CHARACTERISTICS OF PARTICIPANTS IN AN EMPLOYEE SUGGESTION PLAN¹

Abstract

THE widespread use of suggestion plans and the voluminous descriptive and hortative literature on their form, installation, and operation show both that the potential value of employee suggestions is well recognized and that the success of such plans is not automatic. Some of the factors affecting the functioning of suggestion plans are doubtless plantwide and can therefore best be studied by cross-sectional and longitudinal comparisons of entire plants. Studies using largely this approach have been published by Dickinson (1932) and Holmes (1952). Suggestion behavior differs not only from plant to plant, however, but also among employees eligible to participate in a common scheme within a single plant. It is often found that a minority of eligible employees account for a majority of the suggestions submitted and awards received in a plant and that some persons make suggestions and receive awards very frequently. The large interpersonal differences in suggestion behavior probably result not only from differential exposure to inefficient working methods and conditions and from random incidence of ideas, but also from differential ability and motivation to create and present improvement ideas appropriate to the situation.Interpersonal comparisons within a plant constitute a second and complementary method of obtaining information on the reasons for success and failure of suggestion schemes. They have also not been used extensively. In fact, published findings on interpersonal differences in suggestion behavior are frag-'This study was supported by the School of Labor and Industrial Relations a t Michigan State University. The author gratefully acknowledges the valuable comments made by Professor Dalton E. McFarland, Department of Management, on an earlier draft. He is indebted to Laurent BBIanger, Daniel P. Kearney, and Tommie Welch, Jr., research assistants in the School, for data processing and the checking of references.289

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