ABSTRACT
I. OVERVIEW Today, most forward-thinking managers are trying to move their organizations in directions that will involve employees at all levels in important decision-making processes. This approach to management is not new-it has received attention for over one-half century. In the 1930s the Scanlon Plan was developed by Joseph W. Scanlon, then research director of the United Steelworkers Union and later a faculty member at MIT. The major purpose of the Scanlon Plan was to measure productivity improvement by a change in the computed ratio of total payroll dollars divided by the total dollar sales value of production, and distribute a share of the gains (usually 50%) to the employees. In addition, the Plan included a highly structured suggestion system and labor-management committees to effect improvements throughout the manufacturing operations.1 R. Likert was also a strong advocate of participation and much of the research he directed at the Survey Research Center at the University of Michigan in the 1950s supported employee involvement. He authored two books in the 1960s that reported the results of many of these extensive research studies on supervision.2
