ABSTRACT
This research work is centered on the employee participation in decision making and its impact on productivity: an appraisal of government printing press and two other private firms in Enugu and Lagos. Research into leadership style has exposed employee’s desire for involvement in decision making in their organizations. Employees are at the same time important elements in organizational goals. But there is no democratic participation of employee in most of our organizations and employee are forced to cope with autocratic style of government and leadership. The research adopted the survey research method and is highly descriptive and inferential in nature. This involved the use of tables and simple percentages as basic statistical tool employed to analyze the raw data. The raw data was consequently subjected to Chi-square test as a major tool for hypothesis test and analysis .All the alternative hypotheses of the four hypothesis postulated were all accepted showing that the extent of employee’s involvement in decision making process of the organization is low, employee participation in decision making has an impact on job satisfaction, it also has an effect on employee performance and finally employee participation in decision making has an impact on organizational productivity .Findings revealed that among other things that the non involvement of employee in organizational decision making impacts heavily on the organization’s productivity .it was concluded that the management in Nigerian work enterprises are not favorably disposed towards granting employee significant measure of involvement in management decision making. Hence a lot is needed to be done to change the current negative disposition of the Nigerian companies/ establishment management towards employee involvement in management decision making .Finally it recommended among other things that for employee participation to be effective, the commitment of both employers and employees are required to facilitate its initiatives.
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
The concept of employee participation represents a popular theme in the analysis of the world of work among scholar in the fields of industrial sociology, industrial relations as well as management (Noah,2002,2).it refers to any arrangement which is designed to involve employees (workers) in decision making within the workplace. This implies that rather than saddling only a group within the enterprise with the responsibility of making decision, all those who are to be affected by these decisions including the employees or workers would be involved in its formulation and implementation.
In recent times, scholars have directed increasing attention to the issue of employee participation and its broader corollary, industrial democracy. In the United States, industrial democracy is practiced, employees are encouraged to buy shares in their companies enabling them to have a say in the management of their organization, in other developed countries like Britain, Germany and Russia, participatory management is popular.
In Britain and Russia, it is known as joint consolation and self management respectively while in Germany, it is known as co-determination (Mankidy,1984:239,yesufu,1984:20,Adenumi,1993:14, verma and syha:1991:28) These concerns reflect a growing interest in finding ways to make work more meaningful and satisfying to the workers.