Employee participation programs have many faces, many definitions, many forms--and they change all the time. For some people they are meant to solve every problem in the workplace. For others they are ways to reduce resistance to management and its efforts to bring about organizational change. Still others see them as totally redundant and a hindrance to efficency and the implementation of good management practices. To make sense of it all, Bar-Haim integrates--historically, thematically, analytically--the wide but often incoherent knowledge we have about these programs, and in doing so portrays them in a clear, useful, multidimensional manner. The result is a work of scholarship and practical guidance that students, scholars, researchers, and executives will find important, an action-oriented source of vital information.

Bar-Haim shows that participation programs in work organizations have always attempted to solve three basic human problems, problems stemming from industrial democracy and equality, work alienation, and occupational and managerial effectiveness. To do this he uses a rare multidimensional technique. He describes and analyzes the processes and behavior of participation, participants, and organizational forms using a a variety of conceptual and theoretical frames drawn from the social and management sciences. He enhances our understanding of participation programs on micro and macro levels, and then provides practical guidelines from the real-world experience of other scholars and executives. Among the several ironies he discovers are that the roles of enthusiasts, opponents, and skeptics changed during the course of a jubilee of these programs. By integrating a large body of research and suggesting a formal model to evaluate existing employee programs and projected ones, his book attempts to ease the enigmatic ambivalence we have toward worker participation in general. In fact, he shows that by better understanding the dynamics of participation programs, it is possible for those who desire such programs to create, construct, and maintain better ones.

Organizational commitment (OC) is typically thought of in mainstream research as a beneficial behaviour, with employers mutually rewarding employees for their labor. However, in recent decades, there have been many signs that the benefits of OC cannot be taken for granted. The world of work is changing, with organizations downsizing, outsourcing labor activities and restructuring into leaner entities.Adding to this is the trend whereby almost everywhere, organizations are systematically striving to avoid long-term commitment to their workforce, by resorting to atypical, non-standard jobs (such as part-time work, temporary or agency employment, and other types of insecure jobs). This new regime of employment is an escape from organizational commitment and a tendency to avoid long-term relations.In this book, the author challenges the mainstream research on OC. Surveying the rise and fall of the idea of OC among corporate managers and employees, in an era of escape from responsibility and commitment, the author redefines OC as unique, unrewarded behavior of a minority of employees in times of trouble for their employing organization. These employees, who have alternatives in the labor market, continue to stay unrewarded with their organizations despite their ability to leave for a more secure and rewarding workplace.Presenting this new definition of OC, the author addresses theoretical and empirical flaws in the current concept, while returning to an idea of commitment that is more widely used in social sciences: Commitment as a guarantee of fulfilment of obligations, which are neither motivating nor pleasant, but necessary.