Employee involvement: motivation or manipulation?

Employee involvement is subject to a great deal of verbal tribute; there is hardly a manager at work today who will not praise the value of employee input. However, many employee involvement efforts leave employees feeling more manipulated than motivated. This occurs because supervisors and managers, while expecting employees to change the way they work, are themselves either unwilling to change or remain unconscious of the need to change. The result is that, although employee input is regularly solicited in a number of forms, it is often discounted, ignored, or altered to fit the manager's preconceptions. Often the employee is left feeling manipulated. Since the opportunity for involvement can be a strong motivator, it becomes the manager's task to learn how to provide involvement opportunity in manipulative fashion. This can be accomplished by providing involvement opportunity accompanied by clear outcome expectations and allowing employees the freedom to pursue those outcomes in their own way.