Work organisation and employee involvement in Europe : a report based on the fifth European working conditions survey.
Date: 2013-06-27
Institutions: Eurofound
Subjects: decision-making, organisation of work, worker consultation, worker participation, working conditions

Work 
organisation 
and employee
involvement 
in Europe

A report based on the fifth  
European Working Conditions Survey

5

European
Working
Conditions
Survey

Work organisation 
and  employee 

involvement  
in Europe

A report based on the fifth  
European Working Conditions Survey

5th

European
Working
Conditions
Survey

When citing this report, please use the following wording:

Eurofound (2013), Work organisation and employee involvement in Europe, Publications Office of the 
European Union, Luxembourg.

Authors: Duncan Gallie, Nuffield College, Oxford, and Ying Zhou, University of Surrey 

Research managers: Greet Vermeylen, Agnès Parent-Thirion, Jorge Cabrita, Gijs van Houten and Manuel Ortigão

Project team for the fifth EWCS: Agnès Parent-Thirion, Greet Vermeylen, Gijs van Houten and Isabella Biletta 

Eurofound project: Fifth European Working Conditions Survey

The authors are grateful to Brendan Burchell, Arne Kalleberg and Monique Ramioul for their perceptive comments 
and helpful suggestions on earlier drafts.

Cataloguing data can be found at the end of this publication.

Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union, 2013

ISBN 978-92-897-1115-9 
doi:10.2806/18346

© European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions, 2013
For rights of translation or reproduction, applications should be made to the Director, European Foundation for the 
Improvement of Living and Working Conditions, Wyattville Road, Loughlinstown, Dublin 18, Ireland.

Europe Direct is a service to help you find answers  
to your questions about the European Union.

Freephone number (*):
00 800 6 7 8 9 10 11

(*) Certain mobile telephone operators do not allow access to 00 800 numbers or these calls may be billed.

The European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (Eurofound) is an autonomous body 
of the European Union, created to assist in the formulation of future policy on social and work-related matters. Further 
information can be found on the Foundation website at www.eurofound.europa.eu

European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions
Wyattville Road
Loughlinstown
Dublin 18
Ireland
Telephone:  (+353 1)  204 31 00
Fax:  (+353 1)  282 42 09 / 282 64 56
Email:  information@eurofound.europa.eu
www.eurofound.europa.eu

Printed in Luxembourg

Country codes

Country groups

EU27

The order of countries follows the EU protocol based on the 
alphabetical order of the geographical names of countries in the 
original language.

BE

BG

CZ

DK

DE

EE

IE

EL

ES

FR

IT

CY

LV

LT

LU

HU

MT

NL

AT

PL

PT

RO

SI

SK

FI

SE

UK

Belgium

Bulgaria

Czech Republic

Denmark

Germany

Estonia

Ireland

Greece

Spain

France

Italy

Cyprus

Latvia

Lithuania

Luxembourg

Hungary

Malta

Netherlands

Austria

Poland

Portugal

Romania

Slovenia

Slovakia

Finland

Sweden

United Kingdom

Continental: Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg 
and the Netherlands

Eastern Europe:

•	 East-Central:	the	Czech	Republic,	Hungary,	Poland, 	

Slovakia and Slovenia

•	 East-North:	Estonia,	Latvia	and	Lithuania

•	 East-South:	Bulgaria	and	Romania

Nordic: Denmark, Finland and Sweden

North-West: Ireland and the UK 

Southern: Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain 

The  Mediterranean  islands  of  Cyprus  and  Malta  were  not 
assigned to a group.

Other country groups

EU15  15 EU Member States prior to May 2004 (Austria, Belgium, 
Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, 
Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, 
Sweden and the United Kingdom)

NMS   12 new Member States that joined the EU in May 2004 
(Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, 
Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia) and in 
January 2007 (Bulgaria and Romania)

EU27   27 EU Member States, comprising the EU15 and the 12 

new Member States

3

 
Contents

Executive summary 

Introduction 

1 — Patterns of employee involvement 

Assessing employee involvement 

Task discretion 

Organisational participation 

Types of employee involvement 

Summary 

2 — Determinants of employee involvement 

Task characteristics 

Types of flexibility 

Human resource capacity 

Workplace consultative and representative institutions 

Ownership characteristics 

Economic structure, employment regulation and country differences 

3 — Consequences of employee involvement 

Learning opportunities 

Employee motivation 

Working and employment conditions 

Employee well-being 

4 — Changes in employee involvement 2005–2010 

Patterns of change and stability 

Polarisation by occupational class and employment contract status 

Economic crisis and task discretion 

7

9

18

18

18

21

23

24

28

28

32

35

36

37

39

46

46

48

50

51

58

58

60

65

5

5 — Conclusions 

Pattern of employee involvement 

Determinants of employee involvement 

Consequences of employee involvement 

Trends in employee involvement 2005–2010 

Policy implications 

Bibliography 

Annex: The European Working Conditions Survey series 

68

68

69

69

70

71

72

74

ExECuTIvE SummAry

Executive 
summary

Introduction

Given the importance of a highly skilled workforce for 
economic growth, the need to develop systems of work 
organisation to foster employee motivation and well-being 
is likely to become increasingly important to the policy 
agenda. It has been argued that organisations with high 
levels of employee involvement will be particularly suc-
cessful in this respect. At present, relatively little is known 
about the prevalence of employee involvement across the 
EU and the factors that encourage it. The extent to which 
employee involvement leads to mutual benefits for the 
employee and employer is also controversial. The report 
Work organisation and employee involvement in Europe 
draws on data from Eurofound’s fifth European Working 
Conditions Survey (EWCS) of 2010 to investigate these 
issues and to strengthen the evidence available. 

Policy context

The European Union is committed to increasing com-
petitiveness and to improving working conditions for all 
its citizens. The issue of whether forms of work organi-
sation exist that are beneficial to both productivity and 
quality of work is crucial for the viability of this agenda. 
Analysis of the evidence from the EWCS strengthens the 
empirical basis for discussion between policy actors on 
the feasibility of and conditions for improving systems of 
work organisation.

Key findings

Patterns of employee involvement

In the EU27 overall, most of the workforce is in organisa-
tions that provide very limited opportunities for employees 
to participate in decision-making, either in their imme-
diate job or in relation to wider organisational issues 

affecting their work. While 38% of employees were in 
low involvement organisations in 2010, just 27% were in 
high involvement organisations, with 35% in organisations 
that offer intermediate levels of involvement.

There were marked differences between countries in the 
control that employees can exercise over their work tasks, 
their involvement in wider organisational decision-making 
and the likelihood that they work in a high involvement 
organisation. The Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland and 
Sweden) had the highest levels of involvement, while the 
Southern countries (Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain) 
and the East-South countries (Bulgaria and Romania) had 
particularly low levels of involvement. The high levels of 
involvement in Nordic workplaces are evident even when a 
wide range of factors relating to individual characteristics 
and economic structures are controlled for. This suggests 
that it is influenced by a distinctive policy environment. 

There were also important differences among the new 
Member States that joined the EU in 2004 and 2007. The 
East-North group of countries (Estonia, Latvia and Lithu-
ania) had relatively high levels of involvement, being closer 
to the Nordic pattern than either the East-Central (Czech 
Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia) or 
East-South groups.

Gender differences in involvement were relatively small, 
although women tended to have greater control over their 
immediate job tasks, while men had more say over wider 
organisational decisions. 

Determinants of employee involvement

There was a strong association between types of work and 
employee involvement. Involvement was relatively low in 
work involving routine machine production, but consider-
ably higher in work dealing with people and particularly 
in work involving extensive use of computer technology. 

7

Changes over time

There was a small increase in task discretion scores 
between 2005 and 2010 for both men and women. How-
ever, the pattern varied considerably by country, with 
primarily southern and eastern European countries expe-
riencing a significant rise in employees’ control over their 
job tasks.

Policy pointers

 Ô The analysis shows that employee involvement can 
support employers’ objectives to raise levels of 
work performance and can also enhance the qual-
ity of employees’ lives at work.

 Ô Employee involvement is a critical element of work 
quality, both in itself and for other key dimensions 
of work quality such as physical working conditions 
and work intensity.

 Ô Higher levels of employee involvement are more 
likely to be found in companies with relatively 
advanced technology and a more skilled workforce.

 Ô Policies that encourage employers to invest in well-
developed human resource capacities are likely to 
be favourable for employee involvement. 

 Ô Policy support could be given to assist small and 

medium-sized companies in the implementation of 
advanced human resource management. 

 Ô Small and medium-sized companies could benefit 

from policy initiatives and funding to support bet-
ter networking between companies and sharing of 
knowledge, skills and facilities. 

 Ô European Commission initiatives to encourage 

the spread of information and consultation proce-
dures could lead to more widespread and effective 
employee involvement.

There was also a clear relationship between opportunities 
for involvement and occupational class, with those in more 
skilled jobs having a greater say over their work. However, 
there were also considerable differences between coun-
try groups in the extent to which involvement practices 
varied by occupational class, with occupational class 
differences being particularly low in the Continental and 
Nordic groups.

Organisations  with  a  strong  human  resource  capac-
ity  appeared  to  be  particularly  conducive  to  greater 
employee involvement. This is consistent with the view 
that involvement works most effectively when embedded 
in a wider organisational culture concerned with employee 
development.

The provision of institutionalised channels for dialogue 
between employers and employees was also an important 
support for effective employee influence. Where consulta-
tive procedures existed, employees were more likely to be 
in a high involvement than in a low involvement organisa-
tion. The association between the national strength of 
trade union membership and high involvement organisation 
also pointed to the potential importance of macro-level 
mechanisms of cooperation between social partners.

Consequences of employee involvement

There was also a strong association between the level of 
employee involvement and the opportunities for informal 
and formal learning at work. Nearly 60% of employees in 
high involvement organisations had received training in the 
previous 12 months compared to just over 42% of those 
in low involvement organisations. Greater involvement 
was also associated with stronger employee motivation 
in terms of commitment to the work task and to the wider 
organisation. 

