saturs - rpiva

capable of self-development and majestic contribution to company’s results. It is consistent
with Maslow’s views on human nature, as they were inspired, among others, by McGregor’s
work. Maslow, as a main representative of humanistic psychology left in his scientific output
not only widely known hierarchy of needs, but also conception of eupsychian management
(eupsychian – term introduced by Maslow (1998/2005), meaning an ideal organization or
society). Maslow systematized characteristics of eupsychian organization and listed 36
statements considering both the nature of a desirable work environment and of an employee.
The essential theses of Maslow assume that every person prefers to be a prime mover rather
than a passive helper. From economic point of view, Maslow’s (1998/2005) arguments come
down to the statement that human potential is the most important source of competitive
advantage in every branch of industry, every organization and institution.
To reassume, what grounds the individual’s willingness to participate in management
is a very specific content of the his or her cognitive representations. But as it was already
mentioned, in the model of participative orientation described by Żmuda et al. (2008) there is
also the second, behavioral dimension of the concept.
According to Żmuda et al. (2008) such “participative” representations, as described
above, result in a new kind of behavior within an organization. As the authors write, it can be
explained best in the terms of the personal initiative concept, introduced by Frese and his
coworkers (Frese, Kring, Soose & Zempel, 1996; Frese & Fay, 2001). The authors define
personal initiative as “a behavioral syndrome resulting in an individual’s taking an active and
self-starting approach to work and going beyond what is formally required in a given job”
(p.38). What distinguishes personal initiative from other concepts describing the heightened
individual performance, such as organizational citizenship behavior, organizational
spontaneity, generic work behavior, contextual performance, intrapreneurship or extrarole
behavior, are five characteristics distinguished by Frese and his coworkers. The personal
initiative behavior (a) is consistent with organization’s mission, (b) is self-starting and
proactive, (c) is goal-directed and action-oriented, (d) has a long-term focus (e) and is
persistent in the face of barriers and setbacks.
The personal initiative behavior is assumed by Żmuda et al. (2008) to be the same as
the behavior, which constitutes the behavioral aspect of the participative orientation. The
differentiation between the personal initiative behavior and behavioral dimension of
participative orientation the authors explain with the fact that they come from two theories
concerning separate levels of analysis. While personal initiative is anchored in a theory that
explains intentional behavior, participative orientation is derived from a developmental
theory, which focuses on creative behavior not determined by the incentives. According to
Frese et al. (1996) the cause of personal initiative are particular definitions of an
organizational goal introduced by each employee, while participative orientation seem to be a
wider concept, embracing whole organizational ontology worked out by all employees and
managers.
Stocki (2011) takes a systemic approach in order to distinguish the factors that
determine, which orientation towards an organization an employee displays or in other words
– what influences the content of his cognitive representations (see Figure 1).
According to Stocki’s model, the content of the cognitive representations a man
develops and the kind of orientation he or she chooses depends both on environmental and
individual characteristics. When it comes to environmental characteristics the crucial issue is
the degree to which the organizational environment is possessive or participative. The
“possessiveness-participativeness” dimension describes such elements of the organizational
reality as management systems and the organizational culture. It shows whether systems and
culture favor participation in organizational life or encourage employees to concentrate on
their personal goals.
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