The Literature of Participation: From Optimism to Realism

participation as · a remedy for those twin ailments suffered by employ-ees in hierarchical organizations: poor performance and tensions. Less optimistic have been recent writers on management. The conditions that facilitate better performance and fewer tensions are not fully understood. Often, there is no positive relationship between job satis-faction and improved performance. And for those who are invited to participate but do not wish to, participation can be a source of tension. THE LITERATURE OF PARTICIPATION IN MANAGEMENT is ·enormous, consisting mainly of reports of experiments and observations made by social scientists in complex organizations. Only a few ex-amples of this literature are cited in this essay, with emphasis on those that illustrate my thesis. (The literature dis-cussed is listed in a bibliography at the end of this article.) Most of these studies have been ·con-ducted in organizations other than li-braries, yet all have relevance for librar-ians because complex organizations have much in common: their structure is hierarchical; they tend to adopt bureau-cratic practices, such as the writing down of regulations; they employ an advanced technology, such as the use of computers and other mechanized equip-ment; and many of those employed in the organization are specialists. The thesis of this essay is that the optimism with respect · to participation that marked Likert's New Patterns of Louis Kaplan is professor in the Librar