There were clear benefits in terms of working and employ-
ment conditions from being employed in an organisation 
that provided greater scope for involvement in decision-
making. There was a significant reduction in general physi-
cal risks in the work environment, such as exposure to 
high levels of noise, extreme temperatures and potentially 
dangerous physical burdens. Such organisations also 
provided greater flexibility with respect to working time. 
More generally, employees in high involvement organisa-
tions were less likely to think that their health and safety 
was at risk because of their work. 

Greater opportunities for involvement in decision-making 
were associated with higher levels of psychological well-
being – for both men and women. It was also consistently 
related to fewer physical symptoms of stress. Furthermore, 
employees in high involvement organisations were less 
likely to be absent due to health problems. 

8

WORK ORGANISATION AND  EMPLOYEE INVOLVEMENT IN EUROPEIntroduction

This report assesses developments in patterns of work 
organisation in the EU27: the prevalence of different types 
of work organisation, their determinants, and the implica-
tions for employee learning, motivation and well-being. 
It takes employee involvement as the core dimension of 
work organisation.1 As well as being central to the most 
influential theories of work organisation, this has been 
viewed as critical to both organisational productivity and 
employee psychological well-being.

Employee  involvement  could  potentially  be  of  major 
policy significance in a society increasingly dependent 
on knowledge-intensive production. Higher skills, it is 
argued, require more extensive use of discretionary effort 
on the part of employees, while the nature of the work is 
inherently more difficult to monitor. Involving employees 
more closely in decision-making may help to ensure the 
high levels of commitment that will motivate people to:

 Ô make full use of their abilities;

 Ô develop their skills;

 Ô take the initiative in conditions where detailed man-
agerial control of work performance is unfeasible.

At the same time, employee involvement is seen as fun-
damental to the quality of work and is widely thought 
to be a major factor affecting employees’ welfare, their 
opportunities for self-development, satisfaction at work 
and psychological well-being.

The empirical trends in the forms of employee involvement, 
their variations by occupational class and gender, and their 
implications have, however, been controversial. While there 
is evidence in many countries of the growth of formal insti-
tutional arrangements to enhance direct dialogue between 
employers and employees, their effectiveness as chan-
nels for employee voice has been contested. Knowledge 
about the factors that encourage or discourage initiatives 
to involve employees more closely in decision-making is 

limited. A relatively unexplored issue is whether the pro-
cesses that stimulate employee involvement are relatively 
general across advanced capitalist societies or whether 
they are mediated by specific economic and organisa-
tional environments. There is little understanding of how 
developments in employee involvement are affected by the 
business cycle or by national institutions of employment 
regulation. Not least, there is a marked lack of information 
about the possible implications for employee involvement 
of the economic crisis.

Moreover,  strong  evidence  about  the  implications  of 
employee involvement is still limited. There are relatively 
few studies about its relationship to opportunities for 
skill development. There has even been debate about its 
implications for employee well-being. While some have 
claimed that employee involvement is an effective way 
of meeting the need of employees for work that provides 
opportunities for self-development and self-realisation, 
others have argued that it is a mechanism for intensifying 
work and undermines employee well-being. It is unclear 
whether the benefits or costs of employee involvement 
are similar across diverse categories of the workforce, for 
instance between men and women and between those in 
higher and lower occupational classes.

This report seeks to provide a clearer empirical assessment 
of the conflicting claims. It focuses on four central issues:

 Ô the pattern of employee involvement in 2010 in the 
EU as a whole and in its constituent countries and 
regions;

 Ô the structural determinants of the level of employee 

involvement;

 Ô the consequences for employee learning, motiva-

tion and well-being;

 Ô the extent and direction of change in employee 

involvement since the mid-2000s.

1 

This contrasts with analyses of work organisation based on the fourth European Working Conditions Survey which started from more 
holistic typologies of work organisation derived from hierarchical cluster analysis (Eurofound, 2009).

9

A simplified version of the underlying conceptual frame-
work is presented in Figure 1.

Patterns of employee 
involvement

Employee  involvement  refers  to  the  opportunities  for 
employees to take part in decisions that affect their work. 
It is concerned with the capacity of employees to influence 
decisions as individuals rather than through representatives. 
It is often used synonymously with the term ‘direct partici-
pation’. Opportunities can be provided which may or may 
not be taken up; employee involvement therefore includes 
not only effective influence but latent capacities for action. 
It is the common concept that underlies diverse notions of 
‘new forms of work organisation’ – whether ‘high involve-
ment’, ‘high performance’ or ‘learning organisations’ – and 
it provides a core theoretical dynamic of their arguments.

In principle, it is possible to distinguish three levels of 
employee involvement:

 Ô higher level decisions such as investment, work-

force structure and product development;

 Ô involvement in decisions about work organisation;

 Ô involvement in decisions about the immediate job 

task.

Although there is little consensus in the literature about 
nomenclature, this report refers to these three levels as 
‘strategic participation’, ‘organisational participation’ and 
‘task discretion’, respectively.

In practice, the fifth European Working Conditions Survey 
has a well-established set of indicators of task discre-
tion, an enhanced set of questions on organisational 
participation and no questions for measuring strategic 
participation. The forthcoming wave of the European 
Company Survey (ECS) should provide a richer source 
of evidence with respect to strategic participation. This 
report therefore focuses on the second and third levels 
of involvement.

Previous  empirical  research  has  primarily  examined 
involvement at the level of the job task or task discretion 
(Hackman and Oldham, 1980; de Terssac, 1992; Gal-
lie et al, 2004; Gallie, 2007). This research revealed the 
limitations of workplace reform focused solely on the 
distribution of decision-making powers between front-
line supervision and employees. This in turn has increas-
ingly led to a view that task-level involvement practices 
are only likely to be effective and durable when they are 
embedded more widely in organisational practices (Frobel 
and Marchington, 2005). Some research has pointed to 
significant country variations in employee participation 
in wider organisational decisions (IDE, 1981; Tannen-
baum and Rozgonyi, 1986; Heller et al, 1998). However, 
the relationship between different levels of involvement 
is empirically underexplored. Therefore, an assessment 

Figure 1:  Determinants and consequences of employee involvement

Task
characteristics

Types of
flexibility

Human resources
capacity

Representative
voice

Ownership
characteristics

Employment
regulation

10

Employee
involvement

Strategic
participation

Organisational
participation

Task discretion

Learning

Employee
motivation

Working and
employment
conditions

Employee
well-being

WORK ORGANISATION AND  EMPLOYEE INVOLVEMENT IN EUROPEInTroDuCTIon

of patterns of employee involvement also requires an 
examination of employee influence over wider decisions 
about work organisation (organisational participation) and 
the way these relate to immediate job control.

Employee involvement systems are conceptualised in terms 
of combinations of the two dimensions – task discretion 
and organisational participation. Schematically this gives 
a matrix of four types of organisational context (Table 1).

Determinants of employee 
involvement

It is possible to distinguish at least six potential influences 
on the prevalence of employee involvement systems. 
These are:

 Ô the characteristics of the work task;

 Ô the nature of employer flexibility policies;

 Ô organisational human resources capacity;

 Ô the availability of consultative and representative 

institutions;

 Ô the type of ownership;

 Ô the nature of employment regulation.

However, the arguments about specific mechanisms are 
quite diverse. Moreover, they differ as to whether specific 
factors are viewed as direct determinants or mediators 
of the efficacy of employee involvement.

Arguments about the characteristics of work tasks have 
focused on two different types of factors:

 Ô the type of work in the sense of the nature of the 

work process;

 Ô the skill level of the job.

Theories regarding the importance of types of work point 
in rather different directions. The most substantial body 
of research has looked at the effects of technology on job 

Table 1:  Types of employee involvement

tasks. Theories of automation (Blauner, 1964; Woodward, 
1970; Piore and Sabel, 1984) postulated that technical 
development was reversing earlier trends towards the 
simplification of work and the reduction of employee 
influence over the work process. Discussions about the 
growth of services pointed in a similar direction, with the 
view that work that is primarily concerned with people 
would require greater involvement of employees in every-
day decisions about their work (Bell, 1974). However, there 
is also an extensive literature on the enhanced powers 
of monitoring and control that advanced technologies 
provide to employers.

Skill has also been seen consistently as a major fac-
tor affecting employee influence over decisions (Zhou, 
2009). Occupational class theory postulates a very dif-
ferent employment relationship between higher skilled 
and lower skilled employees. For the former, employers 
are concerned to mobilise discretionary effort and ensure 
retention, while the priority for the latter is to maxim-
ise flexibility to hire and fire. The logic of this argument 
implies that employee involvement opportunities will be 
primarily directed at those in more skilled occupational 
positions.

The potential importance of flexibility policies derives from 
literature about the way employers may have been adapt-
ing to greater product market uncertainty. Some theories 
of innovation suggest that product market uncertainty 
provides the conditions for higher involvement through 
‘organic’ as distinct from ‘mechanistic’ organisational 
structures (Burns and Stalker, 1961). The re-emergence 
of interest in employee involvement in the managerial 
literature was premised on the increasing importance of 
product and service quality in an increasingly competitive 
environment (Walton, 1985; Wyer and Mason, 1999; Wall 
et al, 2002). However, other theories of the implications of 
increased competitive pressure and uncertainty underlined 
the necessity of enhanced numerical flexibility, which 
was unlikely to be conducive to employee involvement 
(Atkinson, 1985; Capelli et al, 1997).

Segmentation and flexibility theories have argued that 
differences in employment relationships are centred on 
differences in contractual status. Employees in perma-
nent and full-time work benefit from generally privileged 
employment  relationships  that  would  be  conducive 
to employee voice, whereas temporary and part-time 

High task discretion

Low task discretion

High involvement organisation

Discretionary organisation

Consultative organisation

Low involvement organisation

High organisational participation

Low organisational participation

11

employees constitute a peripheral workforce with generally 
disadvantageous employment conditions. This has been 
linked to gender disadvantages in employment, leading to 
the expectation that women will have fewer involvement 
opportunities than men given their greater concentration 
in part-time and temporary work. Such arguments clearly 
have relevance for the issue of the implications of the 
economic cycle or major economic crises for decisions 
about work organisation and workforce structure.

