Workers’ Participation in Technological and Organisational Development: The Human Resources for a Suggestion Programme in Nigerian Industry

Abstract

Since the industrial revolution, modern societies have been propelled by basic innovations in industry, and individual firms by improvements on these. The improvements have not only been the work of engineers in research and development departments but to a large extent of workers who have thus made an essential contribution to the technological progress. It is the workers who are in the closest daily contact with technology; an organisation which does not utilise the technological potential of its workers is therefore wasting one of its major resources. Many firms in industrialised countries have therefore institutionalised a system of suggestions for improvement, with rewards going to the workers whose suggestions for improvements are found to be useful.