Search results

Identify the different types of experiences of European Works Council (EWC) members based on the four fields of interaction of EWCs and evaluate their relative presence.

Latent profile analysis using survey data of over 1600 EWC representatives from more than 300 EWCs.

Five different types of EWC experience are identified (marginalized, dominated, spearhead, participative and transnational forum). After 22 years of experience with EWCs, only a small minority of EWC representatives consider their EWC to be a participative structure. While trade union support and training increase the value of belonging to a well-functioning EWC type, they are not enough to circumvent structural obstacles. Additionally the analysis shows that domination by some countries in the functioning of an EWC is not always negative as this experience is present in both well- and ill-functioning EWC types.

The article argues that research should focus more on the moments of regression which EWCs face; and take a more nuanced approach to the domination by some countries of how EWCs function.

The article adds to the growing body of evidence that argues for structural intervention to improve EWC functioning.

This article uses insights from comparative case study research to cross-validate the findings using quantitative methods.

The purpose of this paper is to identify different job types in the Belgian electricity sector and their relations with employee outcomes such as work engagement and innovative work behaviour (IWB).

This paper uses a combination of latent profile analysis and relative operating characteristics (ROC) analysis.

Depending on the job resources and demands, five different job types are identified corresponding largely to the Karasek and Theorell (1990) job types. Their relation with the outcomes is not parallel with low-strain jobs performing best for work engagement, and active jobs for IWB.

The combination of methods used in this study increases significantly the ease of communication of the findings, yet an external benchmark for the ROC analysis would be preferable.

To foster engagement and IWB with employees one should focus on the job content and only increase demands if they are combined with sufficient resources.

This research is the first in its kind that relates latent job types with different employee outcomes using a combination of latent profile and ROC analysis.

The purpose of this paper is to study how employee representatives in European Works Councils (EWCs) treat confidential information and how such strategies might improve the EWC functioning.

Building on interviews of several case studies of EWCs, this paper brings together insights from industrial relations and occupational psychology literature.

The results show that through actively challenging the management, an EWC can reduce the amount of information labelled as confidential and become freer to communicate with their rank and file. Actively challenging management, however, does not seem to impact the openness of the management to give early and complete information.

The paper is based on several case studies, which limits the generalisability of the findings. The results, however, indicate that research is required on how challenging confidentiality can incite managements to provide earlier information.

The research show clearly the potential but also limitations for employee representatives in actively challenging the management over what information is confidential.

This study studies a universally difficult topic for employee representatives: how to handle confidential information. The findings show that EWCs have little levers to force management to provide early information. For this, more structural change is needed.

This study is the first to focus exclusively on the issue of confidentiality in EWCs. This is a central concern for employee representatives, but research, until now, has not given much insight in which strategies work.