An approach at situation of work participation in technology innovation of Catalonian companies

Abstract

The analysis of the worker’s participation in the technological innovation process managing, through the study of cases in fifteen companies of the Catalonian industry of automotive components, made possible to state that the achieved participation levels are very limited. In only one of the fifteen companies studied, decisions taking related to the four steps composing the technological innovation process (planning, project, layout and evaluation) was performed with the adequate co decision levels between the social and management areas. On this way, in only one company, monitoring of workers or its representatives over such process, reached the highest expected level of this investigation.

Among the remaining companies, in two of them, the participation level in technology managing was of the bidirectional kind (negotiation between the two parts but final decision taken by management), while participation extend arrived just until project steps —consequently including layout and evaluation steps— resulting in a medium range control by the workers.

In other six companies, the achieved participation level was of the mono directional kind (management consults workers without any commitment of accepting proposals) with an extent limited to the layout step —except in one company where the extent reached the evaluation step— providing a minimum kind of technology control. Finally, in the remaining six companies, no participation, either in level or extent was detected.