The effect of the provision of financial information upon the construing of employees

The research problem was to ascertain the effect of providing financial information to employees. After reviewing the different literatures concerned with financial information, industrial democracy, influence, power and social psychology, a model of the various types of financial information and contexts for its presentation was constructed. The model posited that over time an employee. with suitable opportunities for Involvement in decisions and training to understand the financial information, would desire to become involved at a higher level in the organisation with its concomitant increase in financial Information. As the intention was to find out what employees made of financial Information. It was considered logical to investigate their construing of the Information. This together with the difficulties of making the model operational and testable lead to an approach involving the psychology of personal constructs thus reformulating the problem in terms of personal constructs. Previous research was of orthodox experimental design and took an organizational or social view and rarely the view of the individual. Longitudinal field studies were conducted in three different organisations. These field studies were not orthodox in design for the approach was to focus on the individual and it was considered. In the main, more appropriate to use an idiographic analysis rather than the straight-jacket of orthodox (nomothetic) experimental design. It was found that the construing of employees generally altered after financial Information had been provided. The alterations were more profound in situations where some training relating to financial Information was provided. There are that in suitable conditions, employees do begin to understand the financial Information which becomes more Integrated into the construing of employees, simultaneously some employees construe more power, actual and desired influence, and wanted more financial Information. Future research could well pursue this rich area with studies of larger numbers in similar situations receiving more comprehensive training