ABSTRACT
In view of the extremely wide range of forms of workers' participation in decision-making and of the great many interpretations of this particular term, it is clearly not unreasonable to attempt to clarify an otherwise rather confusing picture by means of classification. But there are many potential means of classifying any given phenomenon, and therefore, unless the basis of selection is to be purely arbitrary or idiosyncratic, certain distinctions should be made at the outset which have some association with the main purposes of this inquiry. To begin with, then, it would seem to be essential to identify the principal initiators of the different programmes, partly because it requires a certain measure of power to bring any specific scheme into effect, but also for the reason that the values of given classes, parties and groups can be easily recognized by this method. Parallel developments may be observed in the increased attention paid to managerial ideologies within the industrial system.
