A Longitudinal Study of the Distribution of Control in Yugoslav Organizations

Abstract

The legal system of workers' self-management in Yugoslavia provides to all of the employees of each enterprise ultimate authority over basic policy, personnel, and technical issues of the firm. This study explores the "actual" and the "ideal" distribution of control in Yugoslav industrial organizations as reported by members during a five-year period, from 1969 through 1973. The data are based on questions administered at yearly intervals (excepting one year) to a probability sample of more than 3,000 persons in 100 organizations. Because important legal changes in the direction of greater participation in the governance of Yugoslav organizations were introduced immediately prior to and during this period, we expected to find some change in the distribution of control during the five years of the study. The data fit a pattern that has been found in other countries, thus illustrating principles that may transcend culture and political system. The data also differ in degree from those of other places thus also illustrating the impact of the unique legal system or organizational control in Yugoslavia. Furthermore, the data seem to be characterized more by stability than by change during the five years of the study. If change has occurred it appears to have occurred more with respect to the expectations or "ideals" of respondents than with regard to their perception of the realities of control in their organization. We none-theless assume, partly on the basis of these data and of those from studies in other countries, that substantial change in distribution of control has occurred since before the Yugoslav revolution and that a process of evolution in the distribution of control is continuing. We offer a hypothesis about this process. In addition, because we rely on the judgment of organization members for our measure of control, we present data that may shed some light on the meaning of the concept of control to these persons and therefore on the degree of correspondence between their implicit definition of control and our own.