ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned with participation and participatory practices as the principal methodology in the design and analysis of work systems. Several closely related terms and concepts, such as participation, participatory ergonomics, employee involvement, stakeholder commitment, participative management, and various other participatory approaches appear throughout wide-ranging literature in the fields of ergonomics, psychology, and management, and are often used interchangeably. Cotton (1993), for example, uses the term “employee involvement” in a broad sense, and defines it as “a participative process to use the entire capacity of workers, designed to encourage employee commitment to organizational success” (p. 3). He points out that it is not a true unitary scientific concept, but rather a useful catchall term for a variety of approaches, all of which employ participative techniques. The principal problem appears to be that each approach to employee involvement seems to be studied in isolation. It is possible to compare and contrast them, but not to test them comparatively (Cotton, 1993).