It seems plausible that effective employee involvement 
systems require relatively sophisticated human resources 
capacity. This is particularly the case in larger scale organ-
isations that face more complex problems in the coordina-
tion of work activities. The existence of such capacity is 
not easy to establish from an employee survey, but it is 
likely to be reflected in more employee-centred systems 
of supervision, greater use of teamwork, stronger systems 
of performance assessment, opportunities for career 
advancement and reward systems that reflect collective 
performance.

Ownership characteristics have also been seen as poten-
tially important for the pattern of employment relations. 
In general, employees in the public sector have been 
thought to benefit from more progressive employment 
policies than those in the private sector, if only because 
it was more difficult for the state to avoid implement-
ing regulations designed to improve employee welfare 
in organisations that it controlled directly. At the other 
extreme, employees in small and medium-sized enter-
prises (SMEs) are often assumed to be relatively vulner-
able to directive forms of management, since ownership 
is commonly with private families who wish to retain their 
managerial prerogatives.

Finally, and least elaborated, it has been suggested that 
there are major differences in the character of the employ-
ment relationship not only within, but between countries 
as a result of different national systems of employment 
regulation. Particularly influential has been the argument 
of ‘varieties of capitalism’ or ‘production regime theory’: 
that differences in the coordination practices of employers 
and in systems of skill formation are associated with dif-
ferences in the importance attached to employee involve-
ment (Soskice, 1999; Hall et al, 2001). There are, however, 
alternative accounts of national difference that empha-
sise power relations in the wider society or cultural path 
dependency (for instance with respect to trust, authority 
and gender cultures).

Consequences of employee 
involvement

To examine outcomes, the report focuses on four issues 
that are crucial to the debate about the positive-sum or 
zero-sum nature of organisational structure:

 Ô learning opportunities at work;

 Ô employee motivation;

 Ô work and employment conditions;

 Ô employee well-being.

Learning opportunities at work

The scope for learning new things at work is a critical aspect 
of work organisation in an increasingly knowledge-intensive 
work process with rapid technical change. There are plau-
sible grounds for the view that higher levels of involvement 
enhance learning opportunities. Where employees are given 
more responsibility, employers have an interest in ensuring 
that they are adequately trained to take sensible decisions. 
Furthermore, involvement in decisions on the job provides 
opportunities for on-the-job learning through the everyday 
work process (Felstead et al, 2010; Gallie et al, 2012). If the 
economic crisis has entailed reduced employee involve-
ment, it may then have reduced learning opportunities at 
work, with important additional costs for future productivity.

Employee motivation

In this report, employee motivation refers to a disposition 
to achieve sustained high quality work performance. As 
such, employee motivation has both task and organisa-
tional dimensions. In its task dimension, it designates the 
willingness to put in discretionary effort, which is likely to 
be closely related to the perceived interest and usefulness 
of work tasks. In its organisational dimension, it designates 
commitment to the employing organisation, which may 
be reflected in feelings of belongingness, shared values 
and adequate rewards.

Higher involvement is presumed to enhance motivation in 
two different ways. First, it is considered to be intrinsically 
valued, so that employees are more likely to emotionally 
invest in jobs that provide rewards of self-determination. 
Second, by providing opportunities for voice, it makes it 
more likely that other aspects of working conditions and 
work rewards match employee expectations.

The first ‘intrinsic’ source of motivation is likely to depend 
on the value employees attach to self-determination. Some 
suggest that this may vary both by skill level and gender 

12

WORK ORGANISATION AND  EMPLOYEE INVOLVEMENT IN EUROPEInTroDuCTIon

(for example, with lower work centrality among female 
employees). But robust evidence on such differences in 
work values is still lacking.

Work and employment conditions

Extensive research over several decades has pointed to the 
general deterioration of working conditions that accompa-
nied the extreme simplification and division of tasks char-
acteristic of Tayloristic systems of production (Friedmann, 
1946; Chinoy, 1955; Braverman, 1974; Durand, 1978; Durand 
and Hatzfeld, 2003). There are grounds for expecting that 
higher involvement work systems are associated with higher 
standards of health and safety at work. The greater the 
employees’ control over decisions, the more likely it is that 
work intensification will be kept in check. Indeed this was 
one of the original motivators of the emphasis on removing 
their control in ‘scientific management’.

Employee well-being

A key issue is the capacity of work to enhance employee 
well-being. An important aspect of this is the implica-
tions for psychological well-being (that is, its capacity to 
enhance positive affective psychological states). But these 
also may find physiological expression such as anxiety 
in muscular tension and rapid heart rate, depression in 
sleep disturbance, fatigue and loss of appetite. It has been 
shown that enduring negative well-being is reflected in 
higher sickness absence and can be a significant cause 
of physical ill-health.

Perhaps the most influential (although still controversial) 
theories on the links between employee involvement and 
affective well-being are:

 Ô ‘demand–control’ theory, which postulates the 

importance of employee control in mediating the 
psychological impact of work pressure;

 Ô the theory of ‘organisational justice’, which empha-
sises the importance of procedural adequacy and 
predictability in adapting to perceived threats to 
personal well-being.

However, some have argued that involvement practices 
undercut employee well-being through their implications 
for the intensification of work (Barker, 1993).

An  issue  that  crosscuts  all  these  themes  is  whether 
employee involvement has similar consequences for men 
and women. High levels of female labour market participa-
tion are relatively recent in many countries and there has 
been considerable debate about whether women’s orien-
tations to work, in particular with respect to the intrinsic 
aspects of work, are similar or different to those of men. One 

influential line of argument has suggested that employment 
is less central to women’s life values and identity (Hakim, 
1991, 1996). If this is the case, it could be that employee 
involvement matters less to women and that its conse-
quences for both motivation and well-being are correspond-
ingly less great. However, good research evidence on work 
orientations, especially of a comparative type, is scarce.

EWCS data

The European Working Conditions Surveys (EWCS) have 
been conducted by Eurofound every five years since the 
1990s.

The first EWCS was carried out in 12 Member States and 
focused on risks, work organisation and working time. 
With the enlargement of the European Union over the 
past two decades, the EWCS has expanded into new 
geographical areas and the topics extended to include 
new areas of interest. The fifth EWCS, conducted between 
January and June 2010 on 44,000 workers in 34 countries 
(EU27 and Norway, Albania, Croatia, Kosovo, Montenegro, 
Turkey and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia), 
covered a wide range of issues that included leadership 
styles, work organisation, worker participation, working 
time, precarious employment, pay, work-related health 
risks, cognitive and psychosocial factors, work–life bal-
ance and access to training. Of particular interest to this 
report is the enriched set of questions for assessing the 
prevalence and depth of employee involvement. Further 
details of the survey methodology are available from the 
technical report (Eurofound, 2010) and in Annex 1 of the 
overview report (Eurofound, 2012).

With its coverage of all the countries of the EU27, the 
fifth EWCS offers the possibility of contrasting develop-
ments in the different regions of the EU with their diverse 
institutional arrangements and cultural heritages. For 
at least a subset of the questions, it allows comparison 
with the results of earlier surveys, making it possible to 
compare patterns during a period of lengthy economic 
stability with those following the most severe economic 
crisis since the interwar period.

Although the fifth EWCS provides an invaluable basis for 
a systematic assessment of changes in employee involve-
ment practices in Europe, the limitation of cross-sectional 
data means that causal links cannot be identified through 
comparison of survey results in different years. The use of 
terms such as ‘effects’ should be understood as shorthand 
for reporting associations between various factors rather 
than implying any demonstrated causal relationships.

It  should  also  be  borne  in  mind  that  the  survey  pro-
vides a view of work organisation through the eyes of 

13

employees. While it is likely that they are particularly well 
placed to have a view about the influence they can exer-
cise over their work environment, such evidence should be 
regarded as more tentative than conclusions based upon 
a combination of both employer and employee accounts. 
The strength of associations may be overestimated as 
a result of a ‘halo’ effect in which, for instance, a predis-
position by an individual to a positive or negative evalua-
tion may affect their reports of different aspects of their 
work experience.

A view of organisational characteristics from the point 
of view of employees is also likely to be derived from 
the particular sectors of the organisation in which they 
work. In practice, organisations may be segmented, with 
different categories of employee experiencing different 
relationships with their managers. In this report, when 
specific forms of ‘organisation’ are referred to, the more 
immediate organisational context experienced by this 
type of employee is meant.

Research methodology

The analysis uses a range of statistical methods. In the 
main, charts present results based on cross-tabular analy-
sis methods, scoring and scaling methods, multivariate 
statistical methods and multilevel analysis. Cross-tabular 
analysis is suited to the identification of patterns and 
trends within survey data. Scoring and scaling methods 
are used to summarise and group the questionnaire 
responses, as past research has shown that, in measur-
ing a substantive concept, a score or scale based on 
several correlated items provides more reliable informa-
tion than any of the component items. Before bringing 
a group of items to form a composite measure, the internal 
consistency of these items is tested by means of reliability 
analysis. The statistical method used to assess inter-item 
reliability is Cronbach’s alpha (Cronbach, 1951); a coef-
ficient alpha above 0.6 is considered to indicate a reliable 
scale. However, the conclusions drawn also reflect more 
complex analyses controlling for potentially confounding 
factors. Significant results from such analyses for all 
employees are shown by an asterisk (*) in the relevant 
figures in the report and significant results for separate 
analyses for men and women by a plus sign (+).

The multivariate statistical methods used depend on the 
nature of the response variable. Three main types of mul-
tivariate techniques were used:

 Ô multiple linear regression analysis;

 Ô ordered logit models;

 Ô logistic regression analysis.

In interpreting the meaning of regression coefficients, 
it is necessary to bear in mind that the effects of differ-
ent independent variables can often not be compared 
directly because the variables are not commensurate. For 
instance, a unit increase in a given form of organisational 
flexibility may have very different implications for employee 
involvement compared with a unit increase in employee 
occupational class. In order to compare the magnitude of 
the effect of different factors, a separate set of analyses 
was carried out in which dichotomised values of independ-
ent variables were used to predict employee involvement. 
This exercise has the benefit of producing regression coef-
ficients that allow comparison of the effect of variables 
measured on different response scales, but it also has 
the limitation that subjective judgement had to be used 
when determining a cutoff point for variables measured 
on odd number response scales. When interpreting the 
multiple regression results, this study has relied on the 
results from full regressions (using the original independent 
variables) to examine whether a factor has a statistically 
significant effect on employee involvement. The results 
from regressions using dichotomised predictor variables 
are used only to compare the effect of independent vari-
ables where statistically significant relationships exist.

