| Summary: | An inquiry was carried out into the effects of involvement
in decision-making, related to how to perform a given
task, on the productivity of three-man laboratory groups.
One of the possible explanations for the wealth of contradictory findings in the literature is that the "motivational"
effects of being involved indecision-making and the efficacy of decisions made appear to be two logically separable
effects, although both are often treated as one. As a consequence,
an attempt was made to control the effectiveness of
the strategy used between the two treatment conditions.
The theoretical basis for the experiment was McGregor's
(I960) adaptation of need theory for the organizational context and Lowin's (1968) analysis of the potential effects of
participative decision-making on productivity. The three
hypotheses, derived there from, which guided the investigation
were: (1) groups involved in decision-making would be more
productive than groups which were not; (2) would implement
the strategy designed to accomplish the task more faithfully,
and; (3) given the choice, subjects in the experiment would
choose to perform in a situation in which they were involved
in decision-making rather than one in which they were not. The task involved the assembly of matrices from component
pieces. The measure of productivity was time to successful
completion.
Results did not agree with predictions. In all three
cases the hypotheses were not confirmed. Additionally productivity and choice results were significant in the opposite
direction to that predicted by the experimenter . The experimental procedures, assumptions concerning the nature of the test population and the theory itself were re-examined in an attempt to offer possible explanations for these findings. === Education, Faculty of === Graduate
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