The outcomes of works councils: the role of trust, justice and industrial relations climate

Abstract

This paper investigates trust and organizational justice as antecedents of Works Council (WC) effectiveness perceptions, and the moderating role of industrial relations climate on this relationship. A two-year longitudinal study of Works Council participants in two UK organizations (a Housing Association and a Professional Services firm) was undertaken.Results show positive significant relationships between both trust and organizational justice and WC outcomes of WC performance, WC usefulness, and outcome satisfaction. Industrial relations climate is found to moderate the relationship between justice and WC performance, WC usefulness and outcome satisfaction.

Skating on thin ICE? A critical evaluation of a decade of research on the British Information and Consultation Regulations (2004)

“…As the Commission noted in 1998, ‘Information and Consultation are factors for productivity as they contribute to the creation of a highly skilled and committed workforce’ (CEC, 1998: 2). As such there is a need to redefine ‘effectiveness’ beyond employee interests and the democratisation of the workplace (see also Kougiannou et al, 2015) and consider the implications of mandated consultation for the managerial and practitioner constituency. Certainly, within the UK, the legitimising rhetoric surrounding the transposition of the ICE Regulations in 2004 was couched in terms of the latter ‘business case’ (Gollan and Wilkinson, 2007: 1148) narrative.…”

“…However, such a design is likely to lack the sensitivity to capture subtle changes in process, attitudinal improvements (Johnstone et al, 2009) and advances (or otherwise) in the antecedents of effective consultation, e.g. trust (Kougiannou et al, 2015). Such dynamics typically occur through minor and incremental adjustments.…”

Forming Effective Employee Information and Consultation: A Five‐Stage Trust and Justice Process

“…Information and consultation (I&C) bodies are one of the most common forms of representative participation in non-union firms (Gollan and Xu 2007;Van Wanrooy et al, 2013). A key debate concerns trust relations between principal actors within I&C bodies (Dietz and Fortin, 2007;Kougiannou, Redman and Dietz, 2015). Several attempts have been made to assess the effectiveness of I&C processes (Adam, Purcell and Hall, 2014;Cullinane et al, 2014;Holland et al, 2009), however, research on the critical issues of trust and justice between the parties is limited despite their Acknowledgments: The work presented in this paper owes a debt to Tom Redman and Graham Dietz, for their guidance and support during the early stages of preparation.…”

“…Most of all, we miss their friendship. centrality to the process (Kougiannou, Redman and Dietz, 2015). Broad (1994) found that a mismatch in participant expectations led to a fragile voice arrangement and Kessler and Purcell (1996) expressed concern about the limited attention paid to the factors that make joint consultative processes effective.…”

“…Other studies have examined a range of potential factors concerning the operational efficacy of I&C mechanisms, such as the expertise of employee representatives (Holland et al, 2009); processes to share decision-making power (Dundon et al, 2014); informal social dialogue (Marchington and Suter, 2013); perceptions of mutuality between I&C respondents (Cullinane et al, 2014); and mandatory regulations to widen the opportunity for employees' voice (Hall et al, 2015). While acknowledging that efficacy may be Forming Effective Information and Consultation for Employees 201 interpreted differently by different actors, these studies say very little about the role, or impact, of trust and justice relationships within the voice process itself and how such perceptions affect the efficacy of I&C for the actors involved (Kougiannou et al, 2015). Principally, research shows that I&C is more effective when the parties are active in the arrangement (Koukiadaki, 2010).…”