Structural and Behavioral Determinants of Works Council Members' Influence in Organizations

Abstract

The role of works councils in organizations is still ambiguous. Most research on works councils focuses on presence of a works council, and not its characteristics. In this study we focus on the individual works council members, to gain more insight in how works councils can use their social network position to become more influential, and also how they can behave strategically to gain more influence. The questions of interest are whether works council members are more influential than non-members, and how the network position and strategic behavior of works council members affect their influence within organizations. We perform OLS regression analyses to test our hypotheses, and find that works council members are not significantly more influential than non-members. Furthermore, access to information (closeness centrality) is significantly related to influence, while control over information (betweenness centrality) shows no effects. For the works council, coalition as an influence tactic is related to influence.