Ángel Cabrera

An exploration of the factors that influence employee participation in Europe

The goal of this study was to identify the determinants of direct employee participation in organizations across Europe. Some factors were predicted to be related to levels of participation in general, namely, competition, sector, the pursuit of a differentiation strategy based on either quality or service, and indirect participation. Two additional factors were expected to be differentially related to two forms of direct participation: consultation and delegation. These factors were organizational size and the pursuit of a cost leadership business strategy. The hypothesized relationships were contrasted using data from the EPOC survey, a representative survey of over 5,700 organizations located in 10 European Union countries. The results supported 11 of the 14 predicted relationships.