Employee participation in Europe : in search of the high participative workplace in Europe

This report presents an overview of practices on participation schemes in companies in different European countries. It is based on a secondary analysis of the 1996 EPOC-mail survey data among managers of profit-sector establishments in ten EU countries. The paper offers a description of the diversity of the extent and nature of participative workplaces in European countries. Hence, it analyses the interrelationships between several forms of participation schemes and indicators for the participative nature of the workplace: schemes for direct participation (DP) of employees, i.e. group consultation and individual and group delegation; schemes for financial participation (FP), i.e. employee ownership and profit sharing; and the arrangements for indirect, employee representative participation (ER). Based on a multivariate analysis of the intensity of participation schemes, a profile of high participative workplaces is presented. Typifying these workplaces we focused on country factors, management practices and workplace characteristics.