The world economic situation is beset by growing worker dissatisfaction, slowing economic growth, and rising energy and resource costs. A partial solution to these problems may be worker participation in management and ownership. As production has become more dehumanized and workers have become increasingly dissatisfied and alienated, the quality of their work has suffered. To offset this malaise, various experiments have been conducted to improve the quality of work life and to give workers a voice in management decisionmaking. While workers in the U.S. often use unions to express their views, in other nations they hold seats on boards of directors and have formed work councils for this purpose. Ownership by workers may be either indirect in the form of investment funds and employee stock ownership programs or direct in the form of co-ops. It is difficult to generalize about the economy-wide impact of worker participation because of the lack of controlled experiments and long-term data. However, it appears that participation certainly does not harm productivity and probably improves it. Presently, worker participation is at different stages in countries around the world due to variations in cultural backgrounds and histories. (ELG)