In addition, multilevel analysis is used to explore the extent 
to which country variance in employee involvement can 
be accounted for by for the compositional differences in 
the workforce as compared with macro level institutional 
arrangements. Multilevel analysis is an ideal method for 
analysing data that have a hierarchical structure where 
individuals are nested within higher level units. It takes 
into account the fact that individuals within groups tend 
to be more similar to each other than those randomly 
sampled from the general population. Multilevel analysis 
is a useful tool for identifying contextual characteristics 
that help shape organisational design features such as 
the level of employer bargaining coordination and the 
strength of organised labour.

Throughout the report, cross-national weight (w5_EU27) 
was applied to analysis carried out at the aggregate EU 
level and post-stratification weight (w4) was applied to 
analysis conducted at country level. No weight was used 
in the analysis at country group level, which controls for 
individual countries to ensure that the effects discovered 
are applicable to all countries within the region.

Country and regional 
variations

As well as the overall pattern for the EU, the report exam-
ines variations both at the level of individual countries and 
in different regions of the EU. The latter is relevant for 

14

WORK ORGANISATION AND  EMPLOYEE INVOLVEMENT IN EUROPEInTroDuCTIon

assessing progress with respect to regional convergence, 
a key objective of EU social cohesion policy (European 
Commission, 2010).

In addition, a number of ‘regime’ arguments in the lit-
erature suggest that certain geographical regions share 
common institutional characteristics that lead to distinctive 
forms of work organisation, although there is considerable 
divergence in views about the institutional features that 
are most important in this respect (contrast Soskice, 1999; 
Gallie, 2007). Moreover, regime arguments have focused 
on the EU15 and there is no clear indication in the litera-
ture of how they are to be extended to the new Member 
States (NMS) of central and eastern Europe. The report 
does not seek to address such arguments systematically, 
but highlights specific points of interest.

For the western European countries, the analyses distin-
guish between:

 Ô countries in north-west Europe (Ireland and the 

UK);

 Ô Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland and Sweden);

 Ô continental countries (Austria, Belgium. France, 
Germany, Luxembourg and the Netherlands);

 Ô southern countries (Greece, Italy, Portugal and 

Spain).

descriptive results for regions. However, statistical analy-
ses of ‘regional effects’ are based on unweighted data 
with controls for constituent countries. Results of analyses 
with controls and regional analyses are presented in the 
discussion and in some cases in summary charts. The 
detailed analyses are set out in the technical appendix 
to the report (available on request).

Structure of report

The  empirical  results  are  reported  in  the  next  four 
chapters.

Chapter 1 describes patterns of employee involvement 
in the EU27, and compares the individual countries and 
the country groups.

Chapter 2 assesses the consistency of the evidence with 
arguments about potential factors that may influence the 
level of employee involvement.

Chapter 3 examines the relationship between employee 
involvement  on  the  one  hand  and  factors  related  to 
employee work performance and employee well-being 
on the other.

Chapter 4 looks at evidence about change over time in 
one dimension of employee involvement (task discretion) 
and considers factors that may have affected this.

With respect to the 10 NMS of central and eastern Europe, 
the report adopts a categorisation into:

Finally, Chapter 5 draws overall conclusions from the 
analyses.

 Ô an East-North group (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania);

 Ô an East-Central group (the Czech Republic, Hun-

gary, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia);

 Ô an East-South group (Bulgaria and Romania).

This makes it possible to examine the possibility that east-
ern European countries may have been influenced by the 
characteristics of neighbouring western European models.

The Mediterranean islands (Cyprus and Malta) do not fit 
easily into any conventional geographical classification 
of countries. Rather than artificially associate them with 
a specific group, they have been kept separate. They are 
present in the EU27 and the full country analyses, and 
their relative position with respect to the country groups 
is commented upon in the text.

In the analyses, countries are represented in the coun-
try groups proportional to their relative size in the EU27 
in the presentation of overall results for the EU and of 

15

CHAPTER 1

Patterns of  
employee involvement

5thEuropean Working Conditions SurveyPatterns of 
employee 
involvement

This chapter provides an initial picture of the prevalence 
of employee involvement across the EU27 Member States. 
The first section considers the EWCS questions used to 
assess employee involvement and the justification for 
the distinct scales of task discretion and organisational 
participation. The second section describes the patterns 
of employee involvement across the EU27, examining 
this with respect to task discretion, and then exploring 
employee involvement in wider decisions about work 
organisation. The final section examines the frequency 
of four different types of employee involvement systems 
which combine the dimensions of task discretion and 
organisational participation.

Assessing employee 
involvement

of work?’ For organisational participation, there are two 
potentially relevant questions. People were asked how often 
the following statements applied to their work situation: ‘You 
are involved in improving the work organisation or work 
processes of your department or organisation’, and ‘You 
can influence decisions that are important for your work’.

A principal components factor analysis confirmed that 
the task and organisational level items formed two dis-
tinct dimensions. Moreover, tests for scale reliability 
also showed that the items within each dimension were 
very closely related.2 Given this strong support for both 
the difference between the dimensions and the internal 
consistency of their constituent items, summary indices 
were created for each by averaging the scores across the 
individual items. For ease of presentation, indices were 
rescaled to run from 0 to 10, with higher scores indicating 
higher levels of involvement.

This report distinguishes between two dimensions of 
employee involvement:

Task discretion

 Ô task discretion or the influence that employees 
could exercise over their immediate work tasks;

 Ô organisational participation or the influence that 
employees can have over work organisation.

The EWCS provides three measures of task discretion, 
focusing on different aspects of the work task. Respond-
ents were asked: ‘Are you able to choose or change – your 
order of tasks, your methods of work or your speed or rate 

The level of control that employees could exercise over 
their immediate work tasks for the EU27 as a whole in 
2010 was found to vary depending on the aspect of the 
work task (Figure 2). Taking the workforce as a whole, it 
was lowest with respect to the ability to make choices 
over the order of tasks and greatest with respect to work 
pace. There were differences in the levels of task discre-
tion between men and women. Women were slightly more 
likely than men to exercise control over their immediate 
tasks on all three dimensions.

2 

The items for task discretion had a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.77 and those for organisational participation an alpha of 0.73.

18

WORK ORGANISATION AND  EMPLOYEE INVOLVEMENT IN EUROPEPATTErnS of EmPloyEE InvolvEmEnT

Figure 2:  Task discretion in the EU27

8

7

6

5

4

3

2

1

0

Task order 

Work methods 

Work pace 

Task discretion index 

Note: The task discretion index has been rescaled from 0 to 10.

Men 

Women 

All employees 

Figure 3:  Task discretion index by country

10

9

8

7

6

5

4

3

2

1

0

UK 

IE  DK 

FI  SE  DE  FR  AT  BE  NL  LU  EL 

IT  PT  ES  CZ  HU  SK  SI  PL  EE  LT 

LV  BG  RO  MT  CY  EU27 

Notes: The task discretion index has been rescaled from 0 to 10.

Countries are ordered by country group (see p. 4).

19

Figure 4:  Task discretion index by country group

7.8

6.5

6.3

6.3

6.2

7.2

5.4

9

8

7

6

5

4

3

2

1

0

North-West 

Nordic 

Continental 

Southern 

East-Central  

East-North 

East-South 

Note: The task discretion index has been rescaled from 0 to 10.

Country variations in task discretion

Turning next to the patterns by individual country, Fig-
ure 3 shows the average scores for the different countries 
ordered by country group. Task discretion was especially 
high in Denmark, Finland, Malta, the Netherlands and 
Sweden, and in two East-North countries (Estonia and 
Latvia). It is particularly low in Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece, 
Romania and Slovakia. The score variation is substantial, 
with a task discretion score of 5 in Bulgaria rising to 8.4 in 
Denmark and 8.9 in Malta. There is a particularly marked 
variation among the eastern European countries, with 
some countries being among those with the highest task 
discretion and some being among those with the lowest.

The country groups were examined to assess the extent 
of the similarity or difference between the different geo-
graphical areas of the European Union. Taking the overall 
patterns for the regional groups, the Nordic countries had 
the highest level of task discretion followed by employees 
in the East-North group (Figure 4). This may reflect the 
possibility that this group among the eastern European 
countries has been particularly influenced by the Nordic 
model. The North-West countries came next followed by 
the Continental, Southern and East-Central groups. Finally, 
the East-South countries, which joined the EU relatively 
recently in 2007, showed the lowest levels of employee 
task level involvement.

The two North-West countries (Ireland and the UK) had 
a relatively similar pattern (Figures 3 and 4). This was also 
the case for the three groups of eastern European coun-
tries. There was, however, substantial variation within other 
country groups. The very high level of task discretion in the 
Nordic countries was primarily due to Denmark and Finland, 
whereas Sweden was lower. In the Continental group, Bel-
gium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg had considerably 
higher task discretion than Austria, France and Germany. 
Finally, in the Southern group, while Portugal and Spain 
were rather similar in pattern, Italy had somewhat higher 
task discretion and Greece markedly lower task discretion.

The differences in the level of task discretion between the 
different country groups were very similar for both sexes 
(Figure 5). The pattern found for the EU27 as a whole, 
whereby women had higher influence over their immedi-
ate job tasks than men held for six of the seven country 
groups (North-West, Continental, Southern and the three 
eastern European country groups). Notably this was not 
the case for the Nordic countries where men had higher 
task discretion scores. The Mediterranean islands had 
contrasting patterns: women had higher discretion in 
Malta and men had higher discretion in Cyprus.

A more detailed analysis showed that the differences 
in country group pattern were statistically significant. 
Task discretion was significantly lower in all other country 

20

WORK ORGANISATION AND  EMPLOYEE INVOLVEMENT IN EUROPEPATTErnS of EmPloyEE InvolvEmEnT

Figure 5:  Task discretion in the country groups by gender

9

8

7

6

5

4

3

2

1

0

North-West 

Nordic 

Continental 

Southern 

East-Central  

East-North 

East-South 

EU27 

Notes: The task discretion index has been rescaled from 0 to 10.

