Problems of Management Autonomy and Worker Participation in Multinational Companies

In this paper, we argue that discussion of worker participation in decision‐making is very limited in its usefulness unless the analysis looks at the structure of decision‐making, particularly in terms of centralization, in the organization concerned. The issues of worker participation are not instructive per se. If there is decentralization, it may assist the effectiveness of participation structures at lower levels, but the problem remains of the degree to which the costs of some decentralization are traded‐off by the ‘dominant‐coalition’ in the corporation against the benefits of centralization of decision‐making in the areas of finance and senior personnel.