The EC single market and employees' participation: Experience from the telecommunication and energy utilities

Abstract

The present multitude of criteria and forms of industrial organization in the major public utilities due to the EC single market has produced a new political reality for the management of corporate environments. This reality, a product of the economic globalization and reconstitution of spatial and social networks of industrial activity, has challenged and repackaged the criteria and mechanisms of decisionmaking. Towards which direction are these criteria and mechanisms of decisionmaking moving? How are the policies of integration and deregulation affecting employees' participation and control of corporate decisionmaking, at both branch and national level? This article examines the new technosocial objectives of the telecommunication and energy utilities due to ‘1992’, and the new shape of their decisionmaking frameworks. By examining the cases of these two major industries, the article seeks to demonstrate the impact of the single market objectives upon employees' ability to shape corporate strategies for industrial development. The illustration of the structural readjustment that the 12 national corporate utilities are undergoing, plus reference to the Greek Public Power Corporation's reorganization of decisionmaking networks, will consolidate an overall critique of the major processes and tendencies that influence employees' participative powers.