IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/indres/v58y2019i3p376-422.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Board‐Level Employee Representation (BLER) and Firms’ Responses to Crisis

Author

Listed:
  • Aleksandra Gregorič
  • Marc Steffen Rapp

Abstract

Short: We hypothesize that companies with board‐level employee representation (BLER) experience a lower probability of crisis‐induced dismissals than other firms. Theoretically, we link this effect to the employee directors’ ability to reduce the information asymmetry and moral hazard in employee–employer contracting, thereby facilitating the implementation of labor‐cost adjustments that are an alternative to workforce dismissals. We confirm our hypotheses by analyzing the behavior of Scandinavian public corporations with/without employee directors during the Great Recession.

Suggested Citation

  • Aleksandra Gregorič & Marc Steffen Rapp, 2019. "Board‐Level Employee Representation (BLER) and Firms’ Responses to Crisis," Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 58(3), pages 376-422, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:indres:v:58:y:2019:i:3:p:376-422
    DOI: 10.1111/irel.12241
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/irel.12241
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/irel.12241?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Nicholas Lawson, 2011. "Is Collective Bargaining Pareto Efficient? A Survey of the Literature," Journal of Labor Research, Springer, vol. 32(3), pages 282-304, September.
    2. Daniel Gros & Cinzia Alcidi, 2010. "The impact of the financial crisis on the real economy," Intereconomics: Review of European Economic Policy, Springer;ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics;Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS), vol. 45(1), pages 4-20, January.
    3. Svejnar, Jan, 1981. "Relative Wage Effects of Unions, Dictatorship and Codetermination: Econometric Evidence from Germany," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 63(2), pages 188-197, May.
    4. George A. Akerlof & Janet L. Yellen, 1990. "The Fair Wage-Effort Hypothesis and Unemployment," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 105(2), pages 255-283.
    5. John T. Addison & Claus Schnabel, 2011. "Worker Directors: A German Product that Did Not Export?," Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 50(2), pages 354-374, April.
    6. Karl V. Lins & Paolo Volpin & Hannes F. Wagner, 2013. "Does Family Control Matter? International Evidence from the 2008--2009 Financial Crisis," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 26(10), pages 2583-2619.
    7. Fauver, Larry & Fuerst, Michael E., 2006. "Does good corporate governance include employee representation? Evidence from German corporate boards," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 82(3), pages 673-710, December.
    8. David A. Matsa & Amalia R. Miller, 2013. "A Female Style in Corporate Leadership? Evidence from Quotas," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 5(3), pages 136-169, July.
    9. Fama, Eugene F. & French, Kenneth R., 1993. "Common risk factors in the returns on stocks and bonds," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(1), pages 3-56, February.
    10. Derek C. Jones, 1987. "The Productivity Effects of Worker Directors and Financial Participation by Employees in the Firm: The Case of British Retail Cooperatives," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 41(1), pages 79-92, October.
    11. Ai, Chunrong & Norton, Edward C., 2003. "Interaction terms in logit and probit models," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 80(1), pages 123-129, July.
    12. Peter G. Gahan, 2002. "(What) do unions maximise? Evidence from survey data," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 26(3), pages 279-297, May.
    13. Carhart, Mark M, 1997. "On Persistence in Mutual Fund Performance," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 52(1), pages 57-82, March.
    14. Gary Gorton & Frank A. Schmid, 2004. "Capital, Labor, and The Firm: A Study of German Codetermination," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 2(5), pages 863-905, September.
    15. Toke Aidt & Zafiris Tzannatos, 2002. "Unions and Collective Bargaining : Economic Effects in a Global Environment," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 15241.
    16. Vera Glassner & Maarten Keune & Paul Marginson, 2011. "Collective bargaining in a time of crisis: developments in the private sector in Europe," Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research, , vol. 17(3), pages 303-322, August.
    17. Shlomo Mizrahi, 2002. "Workers’ Participation in Decision–Making Processes and Firm Stability," British Journal of Industrial Relations, London School of Economics, vol. 40(4), pages 689-707, December.
