Workers' Participative Schemes

Helen Tsiganou's study explores the enormous diversity of worker participation schemes across national contexts. Using a historical comparative approach, worker participation schemes are examined in two major settings: the developed capitalist countries of the United States, Japan, Sweden, Norway, England, Germany, and France; and the centrally planned less developed socialist countries of Yugoslavia, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, China, and the Soviet Union. Tsiganou addresses the conditions under which participation schemes emerge and the reasons for similarities or differences among these schemes. She first studies the origins and history of schemes within a given national setting. She then draws on specific national experiences and makes cross national comparisons. This is not a systematic, detailed, country-by-country comparison but an explanation of the enormous diversity of worker participative schemes through comparative analysis.

Part I of this volume examines the motives and goals behind various participatory schemes and their development and outcomes in the two distinct settings. The comparative logic and analytical framework of the book is laid out against a background of existing theoretical and analytical work. Meanings and definitions attached to worker participation, and their significance in denoting the dynamics of power within the workplace and society, are also covered. This section concludes with a discussion of the book's major assumptions. Part II deals with the diversity of workers participation schemes in several developed countries--countries with advanced industry and democratic pluralist political systems. Part III discusses schemes in several centrally planned socialist societies; and their efforts through reforms to correct their weaknesses. The final section summarizes the findings of the study and explores issues that emerge as cross-national and cross-sectional comparisons are made.

HELEN A. TSIGANOU is a Senior Lecturer of Sociology at Northeastern University. Specializing in the sociology of work, organizations, and industry, she is currently conducting a longitudinal study of help wanted ads in the New York Times and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.