Men

Women

groups than in the Nordic countries, with the difference 
particularly pronounced among the East-South country 
group. Separate models by gender showed that these 
patterns of difference were very similar and statistically 
significant for both men and women. However, the nega-
tive coefficients were stronger for men in all the country 
groups, indicating that differences among country groups 
were somewhat less pronounced for women.

Organisational participation

The pattern for organisational participation in the EU27 as 
a whole was very similar for men and women but, in contrast 
to the pattern for task discretion, men had slightly greater 
influence over organisational decisions than women.

Within this overall EU27 picture, there were again consid-
erable variations by country (Figure 7). In the EU15 coun-
tries, organisational participation was particularly high in 
Denmark, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Sweden and 
the UK. It was relatively low in Austria, France, Germany, 
Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain. Among the NMS it was 
highest in the Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Malta and 
Slovenia, and lowest in Bulgaria and Romania.

These country differences led to quite marked differences 
by region (Figure 8). The Nordic countries stood out as 

having the highest level of organisational participation for 
employees, followed by the North-West group (Ireland and 
the UK). Of the EU15 countries, the Continental countries 
had relatively low levels of organisational participation and 
the Southern countries lowest of all. Among the eastern 
European countries, it was again the East-North countries 
that had the highest level of involvement of employees in 
organisational matters followed by those in the East-Cen-
tral region. The countries of the Southern and East-South 
groups had the lowest levels of organisational participation.

A comparison of levels of organisational participation 
by gender shows that these broad regional differences 
were evident for both men and women. The pattern in the 
East-South countries is distinctive in that organisational 
participation was a little higher for women than for men, 
whereas in all the other country groups the reverse was the 
case. With respect to the Mediterranean islands, Cyprus 
followed the predominant pattern of higher organisational 
participation for men, while the scores for men and women 
were virtually identical in Malta.

To check whether the differences between country groups 
were statistically significant, a regression analysis was 
carried out taking the Nordic countries as the reference 
group. All the other country groups had significantly lower 
organisational participation scores than the Nordic coun-
tries. This was the case for both men and women, although 

21

Figure 6:  Organisational participation for all employees and by gender in the EU27

6

5

4

3

2

1

0

Improve work organisation 

Inﬂuence important decisions 

Organisational participation index 

Note: The organisational participation index has been rescaled from 0 to 10.

All 

Men 

Women 

Figure 7:  Organisational participation index by country

7

6

5

4

3

2

1

0

UK 

IE  DK 

FI  SE  DE  FR  AT  BE  NL  LU  EL 

IT  PL  ES  CZ  HU  SK  SI  PL  EE  LT 

LV  BG  RO  MT  CY  EU27 

Notes: The organisational participation index has been rescaled from 0 to 10.

Countries are ordered by country group (see p. 4).

22

WORK ORGANISATION AND  EMPLOYEE INVOLVEMENT IN EUROPEPATTErnS of EmPloyEE InvolvEmEnT

Figure 8:  Organisational participation by country group and gender

7

6

5

4

3

2

1

0

North-West 

Nordic 

Continental 

Southern 

East-Central  

East-North 

East-South 

Note: The organisational participation index has been rescaled from 0 to 10.

All 

Men

Women

for each country group, the regression coefficients were 
smaller for men than for women indicating that country 
group differences were most pronounced for women. This 
contrasted with the case of task discretion, where the differ-
ences among female employees were smaller than for male.

Types of employee 
involvement

Since both task discretion and organisational participation 
represent distinct dimensions of employee involvement, 
an overall measure needs to take account of how they 
interrelate. This report distinguishes between four broad 
organisational types:

 Ô high involvement organisation (high task discre-

tion and high organisational participation);

 Ô discretionary organisation (high task discretion 

but low organisational participation);

 Ô consultative organisation (high organisational 

participation but low task discretion);

 Ô low involvement organisation (low on both 

dimensions).

Measures of the four types of employee involvement sys-
tem were constructed by dividing employees into two 
groups on each dimension, with those above the EU27 
median taken as having relatively high involvement and 
those below the median as having relatively low involve-
ment. The two task discretion groups were then cross-
classified with the two organisational participation groups 
to produce the four employment involvement categories.

Employee involvement in the EU27

Taking first the pattern across the EU27 as a whole (Fig-
ure 9), it can be seen that employees were most frequently 
in organisations at the two extremes of involvement – 
those that offered relatively high involvement with respect 
to both task discretion and organisational participation 
and those with low involvement on both dimensions.

Among all EU employees, 27% were in high involvement 
organisations and 38% were in low involvement organisa-
tions. There were much smaller proportions of employ-
ees in the two intermediary categories, that is, 14.5% in 
consultative organisations and 20.2% in discretionary 
organisations. The broad pattern was very similar for 
both men and women. Men were somewhat more likely, 
however, than women to be in organisations at both of 
the involvement extremes. In contrast women were more 
likely than men to be in discretionary organisations that 

23

Figure 9:  Employees in the EU27 in organisations with different types of employee involvement (%)

45

40

35

30

25

20

15

10

5

0

Low involvement organisation 

Discretionary organisation 

Consultative organisation 

High involvement organisation 

All employees 

Men

Women

provided relatively high immediate job control but little 
influence over wider work organisation decisions.

There were marked differences in the prevalence of the dif-
ferent involvement types by sector (Figure 10). Employees 
were most likely to be working in low involvement contexts 
in the transport, retail, construction and manufacturing 
sectors. Financial services, education and ‘other services’ 
were the only sectors where high involvement organisa-
tion was the most common work setting. Discretionary 
organisation was more frequent in the other services and 
financial services sectors while consultative involvement 
was more commonly to be found in the health services.

Employee involvement by country groups

The relative importance of these organisational types var-
ied considerably by country group (Figure 11). Employees 
were most likely to be in high involvement organisations 
in the Nordic countries (41%). This group was followed at 
some distance by the North-West group (34%) and the 
East North group (32%), which were in turn well above 
the other regional groups. The differences between coun-
tries in the proportions of employees in the intermediate 
involvement categories (consultative and discretionary) 
were considerably lower than at the extremes.

The Nordic countries were the only country group where 
high involvement organisations constituted the dominant 
organisational form. In the North-West and East North 

countries, high and low involvement organisations were 
relatively evenly balanced. In the other country groups the 
most prevalent form was low involvement organisation, 
with the highest proportion (47%) in the East-South coun-
tries. The two Mediterranean islands formed sharply con-
trasting cases, with Malta having a predominance of high 
involvement organisation and Cyprus of low involvement.

A test of the significance of the difference between the 
Nordic countries and other country groups showed that it 
was at a high level of statistical significance. This was also 
true for both male and female employees taken separately. 
However, the negative coefficients were in general higher 
for male than for female employees, indicating particularly 
strong country differences among men. The exception was 
the North-West group (Ireland and the UK) where there 
was little evidence of difference between men and women.

Summary

The most striking feature of the results is the consistently 
distinctive position of the Nordic countries (Denmark, 
Finland and Sweden). This group had higher levels of 
employee involvement than any other country group with 
respect to task discretion and organisational participa-
tion, and therefore with respect to the prevalence of high 
involvement forms of organisation. At the other end of 
the spectrum, the Southern (Greece, Italy, Portugal and 
Spain) and East-South (Bulgaria and Romania) groups 

24

WORK ORGANISATION AND  EMPLOYEE INVOLVEMENT IN EUROPEPATTErnS of EmPloyEE InvolvEmEnT

Figure 10:  Employee involvement by industrial sector (%)

60

50

40

30

20

10

0

Agriculture Manufacturing Construction

Retail

Transport

Financial
services

Public
administration

Education

Health

Other services

Low involvement organisation 

Discretionary organisation 

Consultative organisation 

High involvement organisation 

Figure 11:  Employees in different organisational types by country group (%)

100

90

80

70

60

50

40

30

20

10

0

North-West 

Nordic 

Continental 

Southern 

East-Central  

East-North 

East-South 

Low involvement organisation

Consultative organisation

Discretionary organisation

High involvement organisation

25

had the lowest levels of employee involvement, although 
the pattern in the two cases was somewhat different. The 
East-South countries had the lowest levels of task discre-
tion and the second lowest level of organisational partici-
pation. The Southern countries had the lowest levels of 
organisational participation and the second lowest levels 
of task discretion. The situation of other country groups 
was intermediate. Among western European countries, the 
North-West group (Ireland and the UK) came second to the 
Nordic countries with respect to both task discretion and 
organisational participation followed by the Continental 
countries. Among the other eastern European country 
groups, the East-North countries (Estonia, Latvia and 
Lithuania) had relatively high levels of employee involve-
ment and, among the eastern European countries, came 
closest to the Nordic model. In contrast, the pattern for 
the East-Central countries (the Czech Republic, Hungary, 
Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia) was closer to that of the 
Continental group (Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, 
Luxembourg and the Netherlands).

26

WORK ORGANISATION AND  EMPLOYEE INVOLVEMENT IN EUROPECHAPTER 2

Determinants of 
employee involvement

5thEuropean Working Conditions SurveyDeterminants 
of employee 
involvement

This chapter examines the structural factors thought to 
be related to different levels of employee involvement. 
It first considers the implications of task characteristics 
and types of organisational flexibility, turning then to an 
examination of the significance of organisational human 
resources capacity and the presence of workplace consul-
tative and representative institutions, and continues with 
an analysis of differences relating to ownership charac-
teristics. The final section assesses how far differences 
in employee involvement between countries and country 
groups can be accounted for by differences in underlying 
economic and occupational structures and how far they 
are likely to be attributable to differences in institutional 
regimes of employment regulation.

Task characteristics

Two principal aspects of the task characteristics of the job 
can be distinguished. The first is the nature of the work 
process. Different types of work can be distinguished 
in terms of the technology they involve or their inherent 
requirements for social interaction. The second is the skill 
level of the task, that is to say its substantive complexity 
(Spenner, 1990).

Types of work

Traditionally the theory of employee involvement at 
work  and research into it have focused on the poten-
tial effects of changes in technology on reducing or 
enhancing employees’ influence over decisions. Much 
of the initial discussion centred on the implications of 
the growth of mass production technologies that had 
led to a simplification and de-skilling of work tasks. 