    18. Douglas H. Frank, 2014. "Governance Institutions and Adaptation Costs: Evidence from the Fall of the Berlin Wall," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 60(1), pages 166-187, January.
    19. McDonald, Ian M & Solow, Robert M, 1981. "Wage Bargaining and Employment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 71(5), pages 896-908, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Burdin, Gabriel & Pérotin, Virginie, 2019. "Employee representation and flexible working time," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 61(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Gregorič, Aleksandra, 2022. "Board-level worker representation," GLO Discussion Paper Series 1136, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    2. Xavier Hollandts & Nicolas Aubert, 2019. "La gouvernance salariale : contribution de la représentation des salariés à la gouvernance d’entreprise," Revue Finance Contrôle Stratégie, revues.org, vol. 22(1), pages 63-88, March.
    3. Paul M. Guest & Marco Nerino, 2019. "Do Corporate Governance Ratings Change Investor Expectations? Evidence from Announcements by Institutional Shareholder Services," Working Papers wp515, Centre for Business Research, University of Cambridge.
    4. Kraft, Kornelius, 2018. "Productivity and distribution effects of codetermination in an efficient bargaining model," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 458-485.
    5. B. Espen Eckbo & Knut Nygaard & Karin S. Thorburn, 2022. "Valuation Effects of Norway’s Board Gender-Quota Law Revisited," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 68(6), pages 4112-4134, June.
    6. Joachim Wagner, 2011. "One-third Codetermination at Company Supervisory Boards and Firm Performance in German Manufacturing Industries: First Direct Evidence from a New Type of Enterprise Data," Schmollers Jahrbuch : Journal of Applied Social Science Studies / Zeitschrift für Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaften, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin, vol. 131(1), pages 91-106.
    7. Wolfgang Bessler & Wolfgang Drobetz & Julian Holler, 2015. "The Returns to Hedge Fund Activism in Germany," European Financial Management, European Financial Management Association, vol. 21(1), pages 106-147, January.
    8. Forcillo, Donato, 2017. "Codetermination: the Presence of Workers on the Board. A Depth Analysis," MPRA Paper 81936, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Afonso, Óscar, 2016. "Effects of labour-market institutions on employment, wages, R&D intensity and growth in 27 OECD countries: From theory to practice," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 48-62.
    10. Kolb, Johannes & Tykvová, Tereza, 2016. "Going public via special purpose acquisition companies: Frogs do not turn into princes," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 80-96.
    11. Harjoto, Maretno A. & Hoepner, Andreas G.F. & Li, Qian, 2022. "A stakeholder resource-based view of corporate social irresponsibility: Evidence from China," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 144(C), pages 830-843.
    12. Sebastien Valeyre, 2020. "Refined model of the covariance/correlation matrix between securities," Papers 2001.08911, arXiv.org.
    13. Banerjee, Suman & Humphery-Jenner, Mark & Nanda, Vikram, 2018. "Does CEO bias escalate repurchase activity?," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 93(C), pages 105-126.
    14. Li, Fengfei & Lin, Chen & Lin, Tse-Chun, 2021. "Salient anchor and analyst recommendation downgrade," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 69(C).
    15. Veronika K. Pool & Clemens Sialm & Irina Stefanescu, 2016. "It Pays to Set the Menu: Mutual Fund Investment Options in 401(k) Plans," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 71(4), pages 1779-1812, August.
    16. Armstrong, Christopher & Blackburne, Terrence & Quinn, Phillip, 2021. "Are CEOs’ purchases more profitable than they appear?," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(2).
    17. Matthias Draheim & Günter Franke, 2018. "Employee Orientation and Financial Performance of Foundation Owned Firms," Schmalenbach Business Review, Springer;Schmalenbach-Gesellschaft, vol. 70(4), pages 375-410, November.
    18. Sebastien Valeyre & Denis Grebenkov & Sofiane Aboura & Francois Bonnin, 2016. "Should employers pay their employees better? An asset pricing approach," Papers 1602.00931, arXiv.org, revised Oct 2016.
    19. Edith Leung & David Veenman, 2018. "Non‐GAAP Earnings Disclosure in Loss Firms," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 56(4), pages 1083-1137, September.
    20. Stefan Petry, 2018. "Mandatory Worker Representation on the Board and Its Effect on Shareholder Wealth," Financial Management, Financial Management Association International, vol. 47(1), pages 25-54, March.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:indres:v:58:y:2019:i:3:p:376-422. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0019-8676 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.