Week 4, Blog #2

The discussion of the paradoxes of employee participation and workplace democracy in Chapter 8 resonates well with me in my experiences in the public sector. I completely agree with the authors’ contention that “while most of us believe that increased employee participation in decision making will lead to improved outcomes, the reality is not so clear-cut” (Eisenberg et al., 2007, pp. 230-231). I’ve been aware of project groups that have tried to embrace this team concept to decision-making. The problem, I’ve found, is that teams struggle to ultimately arrive at a decision, and keep “spinning their wheels” with no clear direction for moving forward. And in the cases where decisions are made, some team members object, believing their opinions or recommendations were ignored. It is apparent that in these situations, effective management and leadership need to be in place to ensure that the concept of employee participation and workplace democracy will succeed as part of effective organizational communication.