How the Social Partners View Direct Participation: A Comparative Study of 15 European Countries

Abstract

In international discussion of new developments in industrial relations at the workplace there is general agreement on the importance of direct employee participation in the organization of work. This article reports some of the results of a wide-ranging study conducted as part of a project initiated by the European Foundation in Dublin. It analyses the position of the organized industrial relations actors in the 15 countries of the European Union. Its focus is on how they understand the concept of direct participation and how they assess the impact of new participative programmes on company performance, work organization and working conditions, and the established system of workplace industrial relations.