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This study aims to investigate the nature of employee associations (EAs) and whether the EAs function as a collective voice similar to enterprise unions in Japanese small- and medium-sized enterprises by clarifying the differences in the determinants and effects between EAs and unions.

The authors analyze 2,440 Japanese small- and medium-sized firms for determinants of unions and EAs. Using the bivariate probit model, the authors examine whether EAs complement (a way station to unionization) or substitute for (dampening the desire for unionization) traditional unionization. Furthermore, the effects of EAs and unions on voluntary employee turnover rates are compared.

The authors' findings regarding EAs are as follows: (1) although owner-managers are averse to both unions and EAs, owner-managers are not as averse to EAs as to unions; (2) EAs reduce the turnover rate to the same extent as unions do and (3) EAs are voice institutions that are less affected by the influence of unions.

The limitations of this study are as follows: (1) the dataset is slightly outdated; (2) due to the absence of panel data, the authors could not capture unobserved time-invariant factors that are the primary sources of endogeneity and (3) to overcome this vulnerability, the authors were able to control for the characteristics of management but not for the characteristics of employees because of a lack of information.

This study clarifies that non-union employee representation (NER) has the unique feature of being neither complementary nor substitutive to unions in Japan's industrial relations. EAs are organized not for union avoidance by employers, but voluntarily by employees without the aim of unionization. The associations have the same function as unions in reducing the turnover rate by resolving employees' grievances as entities independent from management.

This paper examines the attempts by trade unions in Britain to gain organisational rights for their members and for workers in organisations operating within the hitherto non‐unionised “new economy”.

By using data drawn from fieldwork interviews with full‐time union officials and supplemented by secondary sources, the paper assesses the genesis and progress of these campaigns, suggesting a combination of employer hostility and worker indifference explain the limited advances made to date.

In particular, the paper considers the configuration of the inter‐relationship between employer action, union strength and sudden grievances as the major explanatory variable in accounting for the variation in the outcomes of the eight union recognition campaigns. Finally, the high degree of dependence and reliance on full‐time union officers, contra the “organising” model, is examined.

Further research on union presence and activity in the “new economy” are needed to critically examine these conclusions, given that the research was based on a study of eight employers.

The implications for trade unions are that not all campaigns for union recognition can be expected to be equally successful, that campaigns are likely to take a relatively long period of time before significant advances are made and that greater scrutiny of potential campaigns is needed.

Provides lessons for trade unions attempting to gain organisational rights for their members.

A growing number of econometric examinations show that works councils substantially shape the personnel policy of firms in Germany. Firms with works councils make greater use of various human resource management (HRM) practices. This gives rise to the question of whether employers view the shaping of personnel policy positively or negatively. Against this background, the purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of works councils on employer attitudes toward HRM practices.

Using data from manufacturing establishments, multivariate and recursive multivariate models are applied to estimate the determinants of employer attitudes toward HRM practices.

The incidence of a works council increases the probability of positive employer attitudes toward the incentive effects of performance pay, profit sharing, promotions, further training and worker involvement in decision making. However, it decreases the probability of positive employer attitudes toward high wages. The results suggest that works councils play a redistribution role in wages and a collective voice role in the other HRM practices.

The study complements examinations focusing on the influence of works councils on the formal presence of HRM practices. There are two potential limitations of focusing solely on formal HRM practices. First, the formal presence of a practice does not necessarily mean that the practice is effectively used. Second, a firm may informally use HRM practices even though the practices have not been formally adopted. The study provides insights into the question of whether or not works councils influence employers’ support for the various practices. This support can be important for the effective use of the practices, regardless of whether they are of formal or informal nature.

