Corporate Efficiency and Employee Participation

Abstract

This article is an attempt to integrate the efficiency perspectives that are traditionally nurtured in business schools with the employee participation perspectives outlined in studies of industrial relations. Global communication between business units, and employee participation and co-determination within business units, both haveimpact on corporate efficiency. The two approaches are synthesized in a conceptual framework combining the articulation of interests and resistance with value-creation and value destruction.

What Works in Democratic Dialogue?

“…Pålshaugen (1999) sees dialogue as a basic element of organizational studies. While Pålshaugen (1999) relies on the idea of discussing the concerns of various individuals and collectives in public spheres, Colbjørnsen and Falkum (1998) have gone further. They conceptualize organizations as an interplay of production (employees, supervisors, management), bargaining (employer representatives, shop stewards) and development systems.…”

“…In some companies, the dialogues had continued locally and resulted in pilots and renewals as the bargaining parties reached solutions compatible with the changing demands of work (Heiskanen et al 1998). In the case of the six participant organizations of Network C working together as a learning network, a conceptualization of Colbjørnsen and Falkum (1998) was used as a learning task: the participants investigated how the production, bargaining, and development organizations were connected in their home organizations (Kalliola and Nakari 2006) and the findings were put into practice by sharing information and power between these systems in local development work.…”

“…Furthermore, the mechanism of practical changes creating trust can be linked to Colbjørnsen and Falkum (1998) approach of involving development organizations with production and bargaining systems. The approach may secure the authority (top managers of the production system who also control budgetary resources and the main actors of the bargaining system controlling the degree of resistance) of the development projects to take action according to the plans made in dialogue forums, and it can be counted as a mechanism for enabling change.…”

Learning to make changes: democratic dialogue in action

“…This organizational space approach is promising in analyzing the outcome of Quality Network interventions, although there is a need for a larger context because of the many actors and borders of public work organizations. Therefore, we turn to Colbjørnsen and Falkum (1998) who have conceptualized work organizations as an interaction between production, bargaining or negotiation and development systems. The authors want to point out that in work organizations there always are, besides the actual production and bargaining organizations, also some kind of development organizations that are used to steer the whole systems and to promote changes seen as necessary by the power elites.…”

“…When combining Hernes's (2004a, b) and Colbjørnsen and Falkum (1998) ideas, we may say that public sector production organizations and bargaining organizations as spaces tend to be regulatory, inhibiting natural social bonding and creative thinking, and thus also learning, although the regulatory aspect is not the same. The production organizations tend to be caught in the bureaucratic regulation and bargaining organizations in the paragraphs of collective agreements and, often, also in antagonistic win‐lose, not integrative win‐win, cultures (Kalliola and Nakari, 2004).…”