Excerpt from the Introduction Thousands of employee ownership companies have found that combining ownership and participation improves performance. Putting an effective participation process in place is a task of never ending evaluation, trial and error, and adjustment, but the core idea is simple.
Any organization is comprised of people with ideas and information.
The most effective organizations are those that find ways to generate and process this knowledge in practical ways. This book provides detailed information about practices to get employees involved in helping to run the business. Our goal in creating this book is to give you the benefit of the ideas and experiences of other companies that can be used as a basis for your own participation efforts. Theory O, we think, is the logical successor to theories X, Y, and Z. Theory X is the command and control system of management. In fact, in any organization, all these theories may be relevant for specific tasks and circumstances.