Form Of Industrial Democracy Research Articles

Transnational Company Industrial Relations: The Role of European Works Councils and the Implications for International Human Resource Management

The general study of institutional arrangements that are designed to impact on managerial prerogatives is typically cast in the genre of forms of industrial democracy. While the last few decades have seen a decline in interest in this area of study, developments in the European Union have enabled an ongoing dialogue specifically on the topic of consultation. Although consultation is generally seen by scholars as a modest form of industrial democracy, formal European Directives have provided the opportunity to assess the representative strength or otherwise of initiatives such as European Works Councils that are explicitly designed to address social policy and inequality in the workplace. Drawing on 41 case studies, we examine the determinants of European Works Councils morphology, activities undertaken and general outcomes. We note that it is important to presumptively inquire as to what is being theorized rather than simply take the implicit position that European Works Councils are the prime institution of influence. This leads us to establish the primacy of management and in particular, the vector of management decision-making as the primary independent variable that predicts much about the operation and robustness of European Works Councils. Accordingly, we find that strong centralized management, rather than the usual suspects of differing national industrial relations systems and cultural differences, typically account for much of what we understand in terms of the role that European Works Councils play.

The Political Economy of Employee Ownership in the United States: From Economic Democracy to Industrial Democracy?

This study examines the development of economic democracy in the United States since the 1700s with particular emphasis on the last 30 years. The particular focus is on employee ownership, although the phenomenon of profit sharing receives some attention. The nature of research and documentation on the subject is reviewed. The study concludes that research in the area has emphasized narrative studies of particular companies and sectors until the 1980s. At that time the support for the concept by the US Federal Government created reporting requirements for companies to the US Department of Labor and the US Internal Revenue Service (the taxation authority) and the US Securities and Exchange Commission. These data-sets have made systematic research on the phenomenon possible. Results of the first national random sample of employed individuals and work sites on the incidence of employee ownership and profit sharing are presented. Finally, we conduct a political economic analysis of the phenomenon. We demonstrate that, despite the growth of employee ownership in particular, a form of employee ownership has developed which encourages workers to use their savings to buy stock in their companies. This form dominates employee ownership in terms of the number of workers, firms, and dollar assets involved. Nevertheless, there is significant employee ownership in a group of closely held firms that use traditional ESOPs (Employee Stock Ownership Plans) and in a group of publicly traded high technology companies that use broad-based stock options. These two sectors offer fertile territory for the development of both economic democracy and nascent forms of industrial democracy.

Labor Participation – A Way to Industrial Democracy

The author examines the role and forms of industrial democracy in the enterprise and when in the process of selection of questions, study and analysis, search for solutions and defining the final decision and which methods of implementation shall employees and their union share, and in what manner, the responsibilities of decision-making with management. Current arrangements must be viewed essentially as transitional accommodations in the unending search for viable, more satisfying and productive plans.

Anglophilia in crisis: Italian liberals, the ‘English model’ and democracy in the Giolittian era

SummaryThe image of England was very important to the political culture of Italian liberals during the Risorgimento and the post-unification period. Even if it was viewed as unreachable, it still constituted an example of progress that Italy could strive towards. This article reconstructs the stages of the process that saw a section of Italian political culture become alienated from this image, just at a time when a more complete form of industrial democracy was becoming eswtablished in Britain. This alienation is interpreted here as having its roots in attitudes to the issues raised by the workers’ movement: Italian liberals were reluctant to give it full legitimacy and engage it on the open terrain of social and political competition. The first two sections of the article go over the traits of Italian Anglophilia up to the end of the nineteenth century and single out the earliest reasons for alienation. The third section identifies the Boer War, the figure of Chamberlain and the cluster of issues linking democracy, imperialism and protectionism as key factors in the change of direction. The fourth section shows that the constitutional conflict in Britain and the Parliament Act were a further, decisive, step in Italian liberals’ disaffection with the ‘English model'.

