Toward a behavioural theory of cooperation between managers and employee representatives in works councils

Abstract

This article builds a comprehensive behavioural framework of cooperation between management and employee representatives in a works council setting. The authors do so by applying insights from organizational behaviour in the works council setting in the belief that this discipline’s long-standing research tradition on (work) group processes and outcomes may provide the necessary theoretical building blocks to unravel cooperation among managers and employee representatives. The authors’ framework suggests that cooperation is a complex phenomenon that is largely driven by the extent of ideological and educational differences between management and employee representatives, procedural justice and perceived organizational support. A series of case studies of Belgian works councils provide illustrations of this framework. The overall contribution of this article is a grounded and testable behavioural framework of how cooperation can develop between management and employee representatives in a works council context.