Does informal participation increase job satisfaction in public organizations? a study on civil servants in Beijing, China

The current literature has deepened our understanding of the participation–job satisfaction relationship in public organizations. However, employee participation has various forms and each form may produce different effects on job satisfaction. The literature often fails to account for the effects of different forms of participation. This article fills this gap by specifically examining the effects of informal participation and the possible moderating effects of interpersonal relationships and career development support. Based on a survey of civil servants in Beijing, the article finds that informal participation has positive and statistically significant influence over job satisfaction. The effects are positively moderated by interpersonal relationships and negatively moderated by career development support. The results help us to gain a fine-grained understanding of the effects of informal participation and may serve as a starting point for more research on different forms of employee participation.