Influencing Strategic Decisions: Worker Directors in UK Bus Companies

This paper examines the role and effectiveness of worker director schemes in six employee‐owned bus companies. This form of industrial democracy, which is aimed at giving workers and their representatives a role in the strategic direction of the employing organization, has been in abeyance in recent years. However, it now seems to be making something of a comeback. Concern about corporate governance, the spread of employee ownership and recent initiatives by the EC have combined to generate renewed interest in employee representation in the formulation of company strategy. As industrial democracy edges back on to the industrial relations agenda it is opportune to reconsider the findings of earlier literature in the light of recent developments.

Work Councils in Iran: The Illusion of Worker Control

Contrary to prevalent arguments in the literature on Iranian work councils ('showras'), this article contends that the push for councils was a premature initiative. While political repression was a very important factor in the defeat of council movement, the demise of the movement stemmed mainly from the weaknesses of the Iranian working class and the left, from the nature and structure of the councils and from the objective conditions in which they were operating. Questioning the theoretical and conceptual basis of workers' councils and worker control, the article points to different forms of industrial democracy as the only viable option for articulating the demands of working people.

Ethics at the workplace

Are facts the only criteria that should determine an arbitrator's decision but are there other ethical criteria that ought to be used? Arbitrators are often faced with deciding issues like whether a person discharged already by a company for arson, should be reinstated or not to his old job. The problem, however, may not be the facts but that the company has discharged him to get rid of him so that it no longer has a problem while society does with the arsonist at work elsewhere. Another problem involves the teaching of human resources management. Most of the current literature dealing with modern management reflects the belief that participatory management is good for management. Most of the evidence supporting such a claim is weak; there surely is very little evidence that such participation should include nonsupervisory employees. The discussion concerning the issue of participatory management could be raised if the participants stopped talking about the increased productivity that is supposed to result, but rather deal instead with the issue that such participation is a form of industrial democracy and therefore is good or bad depending upon a person's ethical judgments concerning such an issue.

Community-Based Economic Development: Our Trojan Horse

At its May convention in 1986, the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) adopted an economic policy statement calling for the development of a workers' economic agenda. The statement calls for a complete re-structuring of the economy based on democratic economic planning, full employment, an expansion of the public sector, nationalization of key industries, democratic control over investment, support for workers' co-ops and other forms of industrial democracy, and an emphasis on community-based economic development. It is this last plank with which this note is concerned. What is it? Is it large enough to matter? Is it a good idea?

The Profitability of Private Information in Unionised Capitalist Enterprises

In recent years many economic models have been developed in which there is asymmetric information, that is where some agents have better information about the environment than others. Virtually all of these models have treated the information structure as exogenous. In some cases this may be very reasonable. In the optimal income taxation literature (see, for example, Mirrlees, 1971) it is assumed that the government cannot observe the ability of individuals directly. Treating the information structure as exogenous in this case is probably legitimate as it is difficult to think of ways in which the appropriate information could be transmitted. However, asymmetric information has also been used in models involving firms and workers (for the implicit contract literature see Grossman and Hart 1981, 1983 inter alia). It is an important argument in this paper that the exogeneity assumption is not necessarily justified in such models. Normally the firm is not an individual and if the information which the firm uses for decision-making is available to managers, then it could presumably also be made available to workers (or their representatives) at a low cost. In this paper the null hypothesis is that it would be costless to make information available to the workers. This might be done through measures to introduce various forms of industrial democracy, or other means of transmitting information. In this country the CBI and other employer organisations have consistently opposed any attempts to force firms to reveal information to workers (see Bullock, 1977, pp. 30-3 for a summary of the CBI submission to the Bullock Committee on Industrial Democracy). This suggests that the private information firms possess might be of positive value to the firm. In fact, in all the asymmetric information implicit contract literature asymmetric information has negative value for the firm. The reason for this is that implicit contract models are typically of the form:

Trade Unions, Industrial Democracy and Collective Bargaining

The demands presented by Trade Unions for Industrial Democracy remain, despite the lack of success in their realization, an important departure from the traditional bargaining objectives they have pursued in the post-war period. The significance of these demands lie in the fact that they explicitly focus on issues of control, particularly with regard to areas of strategic corporate decision making previously excluded from Trade Union influence. The main purpose of the paper is to consider how far the pursuit of these demands is capable of realizing any significant transfer of control to workers over the enterprises they work in. In doing so the paper considers definitions of industrial democracy, competing formulations offered by those concerned with exploring the functional contribution Industrial Democracy can make to Management purposes, and the objectives Trade Unions seek to achieve through industrial democracy. It is argued that the form of Industrial Democracy through which Trade Unions seek to secure their objectives is of key importance. Two main alternatives, that of worker directors and extending collective bargaining are considered in some detail, and the paper concludes that extending collective bargaining is likely to be more advantageous to Trade Unions both in terms of improving their bargaining power against management, and in their attempts to secure Industrial Democracy.

Industrial Democracy Under Liberal Capitalism: A Comparison of Trends in Australia, France and the USA

An examination is made of the trends toward new forms of industrial democracy in three liberal capitalist societies: France, the United States and Australia. A three-dimensional framework is introduced which uses the ideology of the labour movement, the degree of control which is sought by employees at the enterprise level and the level at which participation occurs, to compare developments in each country. It is argued that a convergence of approaches is occurring in these countries towards the participatory enterprise, albeit with some variations, within the framework of liberal capitalism.

Project 3P — An Experiment in Industrial Democracy in a Small Firm

This case study deals with the introduction of a form of Industrial Democracy in a small tyre company located in Brisbane. It describes the four stages of the change program – the managing-owner's acceptance of the implications of the changes; the involvement of the employees; the immediate on-the-job results; and the first seven month settling-down period. Project 3P (for Profit, Protection and Productivity) has been remarkably successful in mobilizing the human resources of that company to achieve its objectives, and might serve as a model of change for other organizations.

West German Experience with Industrial Democracy

The prevailing forms of industrial democracy in West Germany and the proposals for its further develop ment cannot be encompassed in a single integrated system. There are few basic issues of industrial democracy which do not contain a complex interlocking of regulative norms, contractual relationships, and cooperative activities. A genuine German development is codetermination or Mit bestimmung. In order to evaluate its proper significance it is necessary to differentiate between shop floor and board levels, between the institutions of works councils, labor directors on management boards, and worker representa tives on supervisory boards. The greatest achievement in industrial relations, largely due to the works councils, is perhaps the establishment of a reasonably well func tioning grievance and negotiation machinery within the individual plant and the larger corporation. Codetermina tion in supervisory boards has not undermined profit orientation as a criterion of performance, but employee representatives have been able to obtain proper considera tion of the social aspects of work. There are limits in a system based mainly on statutory measures. More personal involvement and more self-government at workplace level might be on the agenda for the near future.

Worker Participation in Israel: Experience and Lessons

This article examines the record of experience with a succession of worker participation programs in Israel over the past 50 years. Collective bargaining has been the universal form of industrial democracy, but it has been accompanied and supplemented at various times by joint productivity councils, plant councils, and joint management boards. The latter have been limited so far to enterprises owned by the General Federation of Labor in Israel, the Histadrut. Profit sharing as a form of participation is presently in the process of being instituted in that sector of the economy known as the Labor Economy. Self-management and self-government have always constituted the basic prin ciples of Kibbutz and Moshav movements as well as the cooperative enterprises. However, the introduction of industrial enterprises into the once purely agricultural Kib butz settlements has brought with it a substantial amount of hired labor, and consequently the integration of hired labor into the self-management structure has raised substan tial difficulties. Evaluation of Israeli experience must pay special attention to the problems of integrating representa tive participation with direct shop-floor participation.