Migrant workers are often concentrated in segments of the labour market characterised by low-paid and insecure work and which fall outside of the traditional ‘web of rules’ providing workers with protections. Institutional experimentation provides an opportunity to rectify this. This chapter examines the reasons why migrant workers are often subject to exploitation and marginalisation in the labour market. It then analyses the roles of the three main actors with the capacity to protect and improve migrant workers’ labour market position: governments, trade unions and community organisations. It proposes a ‘co-regulation’ approach based on collaborative institutional experimentation between these actors as the most effective way to address the exploitation and marginalisation of migrant workers.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the factors influencing the presence of works councils in Polish companies. The study also considers the incidence of councils in organizations and management’s attitude towards these institutions of employee participation.

Based on a sample of 402 Polish private companies, the probit model was calculated to identify the determinants of a works councils’ presence. The coverage of active councils was evaluated on the MRPiPS database and the GUS database.

The data show that the coverage of works councils in Polish organizations fell suddenly after the introduction of the amendment of the Act from 2009. Moreover, trade union density has a strong positive influence on the occurrence of works councils in companies. Councils are also more likely to be found in older foreign-owned companies in which forms of direct participation are used. Additionally, a higher share of shift workers in companies is associated with a higher probability of works councils’ presence.

There are some difficulties with obtaining a precise analysis of the coverage of works councils in Poland.

Polish findings may be useful for other countries of Central and Eastern Europe with similar characteristics of industrial relations and similarly short traditions of works councils.

This paper extends the previous research on the operation of works councils in Polish industrial relations by providing an econometric analysis of the determinants of councils’ presence in companies. Such an analysis has been conducted in Poland for the first time.

The purpose of this paper is to review “institutional experimentation” for protecting workers in response to the contraction of the standard employment relationship and the corresponding rise of “non-standard” forms of paid work.

The paper draws on the existing research and knowledge base of the authors as well as a thorough review of the extant literature relating to: non-standard employment contracts; sources of labour supply engaging in non-standard work; exogenous pressures on the employment relationship; intermediaries that separate the management from the control of labour; and entities that subvert the employment relationship.

Post-war industrial relations scholars characterised the traditional regulatory model of collective bargaining and the standard employment contract as a “web of rules”. As work relations have become more market mediated, new institutional arrangements have developed to govern these relations and regulate the terms of engagement. The paper argues that these are indicative of an emergent “patchwork of rules” which are instructive for scholars, policymakers, workers’ representatives and employers seeking solutions to the contraction of the traditional regulatory model.

While the review of the institutional experimentation is potentially instructive for developing solutions to gaps in labour regulation, a drawback of this approach is that there are limits to the realisation of policy transfer. Some of the initiatives discussed in the paper may be more effective than others for protecting workers on non-standard contracts, but further research is necessary to test their effectiveness including in different contexts.

The findings indicate that a task ahead for the representatives of government, labour and business is to determine how to adapt the emergent patchwork of rules to protect workers from the new vulnerabilities created by, for example, employer extraction and exploitation of their individual bio data, social media data and, not far off, their personal genome sequence.

The paper addresses calls to examine the “institutional intersections” that have informed the changing ways that work is conducted and regulated. These intersections transcend international, national, sectoral and local units of analysis, as well as supply chains, fissured organisational dynamics, intermediaries and online platforms. The analysis also encompasses the broad range of stakeholders including businesses, labour and community groups, nongovernmental organisations and online communities that have influenced changing institutional approaches to employment protection.

Within the two-tier bargaining system, the role of complementary collective bargaining is somewhat controversial. In this paper, the authors analyse collective agreements from a triple perspective: scanning the contents of firm-level complementary collective agreements (CCAs); identifying the factors that determine the probability of signing a CCA and analysing the relationship between the latter and firm performance with a focus on the role of different negotiated topics.

The empirical procedure is based on 2 main linked sources: longitudinal balance sheet data and a cross-sectional dataset of a representative sample of Italian firms with at least 15 employees, including some retrospective information. The innovative dataset derives from integrating multiple sources. The main empirical approaches include Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) estimations, multivariate regressions, as well as instrumental variable (IV) estimations to overcome simultaneity issues.

