Involvement, in Organizations

Involvement in organizations refers to an approach to organizational management. The involvement approach is based on the idea that employee commitment can be elicited when employees have an opportunity to influence decisions about their work and organizational conditions. This approach can be contrasted to one that relies on top-down management controls to govern employee behavior and provides limited opportunity to influence organizational practices and policies. When workers have input into determining the means by which a given task is to be implemented, they are said to have involvement in operational decision making. When they have input into determining broader managerial decisions, such as resource allocation, they are said to have involvement in strategic decision making. In schools, strategies for increasing involvement and participation have centered on enhancing the involvement of teachers in decision making.

Interest in employee involvement in organizations has a long history in organizational research and practice. Employee involvement has its roots in a human relations approach to organizational management. This approach assumes that human motivation derives from participation and involvement in setting goals and improving methods and monitoring progress toward goals as opposed to fear or threat of punishment and/or rewards. In the 1960s, organizational researcher Rensis Likert, in his book The Human Organization: Its Management and Value, placed emphasis on the human component of management. Likert's four organizational systems illustrated different degrees of worker participation and involvement in setting goals. In System 1, exploitive-authoritative, the bulk of decisions were made at the top of the organization. In System 2, benevolent-authoritative, policy decisions were made at the top, but those at lower levels had latitude for decision making within set frameworks. In System 3, consultative, broad policy decisions were made at higher levels, and more specific decisions were reserved for lower levels. In System 4, participative group, decision making was conducted widely throughout the organization and was coordinated by people with overlapping group memberships. System 4 represented an optimum integration of the needs and desires of the members of the organization.

In the 1980s, Edward E. Lawler continued to explore ways that enhanced involvement and met worker and organizational needs. Lawler's high involvement management model explored aspects of human needs that could be satisfied by participation, such as personal needs for control, competence, and personal growth. Concerning the organization as a whole, he maintained that different approaches to involvement all moved one or more of the following further down in the organization: information, knowledge, rewards, and power. Among the private sector strategies for enhancing worker involvement, according to Lawler, were quality circles, employee attitude [Page 527]surveys, teams and job enrichment, and unionmanagement innovations.

In schools, research conducted in the 1970s and 1980s examined how much involvement teachers actually had and desired in decisions made within the school enterprise. Researchers assumed that enhanced involvement would be associated with teachers' acceptance of change, job satisfaction, and willingness to accept the authority of administrators. Studies based on surveys assessing teachers' desires for participation in different areas of school management were reported in research journals. Researchers observed that teachers might not be equally desirous of additional participation. In addition, teachers may want participation and involvement in some areas more than others. Often, the focus was on the influence administrators could expect to wield as a result of how much input into decision making teachers possessed. Some critics suggested that involvement strategies represented only a façade, whereby teachers were promised participation and influence but major decisions were retained by administrators.

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