IMPACT OF DISSOCIATION OF SOFTWARE DEVELOPERS IN PARTICIPATIVE DECISION MAKING (PDM) BY MANAGEMENT ON PRODUCT PERFORMANCE: A STUDY OF PAKISTAN’S SOFTWARE INDUSTRY

Abstract

Participative decision making (PDM) is one of the most essential factors in context of an organization. It is defined as ‘the art of involvement of employees in decision making to accomplish organizational objectives’. A wide range of research shows that the involvement of engineers in organizational decision making was low. This indicates the possibility of firm’s managers are not being analytical about employee’s participative decision making, possibly due to the concept of high power distance culture. In this type of culture, employees are only considered as workforce, and their opinions are not considered valuable. Moreover, Management usually expects a single certain answer for clear direction instead of a variety of possible options. This study aims to investigate the impact of participation of software developers in decision making on product performance. For this purpose, the impact of age, qualification, gender, job satisfaction in the workplace, and product performance on the level of PDM of software developers have been investigated. This study was conducted in the software industry of Pakistan. In this study, a quantitative research approach is used. The data for this study was collected through a questionnaire from a sample of 200 software developers working in the software houses across Pakistan. The findings of the data were analyzed using SPSS. The results show that significant relationship exists between level of PDM and product performance. Similarly, significant relationship exists between level of PDM and job satisfaction. The results of this study can help decision-makers in understanding that participative decision making significantly increases the employee's work outcomes, like employee’s job satisfaction and productivity of employees in terms of product performance to their organization.