Oxford Handbook of Participation in Organizations

Employee participation encompasses the range of mechanisms used to involve the workforce in decisions at all levels of the organization - whether direct or indirect - conducted with employees or through their representatives. In its various guises, the topic of employee participation has been a recurring theme in industrial relations and human resource management. One of the problems in trying to develop any analysis of participation is that there is potentially limited overlap between these different disciplinary traditions, and scholars from diverse traditions may know relatively little of the research that has been done elsewhere. Accordingly in this book, a number of the more significant disciplinary areas are analysed in greater depth in order to ensure that readers gain a better appreciation of what participation means from these quite different contextual perspectives. Not only is there a range of different traditions contributing to the research and literature on the subject, there is also an extremely diverse sets of practices that congregate under the banner of participation. The handbook discusses various arguments and schools of thought about employee participation, analyzes the range of forms that participation can take in practice, and examines the way in which it meets objectives that are set for it, either by employers, trade unions, individual workers, or, indeed, the state. In doing so, the Handbook brings together leading scholars from around the world who present and discuss fundamental theories and approaches to participation in organization as well as their connection to broader political forces. These selections address the changing contexts of employee participation, different cultural/ institutional models, old/'new' economy models, shifting social and political patterns, and the correspondence between industrial and political democracy and participation. As a rich contemporary and relevant overview of the nature, importance and benefits of participation this book will be hard to beat. Linda Holbeche, Developing HR Strategy JournalSECTION I: INTRODUCTION; 1. The History of Employee Participation and Recent Developments; SECTION II: PERSPECTIVES; 2. A Human Resource Management perspective on Employee Participation; 3. An Industrial Relations Perspective on Employee Participation; 4. A Legal Perspective on Employee Participation; 5. Labour Process and Marxist Perspectives on Employee Participation; 6. An Economic Perspective on Employee Participation; SECTION III: FORMS OF PARTICIPATION IN PRACTICE; 7. Direct Participation; 8. Collective Bargaining as a Form of Employee Participation: Observations on the United States and Europe; 9. Employer Strategies Towards Non-Union Collective Voice; 10. Worker Directors and Work Ownership/Co-operatives; 11. Employee Participation Through Non-Union Forms of Employee Representation; 12. Works Councils: The European Model of Industrial Democracy?; 13. Employee Share Ownership; 14. Financial Participation; SECTINO IV: PROCESSES AND OUTCOMES; 15. Labour Union Responses to Participation in Employing Organisations; 16. Voice in the Wilderness: The Shift from Union to Non-Union Voice; 17. High Involvement Management and Performance; 18. Employee Voice and Mutual Gains; SECTION V: POLICY AND COMPARATIVE ISSUES; 19. Paricipation Across Organizational Boundaries; 20. Public Policy and Employee Participation; 21. Corporate Governance and Employee Participation; 22. Cross-National Variation in Representation Rights and Governance at Work; 23. Employee Participation in Developing Countries and Emerging Countries; 24. International and Comparative Perspectives on Employee Participation; 25. Freedom, Democracy, and Capitalism: Ethics and Employee Participation