Policy and practice regarding involvement and participation in the workplace : how effective is the European Union’s approach for the english patient?
The purpose of this thesis is to evaluate evidence about the European Union’s approach to involvement and participation (I&P) in the workplace and whether this is the most appropriate policy for the UK. The first part overviews the development of social policy involving I&P in the European Union and the UK. It traces how social policy involving I&P developed from an incidental part of the Treaty of Rome to the point where I&P in the workplace became enshrined in the Treaty on The Functioning of the European. Since 1970 the Commission has put forward a series of legislative measures that required I&P in the workplace. Primary and secondary sources are analysed to identify factors that influenced the development of I&P policy and led to a new style of Directive that has been used in this area since 1994. The second part analyses the anatomy of I&P using six factors found in the literature. Although the importance of the depth and type of I&P was identified, the literature lacked a comprehensive analysis of key terms used in the I&P. An Involvement and Participation Framework is developed to fill this gap. Whilst Chapter 4 investigates features that combine to produce different forms of I&P Chapter 5 shows how they are used in EU legislative measures. The third part uses Workplace Industrial Relations Surveys and Workplace Employment Relations Surveys to examine I&P practice in the UK. It assesses how management, employees and employee representatives approach and value different forms of I&P in the UK. In order to do this five new hypotheses are developed and tested through quantitative analysis; further results are drawn from literature and studies using survey data. The results challenge basic assumptions made by the EU and give rise to doubts about the basis for the EU’s I&P policy.
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