Participatory practices at work change attitudes and behavior toward societal authority and justice

Abstract

Generalized attitudes toward authority and justice are often conceptualized as individual differences that are resistant to enduring change. However, across two field experiments with Chinese factory workers and American university staff, small adjustments to people's experience of participation in the workplace shifted these attitudes one month later. Both experiments randomly assigned work groups to a 20-minute participatory meeting once per week for six weeks, in which the supervisor stepped aside and workers discussed problems, ideas, and goals regarding their work (vs. a status quo meeting). Across 97 work groups and 1,924 workers, participatory meetings led workers to be less authoritarian and more critical about societal authority and justice, and to be more willing to participate in political, social, and familial decision-making. These findings provide rare experimental evidence of the theoretical predictions regarding participatory democracy: that local participatory experiences can influence broader democratic attitudes and empowerment.

Preferences and Perceptions of Workplace Participation: A Cross-Cultural Study

“…These qualitative insights inform the survey development in Study 2. Next, we build on these qualitative insights and prior established scales (e.g., Dundon et al, 2004 ; Wu and Paluck, 2020 ) to construct a survey that assesses employees’ preference for workplace participation and their perception of its outcomes with Likert-scale items.…”

“…Local groups that we identify with, such as our work groups, citizen groups, and religious groups, play an important role in the socialization of our attitudes and behavior. Prior research suggests that participatory group interventions that target work group dynamics can have increase employee productivity and change social attitudes toward authority ( Wu and Paluck, 2020 , 2021 ). More research on the role of teams in shaping individual behavior is needed.…”

“…In addition, we measured employees' baseline level of participation in workplace, family, and social life using items adapted from Wu and Paluck (2020), with a 7-point Likert scale (Cronbach's a = 0.73). Sample items include "How often do you follow news about politics, e.g., in the daily newspaper, on television, or on the radio?"…”

“…In addition, we measured employees’ baseline level of participation in workplace, family, and social life using items adapted from Wu and Paluck (2020) , with a 7-point Likert scale (Cronbach’s a = 0.73). Sample items include “How often do you follow news about politics, e.g., in the daily newspaper, on television, or on the radio?” and “I speak up and also encourage others go get involved in work meetings.” Demographic data (age, gender, occupation, education, and political alignment) were collected at the end of the survey.…”

“…From an organizational perspective, research has focused on short-term impacts on productivity or profitability, while some have adopted longer-term measures such as the well-being of and the trust between management and labor ( Kessler and Purcell, 1996 ). Recent field experiments also found that participation in local work groups has spillover effect on employees’ outlook toward the society including reduced authoritarianism and belief in a just world ( Wu and Paluck, 2020 ).…”