Workers' Participation

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Abstract
American workers' involvement on the shop floor has benefited from managers' worries about product quality. This concern arose in response to market shares eroded by imports, especially Japanese imports. The small group activities (production teams, quality circles) used in Japan to raise product quality are transportable; they are now well known to U.S. managers and widely considered for adoption. Implementation, nevertheless, is less common. One obstacle to utilizing participation is that listening to production workers' suggestions conflicts with traditional management-worker relations. Also, participation programs are costly; to implement one properly—to elicit hourly workers' cooperation and prevent the program from fading—requires training, job security, and sharing the gains. These investments, however, can yield marked improvement of quality, productivity, and market share. Participation is gaining ground, though more haltingly than pictured in literature.

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