Inherent constraints and creative possibilities: employee participation in Kenya

Abstract

We present findings from a study of employee participation in seven International NGOs (INGOs) operating in Kenya. The inherent constraints of hierarchy and the need to accommodate a range of stakeholder interests imposed a strict ceiling on the degree of participation even in this propitious environment. Being headquartered in a liberal market economy, the low salience of trade unions among Kenyan employees and/or individual management styles within the INGOs meant that some of the agencies fell short even of that ceiling. Contrary to the normative aspirations of both the HR and international development literatures, our study suggests that the co-determination and employee control styles of participation are undesirable and unrealistic goals. On the other hand, a consultation style of participation was appropriate to the seven INGOs, and may also be in other sectors and countries.

Keywords::

• employee engagement
• employee participation
• Kenya
• non-government organizations
• stakeholders

Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge the good nature of the INGO employees and others whom we interviewed, and also a grant from the British Academy which part-funded the field work. Views expressed here are the authors' own, and should not be attributed to any official agency.

Notes

^1. Marchington, Wilkinson, Ackers and Goodman (1993) and Ramsay (1977) also identify waves of enthusiasm for participation.

^2. Wilkinson and Fay build in their turn on Dundon et al.'s (2004, p. 1152) earlier taxonomy of meanings of employee voice.

^3. Kant's maxim, in Popper's (1989, p. 182) paraphrase, is ‘Always regard every man as an end in himself, and never use him merely as a means to your ends’.

^4. We speculate that the similarity is because in both cases we are dealing with a collaborative but unequal relationship. Since such a relationship is anomalous in the light of the current norm of fundamental human equality, rationales must be advanced and regulations put in place to contain the anomaly. This may be why even sceptics like Argyris and Strauss continue to advocate participation.

^5. The donor and partner ‘links’ are absent where INGOs use their own funds and (see Table 3) where they implement their programmes directly.

^6. There was, however, no straightforward host country effect in terms of national culture in our findings, which revealed a complex interplay of national, sub-national (e.g. Kikuyu) and organizational cultures. Pace Blunt and Jones and others, this perhaps refutes any essentialist view of ‘Kenyan culture’ influencing agencies' behaviour.

^7. We remind readers that our scope is confined to management, not ownership. We repeat that even employee-owned companies John Lewis Partnership and Mondragon tend to operate hierarchically. However, we note Ramsay's (1977, p. 498) final sentence: ‘The whole political-economic environment will have … to be transformed if a genuine industrial democracy is to prevail’. In our case, there is indeed something unsatisfactory about a world in which INGOs operate in developing countries but are accountable to Boards and donors in the North – as more thoughtful INGO staff would be the first to recognize (Edwards and Hulme 1996).