Management Revue

Industrial Democracy: Introduction

Industrial Democracy: Historical Development and Current Challenges**

The following article gathers notes and comments on industrial democracy, its terminology, history and current developments. Industrial democracy is an enigmatic term whose spectrum of meanings is explored in the first section. The Anglo-Saxon terminology, going back to S. and B. Webb will be compared with the German vocabulary of Wirtschaftsdemokratie and co-determination. The following sections deal with the peculiarities of German co-determination. First the emergence of co-determination i...

Democracy at Work - Revisited**

This article deals with a model of worker participation which was introduced in a German car dealership and repair shop in the 1960s and which goes far beyond the legal framework of German codetermination ("Mitbestimmung"). The model comprises full codetermination in economic affairs, substantial gain-sharing, participation through work teams on the shop floor, and the "neutralization of capital" (i.e., transfer of owner's property rights to a foundation). The significance of these four eleme...

Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers

Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers, by Kwame Anthony Appiah, is reviewed.

Employee Share Ownership As Moderator of the Relationship Between Firm-Specific Human Capital Investments and Organizational Commitment**

Tight labour markets and changing employment relationships make employees with high levels of firm-specific knowledge, skills, and abilities less dependent on and committed to their employer. Companies need to work harder in order to attract and retain employees and protect their mutual human capital investments. Using a dataset with survey data from employees in 11 companies (N = 777), the present study shows evidence that employee share ownership, provided that it is taken seriously as refl...

Negotiated Forms of Worker Involvement in the European Company (Se) -First Empirical Evidence and Conclusions**

This article analyses the negotiations on worker involvement in the first almost four years of the European Company SE and their outcomes. First, some basic institutional aspects of the SE itself and its current empirical situation are described and explained. Then, the focus is on questions of employee involvement in this new legal form. Again some main institutional provisions on employee involvement are assessed, before a detailed empirical analysis on specific issues is presented. A final...

Understanding the Effects of Works Councils On Organizational Performance. A Theoretical Model and Results From Initial Case Studies From the Netherlands**

In this article, we present a conceptual model to understand the effects of works councils on organizational performance. The model is based on economic and HRM literature on employee participation and organizational performance, as well as on German and Dutch research into the economic and other effects of works councils. The model has been operationalized through a research approach and applied for the first time using in-depth case studies in a large insurance company in the Netherlands. I...