These were seen as necessarily reducing the scope 
for employees to take decisions about their work and 
led to a highly pessimistic scenario of the long-term 
evolution of work. However, this conclusion became 
increasingly questioned with the growth of computer-
ised and automated technologies. Not only did these 
technologies favour a revival of smaller and more flexible 
forms of production, but they were thought to transform 
work even in a mass production context in a way that 
allowed employees to broaden the scope of their work 
tasks and to take increasing responsibility for decision-
making. The increasingly skilled nature of work, it was 
suggested, would also encourage employers to seek to 
integrate their employees by developing wider forms of 
organisational participation. Such arguments were rooted 
primarily in research on developments in manufactur-
ing industry. But the growing importance of the service 
industries also contributed to a more optimistic vision of 
the way in which work was changing. The fact that work 
increasingly involved direct dealings with other people 
was seen as a factor that would encourage higher levels 
of employee involvement in decisions, given the greater 
variability and unpredictability of people’s responses to 
work routines.

A number of measures in the fifth EWCS can be used to 
characterise the technical nature of the work process. 
Traditional mass production technologies have been regu-
larly shown to be associated with highly repetitive work 
and the machine pacing of work. Four questions from 
the EWCS were used to construct a measure of ‘routine 
machine work’. There are three indicators of repetitiveness: 
‘Does your main paid job involve – repetitive hand or arm 
movements?’, followed by questions asking whether it 
involved short repetitive tasks of less than one minute or 

28

WORK ORGANISATION AND  EMPLOYEE INVOLVEMENT IN EUROPEDETErmInAnTS of EmPloyEE InvolvEmEnT

less than 10 minutes. There is one item in the survey that 
captures machine pacing: ‘On the whole, is your pace of 
work dependent, or not, on automatic speed of a machine 
or movement of a product?’ A summary measure has 
been constructed by adding responses across the four 
questions. Computer-based work is measured by the 
average of the responses to two questions. The first asks 
‘Does your main paid job involve – working with comput-
ers: PCs, network, mainframe?’ and the second asks 
‘Does your main paid job involve – using internet/email 
for professional purposes?’

In many jobs (particularly in the service sector), however, 
the work process is characterised not by a specific tech-
nology but by a required interaction with other people. 
The research constructed a measure of work that is pre-
dominantly people-orientated, based on three questions 
from the EWCS: ‘Does your main paid job involve – dealing 
directly with people who are not employees at your work-
place such as customers, passengers, pupils, patients?’, 
‘Does your work involve visiting customers, patients, cli-
ents or working at their premises or in their home?’ and 
‘On the whole, is your pace of work dependent, or not, 
on direct demands from people such as customers, pas-
sengers, pupils, patients, etc.?’3

These task activities were selected because of their theo-
retical importance and represent only a limited number 
of possible types of task activity. They can also be inter-
related. In practice, repetitive machine technology is nega-
tively associated with both computer technology and with 
people work, but there is a positive association between 
computer technology and people work.

How are these different types of work related to employee 
involvement? The analysis focuses on the two most preva-
lent types – the high involvement organisation and the 
low involvement organisation. Being in a low involve-
ment organisation was particularly common where work 
involved highly routine machine production, where there 
was little use of computers and where the work involved 
few dealings with people (Figure 12). The prevalence of 
the high involvement organisation rose with both greater 
use of computers and with work that was more strongly 
orientated to people. But it was only for those in work 
situations where there was extensive use of computerised 
technology that high involvement organisations clearly 
became the dominant organisational form. Among those 
whose work involved little or no use of computers, only 
14% were in high involvement organisations compared 
with 40% where computer use was high (Figure 12).

Figure 12:  Employees in high and low involvement organisations by type of work (%)

60

50

40

30

20

10

0

Low 

Medium 

High 

Low 

Medium 

High 

Low 

Medium 

High 

Routine machine work*+ 

Computer work*+ 

People work* 

Low involvement organisation 

High involvement organisation 

Notes:  * The effects of the factor remained statistically significant at the p ≤ 0.001 level after controls were introduced for gender, age, 

tenure, occupational class and size of establishment. 
+ The same pattern held for both men and women.

3  Although ‘routine machine work’, ‘computer work’ and ‘people work’ constitute distinct factors, the Cronbach’s alphas are low by 

conventional standards. Adjusted Cronbach’s alpha: routine machine work 0.47; computer work 0.90; people work 0.51.

29

Statistical tests showed that this pattern could not be 
accounted for by differences in the individual charac-
teristics of employees, their occupational class, type of 
employment contract or the size of their establishments. 
Separate analyses for men and women indicated that 
the positive effect of computer work for being in a high 
involvement organisation was stronger for men than for 
women (although still significant for women). However, 
with controls, people work only had a significant positive 
effect for men.

Even when other factors had been controlled for, the 
negative effects of routine machine work for employee 
involvement and the positive effects of computer-based 
technologies and people work were also found in a major-
ity of the different country groups.

The skill level of jobs

retention. Employers will seek to ensure the commitment 
and long-term attachment of their highly skilled workers 
by offering them better employment conditions, includ-
ing higher levels of autonomy and more secure work. In 
contrast, since those in lower occupational class posi-
tions can be more easily replaced and their performance 
more easily controlled by supervision, there will be less 
concern to take measures to secure their commitment.

The EWCS does not include detailed skill measures, 
for instance, in terms of learning time requirements. 
However, broad differences in skill level between jobs 
are captured by their location in the major occupational 
class classifications, in this case the International Stand-
ard Classification of Occupations (1-digit ISCO-08). In 
addition there is a simple indicator of task complexity 
in the fifth EWCS in which people were asked whether 
or not their job involved ‘complex tasks’.

Skill level could be expected to affect employee involve-
ment for a number of reasons. Those in higher occu-
pational class positions are more likely to have accu-
mulated knowledge that is specifically relevant to the 
particular organisation (asset specificity), plus their 
work is inherently more difficult to monitor and control. 
Moreover, since highly skilled workers are rarer in the 
labour market, employers will be concerned about their 

Turning to the implications for employee involvement 
(Figure 13), it can be seen that there are two strong 
linear trends by occupational class. The higher the occu-
pational class position, the more likely employees are 
to be working in high involvement organisations, while 
the lower occupational class position, the more likely 
they are to be in low involvement organisations. It is 
notable that the only occupational class in which high 

Figure 13:  Employees in high and low involvement organisations by occupational class and complex work (%)

60

50

40

30

20

10

0

Managers/
professionals

Technicians

Clerical workers Service workers Skilled manual

Occupational class*+

workers

Non-skilled
workers

Yes

No

Complex work*+

Low involvement organisation

High involvement organisation

Notes:  * The effects of the factor remained statistically significant at the p ≤ 0.001 level after controls were introduced for gender, age, 

tenure, occupational class and size of establishment. 
+ The same pattern held for both men and women.

30

WORK ORGANISATION AND  EMPLOYEE INVOLVEMENT IN EUROPEDETErmInAnTS of EmPloyEE InvolvEmEnT

involvement work organisation clearly dominates is that 
of managers and professionals, 50% of whom are in high 
involvement and only 17% in low involvement organisa-
tions. In contrast, the non-skilled are predominantly in 
low involvement systems (57%). This is precisely the 
pattern predicted by occupational class theory. Simi-
larly with respect to task complexity, those with jobs of 
low complexity are overwhelmingly in low involvement 
organisations, while those with complex jobs are more 
likely to be in high than low involvement organisations. 

The  pattern  of  occupational  class  differentials  was 
broadly similar for men and women (Figure 14). However, 
overall occupational class differentials were stronger for 
men than for women. In most occupational class groups, 
men were more likely to be in high involvement organisa-
tions than women. The gap between men and women 
was particularly high among managers and profession-
als and technicians. It was only among the non-skilled 
that the pattern was inverted, with women a little more 
likely to be in high involvement organisations than men.4

The simple indicator of the complexity of work also showed 
a clear relationship with both types of employee influ-
ence. Occupational class and task complexity were highly 
related; whereas 75% of managers and professionals con-
sidered they performed complex work, this was the case 
for only 36% of service workers and 33% of the non-skilled. 
This was consistent with the view that the occupational 
class categories partly represent differences in skill. How-
ever, the positive effects of the complexity of work for 
employee influence remained at a high level of statistical 
significance even when included together with occupa-
tional class. In part, this is likely to be due to the fact that 
occupational classes are relatively broad categories and 
that there is considerable skill heterogeneity within them.

Occupational class differences in types of employee 
involvement were pervasive across all the country groups. 
However, the extent of the occupational class differen-
tial varied considerably. Table 2 shows the probability 
of employees in any given occupational class being in 
a high involvement organisation compared with that of 

Figure 14:  Gender differences in effects of occupational class on employee involvement (%)

60

50

40

30

20

10

0

Managers/
professionals

Technicians 

Clerical workers 

Service workers 

Skilled manual
workers

Non-skilled workers 

Occupational class*+ 

Men 

Women 

Notes:  * The effects of the factor remained statistically significant at the p ≤ 0.001 level after controls were introduced for gender, age, 

tenure, occupational class and size of establishment. 
+ The same pattern held for both men and women.

4 

This result may be an artefact as the ISCO classification tends to provide greater differentiation among male than female jobs.

31

a non-skilled worker in the same country group once 
individual characteristics and other aspects of the work 
setting had been taken into account.

Occupational class differences were notably less great 
in the Continental and the Nordic country groups than 
in the other country groups. In the Continental and the 
Nordic groups, managers and professionals were almost 
4 times more likely than non-skilled workers to be in high 
involvement organisations. But in the Southern group they 
were 7 times, in the East-Central group 8 times and in the 
East-North group 12 times more likely than the non-skilled 
to be in such organisations.

Types of flexibility

There are sharply contrasting views in the literature about 
how organisations best respond to economic uncertainty. 
These views differ in their emphasis on the relative impor-
tance of functional and numerical flexibility in strategies to 
contend with a rapidly changing environment. In the first 
case, the most effective response of employers is thought 
to be to increase the innovative capacity and adaptability 
of the organisation to the demand for new products by 
decentralising decision-making and adopting an ‘organic’ 
form of management. In the second case, priority is given 
to the capacity to alter rapidly the input (and hence the 
cost) of labour through increasing management’s scope 
for altering working hours and staff levels.

