Organisation Structure and Worker Participation

A number of interesting studies have emerged recently in the area of worker participation. Many of them discuss and analyse structures of representation and hypothesise on appropriate structures for different decision areas and for different decision levels within the organisation. They do not, however, take into account the structure of decision‐making in the organisations under discussion. Assumptions are not tested. One exception here is the study of Peccei and Warner. They examined levels of autonomy and centralisation of decision‐making in the subsidiaries of a multinational company. The present study extends this exercise (using the same methodology) to subsidiaries of a range of other larger companies, including multinationals. The purpose was to see whether the Peccei and Warner results were confirmed, secondly to examine non‐multinational subsidiaries for similar results and, thirdly, to check whether defined patterns in the decision‐making structure emerged which could be useful in discussing appropriate structures of worker participation. Some deviations from the Peccei and Warner results were noted with respect to degree of centralisation/autonomy. In particular, in the present study, highly similar patterns of centralised decision areas emerge, also the overall ranked correlation of centralised and non‐centralised decisions is highly significant for various types of decisions over a wide range of different subsidiaries. In contrast to Peccei and Warner, I would conclude that the pattern of centralisation is much more highly predictable than their conclusions imply.