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Workplace democracy has been advocated by labor as a means of worker empowerment and by management as an effort to improve productivity and quality. This article seeks to clarify this contradictory support through an analysis of American managers’ and workers’ attitudes. Class ideology and class experience are tested as factors that underlie attitudes toward three different forms of workplace democracy. Ordinary least squares regression and path analysis are employed in an analysis of national survey data from 1991. Class location is found to be a weak predictor, whereas class experience is a strong determinant. The findings indicate that American workers want more control once they get some influence over workplace decision making, highlighting a paradox behind the often narrow goals of managers. Implications are discussed vis-à-vis the labor movement and contemporary corporate participation programs.
Workplace democracy has been advocated by labor as a means of worker empowerment and by management as an effort to improve productivity and quality. This article seeks to clarify this contradictory support through an analysis of American managers’ and workers’ attitudes. Class ideology and class experience are tested as factors that underlie attitudes toward three different forms of workplace democracy. Ordinary least squares regression and path analysis are employed in an analysis of national survey data from 1991. Class location is found to be a weak predictor, whereas class experience is a strong determinant. The findings indicate that American workers want more control once they get some influence over workplace decision making, highlighting a paradox behind the often narrow goals of managers. Implications are discussed vis-à-vis the labor movement and contemporary corporate participation programs.
This article revisits Hunter’s (1991) culture wars thesis and applies it to an institutional arena that has received comparatively little attention in the culture wars debate—the contemporary American workplace. The authors ask to what extent cultural divisions originating in four broad cultural domains (i.e., social equality, social freedom, multiculturalism, and gender equity) permeate the workplace and impact workers’views of the property rights of jobs. That is, do cultural values originating in the larger society affect workers’evaluations of managerial prerogative to make unilateral decisions in the best interests of the firm without regard to workers’ claims to their jobs? Or, conversely, do such cultural values shape workers’sense of job entitlement that jobs should be protected in times of changing technology, declining demand for a firm’s product, or other organizational and market imperatives? The authors use data from the Indiana Quality of Employment Survey to examine several hypotheses surrounding this debate. The results suggest that the relationship between cultural values and specific, work-based ideologies are more complicated than Hunter’s original formulation might suggest; that is, there are complex and nonobvious relationships between these four domains of American cultural life and workers’ views concerning job entitlement. These relationships are not significantly mediated by organizational and occupational characteristics normally associated with workplace attitudes. The results speak to broader debates about the role of structure and culture in the sociology of work and the complexity of the ideological landscape of American working life.
Aim: The purpose of this research was to examine the perceived level of organizational democracy for the staff working in the different statuses and positions in Provincial Directorates of Youth Services and Sports in Turkey. Material and Method: The study was carried out using the quantitative research method, which is frequently used in social sciences. In this process, the scanning pattern was utilized. The survey technique was used to collect data from the study group. The universe of the research was the entire personnel working in the Provincial Directorates of Youth Services and Sports, which is the provincial organization of the Turkish sports administration in 81 provinces. The sample group consists of 920 individuals selected using the simple random sampling method. In the analysis process, primarily, descriptive statistics (frequency, percentage, mean, standard deviation values) were used. Subsequently, the nonparametric test techniques (Mann Whitney U and Kruskal Wallis) were used. Findings: The perception of organizational democracy in the Provincial Directorates of Youth Services and Sports may be evaluated as above the average (high). When the scores related to the factors constituting this level of democracy perception are examined, it is understood that the personnel of Youth Services and Sports Provincial Directorates find participation-criticism environments in their institutions at the most democratic level while the accountability environment is found to be at the least democratic level. There were statistically significant differences between the factors of participationcriticism, transparency, justice, equity, and accountability, according to the demographic characteristics of the personnel. Results: The perception of organizational democracy has been found to be above the average (high) in the Provincial Directorates of Youth Services and Sports. It has been determined that the level of organizational democracy is highest for personnel who work in the South-eastern Anatolia Region and for the personnel who have PhD degree.
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