The different strategies are likely to have important impli-
cations for differences in employee involvement. Where 
employers seek functional flexibility through decentralisa-
tion, they are more likely to involve employees in decision-
making concerning their tasks and, given its importance, 
commitment to wider organisational decisions. A more 
coercive numerical flexibility strategy assumes that employ-
ees will have relatively short tenure in the organisation and 
is likely to lead to low involvement and an emphasis on 
retaining management prerogative over decisions.

Table 2:  Occupational class differentials

The fifth EWCS included a number of potential indica-
tors of the two forms of flexibility. Organisations that 
seek functional flexibility are likely to experience more 
frequent changes to work processes and work organi-
sation. They are also more likely to require employees 
to change tasks at short notice to deal with changes 
in demand. There were two principal questions in the 
survey that give an indication of task flexibility: the first 
related to the frequency of taking on unforeseen tasks, 
asking: ‘How often do you have to interrupt a task you 
are doing in order to take on an unforeseen task?’ The 
second captured whether there was rotation across jobs 
requiring different skills (sometimes termed polyvalence). 
Employees were first asked whether their job required 
‘rotating tasks between yourself and colleagues’ and, if 
they did, this was followed with a question about whether 
or not the task required different skills. These have been 
combined to create a ‘skill rotation’ indicator.

Organisations that rely primarily on numerical flexibility 
underline the dependence of employment on the state 
of the market and are likely to employ workers on non-
standard employment contracts that allow faster adap-
tation with respect to the hours and numbers employed 
to meet market fluctuation, since they are less strongly 
protected by employment regulations. To capture numeri-
cal flexibility, the nature of the employment contract was 
examined, that is, whether people were employed on 
part-time or temporary employment contracts.

How  did  these  diverse  forms  of  flexibility  relate  to 
employee involvement? The responses to questions 
reflecting functional flexibility were strongly associated 
with a higher prevalence of high involvement systems, 
while those reflecting numerical flexibility were associated 
with a greater frequency of low involvement organisa-
tion. The differences in the likelihood of being in a high 
involvement organisation as a result of different flex-
ibility practices were substantial. For instance, 41% of 
those who changed tasks very often were in this type 
of organisation compared with only 19% of those who 

North-West

Nordic

Continental

Southern

Managers/ 
professionals

Technicians

Clerical workers

Service workers

Skilled manual workers

Non-skilled workers

5.36*

2.57*

1.51

1.38

1.58

1.00

4.26*

2.41*

2.14*

2.13*

1.08

1.00

3.81*

2.38*

2.07*

1.58*

1.14

1.00

7.03*

3.50*

2.43*

1.85*

0.96

1.00

East-
Central

7.72*

3.87*

2.18*

1.71*

1.46*

1.00*

East-North

East-South

12.26*

6.75*

7.07*

3.32*

1.90

1.00

5.53*

3.06*

3.04*

1.57

1.34

1.00

Notes:  The relative odds compared with the non-skilled of being in a high involvement organisation by country group (with controls). 

* Indicates a significant difference from the reference category of at least p ≤ 0.05.

32

WORK ORGANISATION AND  EMPLOYEE INVOLVEMENT IN EUROPEDETErmInAnTS of EmPloyEE InvolvEmEnT

never changed task. Similarly, those who were in jobs 
where there was skill rotation were more likely to be in 
high involvement organisations than those who did not 
rotate through jobs with different skills (32% compared 
with 24%).

The simple associations for task flexibility are shown 
in Figure 15; these remained after introducing controls 
for individual factors, occupational class and size of 
establishment. In general the pattern was the same for 
men and women.

Numerical flexibility: contract status

In recent decades, the growth of a ‘flexible’ or ‘peripheral’ 
workforce on non-standard employment contracts has 
increased. Such employees are seen as suffering from 
multiple disadvantages in terms of opportunities for skill 
acquisition, pay and security. It is possible that their more 
marginal position in organisations (whether because of 
the shorter duration of contracts or shorter working hours) 
also implies lower integration with respect to decision-
making influence.

In this report employees are classified as temporary work-
ers if they reported that they were either on a fixed-term 
contract or a temporary employment agency contract.5 
Part-time work is defined as working 34 hours or fewer.

Temporary  employees  were  more  likely  than  regular 
employees to be in low involvement organisations and 
less likely to be in high involvement organisations (Fig-
ure 16). Whereas 28% of permanent workers were in high 
involvement organisations, this was the case for only 19% 
of temporary workers.

Temporary workers are disproportionately concentrated 
in lower occupational class positions. Hence their lower 
involvement in work decisions might well reflect their occu-
pational class position, which has already been seen 
to have a strong influence on decision-making scope. 
Statistical analyses that included occupational class and 
task complexity, together with the broader range of indi-
vidual and contextual variables used in previous sections, 
showed that having a temporary employment contract 
continued to have a significant effect independently of 
occupational class and other controls.

Figure 15:  Employee involvement by types of flexibility (%)

60

50

40

30

20

10

0

Never 

Occasionally 

Quite often 

Very often 

 Task ﬂexibility*+ 

No 

Yes 

Skills rotation*+ 

Low involvement organisation 

High involvement organisation 

Notes:  * The effects of the factor remained statistically significant at the p ≤ 0.001 level after controls were introduced for gender, age, 

tenure, occupational class and size of establishment. 
+ The same pattern held for both men and women.

5 

The response also included a category of ‘no contract’, but this appears to be very heterogeneous. It was included in this analysis as 
a control.

33

Figure 16:  Employees in high and low involvement organisations by employment contract type (%)

60

50

40

30

20

10

0

Permanent 

Temporary 

Contract duration*+ 

Full-time 

Part-time 

Working time status* 

Low involvement organisation 

High involvement organisation 

Notes:  * The effects of the factor remained statistically significant at the p ≤ 0.001 level after controls were introduced for gender, age, 

tenure, occupational class and size of establishment. 
+ The same pattern held for both men and women.

Part-timers were also less likely to be in high involvement 
organisations when other factors (including occupational 
class and task complexity) were controlled for, but they 
were not more likely than full-timers to be in low involve-
ment organisations. This reflected the fact that part-timers 
were more likely than full-timers to be in discretionary 
organisations that gave significant scope for influence over 
job tasks, but little say in wider organisational decisions.

However, the effects of employment contract status were 
less consistent in the separate analyses within country 
groups (Table 3). Temporary workers were only less likely 
to be in high involvement organisations in the Continental, 

Southern and East-Central countries. This suggests that 
labour market dualism, in which the workforce is divided into 
a core of relatively privileged and a periphery of relatively 
disadvantaged workers, may have been particularly strong in 
the Continental, Southern and East-Central country groups.

Similarly, separate analyses for the different country groups 
showed part-timers as significantly less likely to be in high 
involvement organisations only in the North-West, Nordic, 
Southern and Continental country groups (at a marginal 
level of significance). However, further analysis (not shown) 
revealed that, even in these countries, part-timers were 
not more likely to be in low involvement organisations.

Table 3:  Employment contract differentials

Fixed term 
(relative to 
permanent)

Part-time 
(relative to 
full-time)

North-West

Nordic

Continental

Southern

East-Central

East-North

East-South

0.94

0.80

0.57*

0.71*

0.70*

0.87

0.89

0.79*

0.79*

0.90(*)

0.66*

1.07

0.89

1.38

Notes:  The relative odds compared with employees on standard employment contracts of being in a high involvement organisation by 

country group (with controls). 
* Indicates a significant difference from the reference category of at least p ≤ 0.05. 
(*) Indicates a significant difference from the reference category of at least p ≤ 0.10.

34

WORK ORGANISATION AND  EMPLOYEE INVOLVEMENT IN EUROPEDETErmInAnTS of EmPloyEE InvolvEmEnT

Overall, while there is a clear association between func-
tional flexibility and high involvement organisation, the 
negative implications of numerical flexibility would appear 
to be primarily related to temporary work. This is particu-
larly the case among temporary workers in the Continental, 
Southern and East-Central countries where labour market 
segmentation is particularly severe.

Human resource capacity

An important development in theories of management 
from the 1990s was the emergence of a new model of 
management, variously termed ‘high performance’, ‘high 
commitment’ or ‘high involvement’ management. The dis-
tinctiveness of this model compared with earlier theories 
of participation was that effective and durable forms of 
employee involvement were held to depend on their being 
embedded in a broader set of human resources policies. 
These provided stronger incentive structures of both an 
individual and collective type. One aspect of this was 
a reconstruction of the role of line supervisors to have more 
active concern for the skill development and welfare of their 
employees. This was to be reinforced by the introduction 
of formal appraisal systems, which were in turn linked to 
opportunities for career advancement. A second aspect 
was the redesign of work tasks to replace individual work 
posts with flexible team working. A third was the adaptation 
of the payment system to provide rewards for collective 
performance, either in the form of bonuses or shares.

The fifth EWCS included a range of questions indicating the 
extent to which supervisory style was employee-oriented. 
People were asked whether their immediate manager/super-
visor ‘provides you with feedback on your work’, ‘respects 
you as a person’ and ‘is good at resolving conflicts’. These 
had a scale alpha of 0.55 and a scale based on the aver-
age response was constructed.6 The existence of formal 
appraisal was tapped by the question ‘Over the past 12 
months, have you been subject to formal assessment of your 
work performance?’ and career opportunities by a question 
asking people how much they agreed or disagreed that ‘my 
job offers good prospects for career advancement’.

There are also a number of questions establishing whether 
people worked in teams and, if so, the degree of autonomy 
of the teams. The survey began by asking ‘do you work 
in a group or team that has common tasks and can plan 
its work?’ and then probed whether teams could decide 
on the division of tasks, the choice of team head and the 

timetable of work. This report distinguishes between teams 
with no influence, influence over one issue and influence 
over two or more issues. Teams with influence over two or 
more decisions are termed ‘semi-autonomous teams’. With 
respect to a rewards system, the fifth EWCS had two ques-
tions asking whether people’s earnings included ‘payments 
based on the overall performance of the company where you 
work’ and ‘income from shares in the company you work for’.

