countries (from the 6th European Working Conditions Survey) to identify direct employee PDM corresponding to each organisation included in the sample. Multiple linear regression was performed to test the hypotheses about the relationship between PDM and Hofstede culture values. Previously, a correlation analysis was performed between the independent variables of the regression model to examine the possibility of bias in coefficient significance tests because of multicollinearity. Finally, it presented a ranking of the analysed countries according to their PDM, including the value of their cultural dimensions. This information could be used to define the cultural profile of European participative countries.

The findings advance our understanding of how culture influencing on employee PDM in European organisations. Indulgence and masculinity are the most influent cultural dimensions. Moreover, results provide the cultural profile of those European countries that promote PDM the most and the least.

The research is based only on the perceptions of workers about their PDM but does not consider the managers’ opinion. Moreover, the document analyses the national culture as a single value shared by all the inhabitants of a country without considering the subcultures existing in it. Furthermore, future research should be conducted to analyse the influence of other conditions (such as activity sector, company size and owner public or private) on PDM–culture relationship.

This study can be aid to managers in understanding the cultural profile of the country where their companies operate and the cultural differences between their employees. In this manner, they could implement the appropriate practices to promote the direct participation of employees in decision-making.

To broaden the knowledge, this is the first study investigating PDM across six cultural dimensions. The globalized and international business environment generates new challenges to multinational organizations that could pursue to increase direct PDM to get its benefits (a higher efficiency, performance, motivation, commitment and loyalty by the employee) in culturally diverse societies. The cultural values of the countries where organizations are located affect direct employee PDM. In particular, in this study, this occurs primarily with the variables masculinity, long-term orientation and indulgence. Moreover, this is a finding of high relevance because there is no empirical evidence in the effect of indulgence and long-term orientation on PDM because they were added later to Hofstede’s values.

Purpose of This Chapter: In the age of a hyperactive environment, organizations have to find ways to deal with the pressure of low engagement among employees. Hence, the present study aims to explore the types of participative practices for engaging employees in service sector organizations in India and to examine the level of association among the participation practices.

Design / Methodology / Approach: The primary data is extracted from the employees working in the service sector in the northern region of India. An integration of convenience and snowball sampling has been used. Finally, exploratory factor analysis has been employed to analyze the data.

Findings: The analysis emphasizes the effectiveness of engagement-oriented practices for organizations. Financial participation, consultation, and delegation enhance employee inclusion and management decision-making. These practices improve employee engagement, crucial for the well-being of healthcare staff responsible for people’s lives, aligning with the study’s objectives.

Practical Implications: This study offers insights for HRM and development practitioners to improve employee engagement through delegation and respect. Consultation enhances idea generation, reducing conflicts. Financial participation motivates and benefits both employees and management. The implications are valuable for managers and emerging economies, promoting growth through engagement-focused practices.

Originality: This study extends a clear vision to the managers of countries where the governments are trying harder to push the growth of emerging economies. Through the provision of information regarding the utilization of employee participation practices targeted at engagement, economic situations can be enhanced.

The paper aims to address the failure of prevailing international management concepts to utilize the potentials of company wide employee participation in innovation, and give the reader some practical solutions and some ideas about how to exploit these potentials more efficiently.

These solutions and ideas are developed mainly through two Norwegian action research programmes that have been carried out together with industry over a ten‐year period. The main topic of research has been to see how good practice from prevailing international management concepts like total quality management and business process re‐engineering may be integrated with good practice from the Norwegian industrial democracy tradition into a new approach to continuous innovation. A case study approach has been used.

The case studies showed that a better utilization of the potentials of company wide employee participation in innovation gives efficiency as well as working environment improvements.

The case studies also showed that more knowledge and a further development of practical tools that ease participation in innovation is an important challenge for future R&D.

In order to fully exploit the potentials of employee participation in innovation companies and consultants need to adjust their practice in the direction of a more participatory approach.

The paper gives consultants, academics, managers and shop stewards a framework and some practical tools for employee participation in innovation that may be used at the different company levels. It is argued and shown how activities at the different levels may be co‐ordinated and work reciprocal supportive.

This paper aims to explore a case of customer and user participation in an agile software development project, which produced a tailor‐made information system for workplace support as a step towards a theory of participatory design in agile software development.

Based on an integrated framework for user participation derived from the participatory design literature the research was performed as a case study and semi‐structured, open‐ended interviews were conducted with about a third of the development team and with a representative sample of key players and future users in the customer organization. The interview data were supplemented with company and project documents.

The paper found genuine customer and user participation carried out by onsite customers and by other operational staff in the form of direct and indirect participation and with functional and democratic empowerment. The onsite customers played informative, consultative and participative roles. The analysis revealed that planning games, user stories and story cards, working software and acceptance tests structured the customer and user participation. This form of user participation supported a balance between flexibility and project progress and resulted in a project and a product which were considered a success by the customer and the development organization. The analysis showed that the integrative framework for user participation can also fruitfully be used in a new context to understand what participatory design is and how, when and where it can be performed as an instance of a design process in agile development. As such the paper contributes to an analytical and a design theory of participatory design in agile development. Furthermore the paper explicates why participatory design contributes to the successful completion of the investigated project. By drawing on innovation theory it was found that participatory design in agile development bears the characteristics of a successful organizational innovation. Grounding further explanations in complex adaptive systems theory the paper provides an additional argument why participatory design despite some identified challenges fosters project staff to successfully carry out the agile development project.

The paper presents an exploratory, empirical study of an understudied phenomenon and contributes to theory building.