Decision-Making and Organizational Effectiveness

Abstract

As a way of examining some of the underlying assumptions commonly made about participation in decision-making, data provided by 161 members of a white-collar organization were used to explore the relationship between the structure of influence and member's perceptions of personal and organizational effectiveness. Separate analyses were performed for super ordinates and subordinates. The results showed that being allowed to participate was related to perceptions of effectiveness for subordinates but that allowing participation was not related to perceptions of effectiveness for superordinates. For the latter group, only perceptions of centralization were useful as a predictor of perceived effectiveness. The findings cast doubt on some of the social-psychological reasoning underlying many theories of participation and indicate that differences in organizational position need to be accounted for in assessing the organizational consequences of participation.