Employee Participation in Britain: From Collective Bargaining and Industrial Democracy to Employee Involvement and Social Partnership - Two Decades of Manchester/ Loughborough research

Abstract

This article reports on two influential collective research projects on Employee Participation in Britain, conducted by Manchester / Loughborough academics. This comparative case-study, with a longitudinal element, has allowed us to trace the development of Employee Participation over a decade or more, from a Management approach centred on adversarial trade unions and collective bargaining to one focused on new (non-union) forms of Employee Involvement (EI) and, in some cases, partnership with unions. Our research concludes that important developments have taken place in organisations' approach to managing employees - rejecting the radical view that EI and partnership are 'phantom' forms of participation.