Employee Participation in Europe

The goal of this study was to identify the determinants of employee participation in organizations across Europe. Power distance, uncertainty avoidance, competition, unionisation, sector, organizational size and business strategy were all expected to influence amount of employee involvement. The hypothesised relationships were contrasted using data from the EPOC survey, a representative survey of over 5,700 organisations located in 10 European Union countries. The results supported all but two of the expected relationships. Power distance and organisational size did not predict amount of participation. A closer look at the relationship between organizational size and employee involvement revealed a significant relationship when type of participation, consultative or delegative, was included in the analysis. ∗ Elizabeth F. Cabrera and Jaime Ortega are partially funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology research grant SEC2000-0395 and Comunidad de Madrid research grant 06/0065/2000. We thank Ulrich Pekruhl and the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions for providing us with access to the EPOC database. Corresponding author: Elizabeth F. Cabrera. Department of Business Administration, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Calle Madrid 126, 28903 Getafe (Madrid), Spain. E-mail: [email protected]. Phone: +34 91 624-9709. Fax: +34 91 6249608.