Types of Employee Participation in Decision Making (PDM) amongst the Middle Management in the Malaysian Public Sector

Over the years, there has been tremendous growth of interest in employee participation in decision-making or PDM from a various discipline of studies such as industrial relations, management, human resource management (HRM), organisational behaviour, and political economy. Therefore, this paper aimed to identify the types of employee’s direct participation particularly on delegative, consultative and non-participation in decision-making at the middle management in the six selected ministries in Putrajaya, Malaysia. To achieve the objective, a quantitative research design was used and 758 questionnaires were distributed and 454 (59.9%) were returned. The data were analyzed using descriptive analysis by mean, standard deviation, percentage, and frequency. The results of the study showed that majority of the middle management employees were involved in consultative decision-making rather than delegative decision-making, and only a small percentage of employees experienced with non-participation in the workplace. It can be concluded that employees were encouraged to participate in the decision-making process, however, most of the important decisions are still made by the top management. Also, there is no serious issue of very low level or high level of non-participation among the middle management employees in the Malaysian public sector.