EMPLOYEE PARTICIPATION IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR IN MALAYSIA:A GENERAL OVERVIEW

Abstract

Employee Participation (EP) is an important area of research in the field of industrial
relations and employment relations (Harley, Hyman & Thompson 2005). According to
Markey (2005), extensive literature review has argued that EP has the capacity to
enhance the quality of decision making by broadening inputs, promotes commitment to
the outcomes of the decision making process, improves motivation, cooperation and
communication in the workplace. EP also may reduce workloads of supervisors,
encourage skill development in the workforce, and can contribute to improved
employment relations in general (Markey & Monat 1997). For that matter, the issue of
EP in decision making has attracted the interest among management scholars, industrial
relations researchers and managers in organizations as well (Heller, Pusic, Strauss and
Wilpert 1998; Markey, Golan, Hodgkinson, Chouragui & Veersma 2001; Harley,
Hyman & Thompson 2005; Parasuraman 2007; Arrigo & Casale 2010) especially in
promoting partnership between employer-employee work relationship (Raduan, 2002).
EP has been practised in the private sector; however there is a broad gap on the
importance of EP in the public sector. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to explore
on the effectiveness of EP in the public sector from the academic, employers and trade
union’s perspectives. This study will also analyse and examine on the importance of EP
in the public sector in order to improve the government delivery system. The finding of
this research has some implication to the national labour policy in Malaysia particularly
in the public sector