Innovation and Employee Participation Through Works Councils: International Case Studies

There have been a number of international surveys of employee participation over the years. All of the existing studies consist of national reports of general trends and legal/institutional frameworks. This book is unique because of the following features: the main focus of the individual country studies is upon the operation of particular industries or firms, rather than upon the industrial relations system as a whole; the choice of case studies is upon the basis that they are typical of trends in that country, or they represent significant changes in previous practices; several contributions deal with the transition of various Central of Eastern European countries towards a market economy, comparing their former participation structures with the new ones they have adopted; various contributions are included from countries seldom described in international publications including Greece, Ireland, New Zealand, Switzerland and Tanzania; a contribution from South Africa also describes the major transitions which that country is undergoing in the workplace; the firm-level empirical basis of most of the contributions nicely complements more general international studies; it is the most up-to-date international survey available, covering a period of rapid change in many of the countries covered. The book also brings together a large number of distinguished international scholars with a wide range and great depth of experience in employee participation.