gender differential paper IJCRB

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JUNE 2011
INTERDISCIPLINARY JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY RESEARCH IN BUSINESS VOL 3, NO 2
Employee Participation - Trust in Management and Power Distance
White & Ruh (1973) had defined employee participation as, “The degree to which
employees believe that they can make decisions about how they do their work”. It must be noted
that employee participation in turn depends upon the support it gets from the organization. The
organizational structures and process need to support the employee participation process thus,
leading to organizational participation. Strauss, (1998) had defined organizational participation
as, “A process which permits employee to exert some influence over his/her work in the
organizational environment”.
In this paper we have focused on the employee participation in the context of their “say
in the decision making” in the organization. Issues like whom to involve, when to involve; and
how to involve, hold significant importance in determining the employee participation. In all,
this suggests that regardless of how the participation in decision making is applied, the role and
level of participation needs to be made very clear (Ladd & Marshall, 2004). Rausch (1996) had
suggested that best results of employee participation are obtained if top management leads the
ways by example and encourages others.
As per research evidence a positive relationship exists between employees’ believe that
they have the ability to participate in decision making. This supports that there will be positive
impact on the work environment (Lawler, 1994; Sullivan, 1992). According to Rausch (1996),
the extent to which employees have access to the information, required to participate in decision
making serves as a limiting factor. He argues that not every employee shall exercise employee
participation but only the ones who are capable to handle increased responsibilities, non routine
tasks and possess work - maturity. Maher & Piersol (1970) had discovered that the direct
involvement and participation of employee with his manager in the goal-setting process results
in two- fold benefit- firstly, the participation process leads to a greater clarity of what to do and
how to evaluate the outcomes, secondly, increased mutual commitment was witnessed upon the
agreed upon results.
The high value of power distance in Pakistani culture will not permit employees
participation in any decision making. Thus the trust of employees in management will be
adversely affected. Since Pakistan is rated higher on the power distance, which should have an
impact on the employee participation process in two ways. First, managers may be reluctant to
involve employees in goal setting and decision making activities because they may perceive this
as "giving up" their own power and authority. In a high power distance culture, this perception of
empowerment may cause the concept to be rejected. Second, employees may not accept a more
empowered role because they expect the manager to be the person "in control." The above
literature review leads to the development of second Hypothesis;
H 2: The positive relationship of Employee Participation with Trust in Management is
reduced due to higher power distance dimension of culture.
Feedback -Trust in Management and Impact of Culture
Robbins (2003) defined feedback c as the, “extent to which carrying out the work
activities as per job requirements results in the individual obtaining direct and clear information
about the effectiveness of his or her performance”. Stanley & Standen (2001) had reviewed the
work of Rozell & Gardner (1995) and they have suggested on condition that positive feedback to
skeptical workforce, whenever possible, will result in avoiding personal and global attributions
for employee failure. Randolph (1995) has concluded that sharing of performance related
information with employees will keep them informed about their impacts on organizational
outcomes and will raise the employee’s trust in management Ardalan et al. (1994) research
results support the assumption that permitting employee’s discretion in decision making process
and providing them with outcome feedback will result in to higher quality decisions. These
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