With respect to the probability of signing a CCA, on the firms' side, the authors find a positive role of the degree of firm capitalisation and affiliation with an employers' association and a negative role of family firms compared to non-family firms; on the workers' side, a positive role of the workers' unionisation rate and a positive but differentiated weight of workers' union representations and industrial conflicts. With regard to firm performance, the authors' estimates suggest that signing a CCA is associated with an average increase of 3% in total factor productivity (TFP) and 7.8% in labour productivity. By investigating the contents of the complementarity agreements, the authors show that bargaining a wider range of topics implies advantages that are not homogenous, benefitting more efficient firms. Moreover, the authors find a specific positive and significant role for three main interacting issues: economic incentives, organisation and employment.

The cross-sectional structure of the data on bargaining practices prevents detecting causal relationships due to either potential common driver(s) of both the target variables (firm performance) and bargaining practices (simultaneity bias) and unobservable time-invariant firm-level characteristics (heterogeneity bias).

According to the authors' results, policymakers should operate along four fiscal channels to spur the efficiency of firms, via CCA. First, tax incentives stimulate higher firm capitalisation, as this seems to be a CCA-favouring factor. Second, deduction in taxable income for union members, which should led to higher membership rates, hence raising the likelihood of obtaining a CCA. Third, incentives aimed at directly promoting the greater diffusion of CCAs as a source of improved performance. Fourth, fiscal tools aimed at favouring the negotiation of either specific contents or “bundles” of contents, which the authors' estimates show as an additional performance-enhancing tool of CCA practices.

The conceptualisation of the contents of CCA as organisational investments and the whole probability function of signing a CCA are quite innovative. Moreover, the econometric strategy takes account of several potential sources of bias when estimating the relevant coefficients at each stage, which is currently not fully considered in the literature. Finally, this is the first study to shed light on both the diverse outcomes associated with different negotiated topics (in terms of quantity and quality) and the distinction between short and medium-long term effects.

To examine non‐union channels of employee voice in the Auckland hotel industry over ten years in order to determine the efficacy of non‐union employee representation in a lightly unionised service sector context.

The study draws on a longitudinal study of employment relations in the Auckland hotel industry. Interview and archival data were collected in three waves between 1993 and 2003. A case study of a single hotel illustrates the analysis.

A majority of the hotels studied have adopted and continue to develop an array of non‐union voice channels. While hotel management retain their traditional decision‐making prerogatives and worker influence is constrained, there is evidence that interest in developing non‐union voice channels to gauge employees’ concerns and interests at work is valued by management, albeit for instrumental reasons.

Major limitations include the lack of employee data and sample composition: large hotels in one region only. Further research, incorporating data on employee attitudes and perceptions, is required in order to understand employees’ expectations and desires for influence at work and the reasons for any perceived efficacy.

This study shows that, contrary to the dominant view that they are of little or no value, non‐union voice channels may provide workers in a non‐union setting with a measure of influence that would otherwise be denied.

Given the emergence of new legal initiatives for union recognition, declining levels of union membership and the growth of alternative forms of employee representation, this paper aims to examine the management of employee voice in non‐union firms.

The research adopts a case study approach in seven non‐union organisations from different sectors of economic activity in the UK. Several themes guided the design of the research instruments. Interviews were conducted with managerial respondents responsible for the design and implementation of employee voice at each case study, including non‐personnel practitioners.

Provides information on: the meaning of non‐union voice; the range of practices adopted; the potential outcomes; and apparent barriers to the implementation of non‐union voice arrangements.

The research collected data from managerial respondents only, and this limitation is noted. Further research in this area is suggested, particularly from employee stakeholders involved in the processes of employee involvement.

The paper addresses a gap on employee voice in non‐union settings. It suggests that it is too simple to dismiss voice in non‐union organisations as ineffective and inconsequential.