Employee participation: Experiences with action research

Abstract

Employee participation has the potential to improve working conditions and employee well-being. However, management-driven participation often prioritises business benefits over industrial democracy, while evidence on trade union-driven participation remains limited. This paper presents and discusses an innovative action research experience of employee participation where academia mediated between trade unions and companies by providing a learning and experiential arena to explore new forms of employee and trade union engagement in workplace change. The project outcomes show that under weak institutional enforcement voluntary engagement in a participative experience can encourage further employee participation when perceived benefits and mutual trust support commitment and embed participation in organisational routines. Without these positive factors, companies and trade unions often revert to traditional, more controlling, and adversarial behaviours.