There  was  a  strong  association  between  the  differ-
ent human resources practices and the overall type of 
employee involvement (Figure 17). For instance, where 
there was only weak supervisory employee orientation, 
only 15% of employees were in high involvement organisa-
tions while 54% were in low involvement organisations.7 
In  contrast,  where  supervisory  employee  orientation 
was strong, the proportions in high and low involvement 
organisations were very similar. A similar pattern emerged 
for teamwork. Where there was no teamwork, the low 
involvement organisation was the dominant type (44% 
compared with 22% in high involvement organisations). In 
contrast, where there was semi-autonomous teamwork, 
high involvement organisations were considerably more 
common than low involvement ones (41% compared with 
22%).

More detailed statistical analysis confirmed that the posi-
tive effects of these employee-orientated human resources 
policies remained even when controls were introduced 
for individual characteristics such as age and tenure and 
other aspects of the work situation such as occupational 
class, employment contract status, industry, ownership 
sector and size of establishment. Moreover, even with 
such controls, they were at a high level of statistical sig-
nificance for both men and women.

The strength of the links between these practices and 
employee involvement was further confirmed by separate 
analyses for the separate country groups. Employee-ori-
entated supervisory style, the availability of career oppor-
tunities and semi-autonomous teamwork had consistently 
positive effects for high involvement organisations across 
all the country groups. The pattern of relationship between 
human resources capacity and employee involvement in 
Malta was similar to that of other country groups. Human 
resources capacity in Cyprus was not significantly associ-
ated with the presence of high involvement organisations.

The association between collective performance bonus 
payment systems and employee involvement was less clear. 

6  A further question on whether the supervisor was good ‘at planning and organising the work’ was found in a factor analysis to be unrelated 
to this dimension and was therefore excluded from the index. Appraisal and careers, and the two reward items were only weakly related 
statistically and were therefore kept separate.

7 

If the supervisor index equals 1, the organisation is considered as having strong supervisory employee orientation. A value of 0.67 indicates 
medium supervisory employee orientation and 0.33 or below indicates weak supervisory employee orientation.

35

Figure 17:  Human resource practices and employee involvement (%)

60

50

40

30

20

10

0

Low

Medium

High

Low

Medium

High

None 

Supervisory employee orientation*+

Career chances*+

Inﬂuence
Inﬂuence
0
1
Teamwork*

Inﬂuence
2+

No 

Yes 

Collective bonus*+

Low involvement organisation 

High involvement organisation 

Notes:  * The effects of the factor remained statistically significant at the p ≤ 0.001 level after controls were introduced for gender, age, 

tenure, occupational class and size of establishment. 
Influence 0 = no influence; influence 1 = some influence; influence 2 = strong influence. 
+ The same pattern held for both men and women.

It was positively linked to high performance organisations 
only in the Continental and East-Central countries, and at 
a marginal level of significance in the Southern countries.

Workplace consultative and 
representative institutions

Early theories of employee integration into the company 
stressed the importance of the institutionalisation of chan-
nels of dialogue. The initial emphasis was on the growth 
of joint regulation between management and representa-
tives of employees. Subsequently, there has been an 
increased interest in the formalisation of more direct con-
tacts between management and employees through the 
institution of meetings in which employees could express 
their views directly on workplace problems. The sources 
of such developments could be diverse. They could be 
management initiated and, indeed, could be a constituent 
part of the more systematic human resources strategy 
that was examined in the previous section. They could 

also come about through the pressure of either organised 
labour (as in Sweden) or government (as in France with 
introduction of the lois Auroux). This raises the issue of 
whether the existence of more formal channels of com-
munication was important for employees’ sense of their 
influence over decision-making or whether informal pro-
cesses of influence were as, or possibly more, effective.

The fifth EWCS had relatively few questions relating to the 
institutional aspects of the relations between employers 
and employees, but there are two that allow for some 
examination of the issue. The first, which can be taken as 
a measure of the existence of some type of representative 
channel of communication, asks ‘At your workplace is 
there an employee acting as an employee representative?’ 
The second, termed ‘consultation procedure’, asks ‘At your 
workplace, does management hold meetings in which you 
can express your views about what is happening in the 
organisation?’ The two are associated, with a significant 
correlation of 0.32, possibly indicating that representative 
influence is a factor that helps to underpin more direct 
forms of consultation.8

8 

There was also the following question: ‘Over the past 12 months, have you raised work-related problems with an employee representative?’ 
However, this was excluded as it gave no statistical improvement and is conceptually vaguer, combining an individual issue and with 
institutional structure.

36

WORK ORGANISATION AND  EMPLOYEE INVOLVEMENT IN EUROPEDETErmInAnTS of EmPloyEE InvolvEmEnT

Taken separately, both consultative and representative chan-
nels increased the chances that people would be working 
in a high involvement organisation (Figure 18). However, 
the effect of having a consultation procedure was notably 
stronger. Where it existed, employees were much more 
likely to be in a high involvement than in a low involvement 
organisation (36% compared with 27%). Moreover, when 
account was taken of differences in individual and other 
work factors, the effect of having a consultation procedure 
for employees in the EU27 as a whole remained at a high 
level of statistical significance, and this was the case for both 
men and women. In contrast, employees in organisations 
where there were representatives were still predominantly in 
low involvement organisations and even, though to a lesser 
extent, than where there was no representative. When con-
trols were introduced for other potential influences, repre-
sentation had only a significant positive effect for women.

Finally, moving to the separate analyses for the different 
country groups, representation did not have a statistically 
significant effect on employee involvement (either with 
respect to being in a high or a low involvement organisation) 
in any of the groups other than the East-South countries 
(where it was of marginal significance). In contrast, con-
sultation procedure proved to be consistently important. It 
had a highly significant positive effect with respect to high 
involvement organisation, even with other factors controlled 

for, in all of the country groups, whereas it was negatively 
associated in all country groups with low involvement organi-
sation. The pattern was the same for Cyprus and Malta.

The results, therefore, support the view that the provision 
of institutional arenas for dialogue is an important support 
for effective employee influence. This was particularly the 
case with respect to consultative procedures, whereas the 
evidence for a positive effect of representation was much 
weaker. This may, however, be due to a degree of institu-
tional specialisation, with representation more strongly 
focused on influencing the terms of employment (pay and 
working hours) and consultation procedures on working con-
ditions. The fact that there is a moderately strong correlation 
between the two may reflect the fact that representation is 
a significant support for more direct forms of consultation.

Ownership characteristics

It has been suggested that management policies may differ 
substantially depending on the nature of ownership of the 
workplace. The public sector and SMEs in the private sec-
tor are often seen as having sharply contrasting employ-
ment relationships. In the 1960s and 1970s the public sec-
tor was often considered as having the mission of providing 
a model of good employment practices, offering good 

Figure 18:  Employees in high and low involvement organisations by consultation procedure and 
representation (%)

60

50

40

30

20

10

0

No 

Yes 

Consultation procedure*+ 

No 

Yes 

Employee representation 

Low involvement organisation 

High involvement organisation 

Notes:  * The effects of the factor remained statistically significant at the p ≤ 0.001 level after controls were introduced for gender, age, 

tenure, occupational class and size of establishment. 
+ The same pattern held for both men and women.

37

working conditions, a concern for employee welfare and 
high levels of job security. Yet at the same time, it was also 
the exemplar of a large-scale bureaucratic organisation, 
which could be seen as adverse to employee decision-
making initiatives. More recently the employee-centred 
quality of public sector employment may have been called 
further into question with the growing popularity among 
governments of new public sector management practices 
that impose detailed performance targets and monitoring. 
Therefore an important issue is how far the public sector 
did provide greater scope for employee involvement by 
the time of the fifth EWCS in 2010.

At the other extreme, SMEs are sometimes depicted as 
a potential source of poor employment conditions. In some 
versions of the dual labour market theory, the peripheral 
sector is seen as primarily involving small companies 
in contrast to the core constituted by large ones. Vari-
ous factors may underlie this vision of work in the SME 
sector. There is often a size threshold beneath which 
labour regulations do not apply, and smaller companies 
are unlikely to find it viable to have relatively sophisticated 
human resources management (HRM) systems. The view 
that employees are unlikely to be granted significant influ-
ence in decision-making may also flow from the fact that 
a substantial proportion of such companies may still be 

family owned. It seems plausible that family ownership is 
associated with a stronger sense of managerial prerogative 
and a reluctance to allow employee interference in deci-
sions. The fifth EWCS does not contain a direct measure 
of ownership status or indeed of overall company size. 
Therefore, the analysis took workplaces with fewer than 
250 employees in the private sector as the best avail-
able proxy for an SME, distinguishing within this category 
‘medium-sized’ organisations with 50–249 employees, 
‘small’ organisations with 11–49 employees and ‘micro’ 
organisations with 10 or fewer employees.9

The patterns in Figure 19 confirm the image of the public 
sector as providing more favourable conditions for its 
employees. Those who work in the public sector typically 
have higher task discretion and higher levels of organi-
sational participation than those who work in the private 
sector. Whereas those who work in the private sector are 
predominantly in low involvement organisations, employ-
ees in the public sector are by a small margin more likely 
to be in a high involvement organisation. This might be 
influenced by the difference in occupational class composi-
tion between the public and private sectors. But even with 
occupational class and other controls, public sector work 
remains associated with a greater likelihood of working in 
a high involvement organisation for the EU27 as a whole.

Figure 19:  Employees in high and low involvement organisations by ownership sector and workplace size (%)

50

45

40

35

30

25

20

15

10

5

0

 All  

 250 + 

50 to 249 

11 to 49 

10 or fewer 

 All  

 250 + 

50 to 249 

11 to 49 

10 or fewer 

Private sector (no. of employees)*+ 

Public sector (no. of employees)*+ 

Low involvement organisation 

High involvement organisation 

Notes:  * The effects of the factor remained statistically significant at the p ≤ 0.001 level after controls were introduced for gender, age, 

tenure, occupational class and size of establishment. 
+ The same pattern held for both men and women.

9  Since there may be multiple workplaces in a company, this should be regarded as a tentative indicator.

38

WORK ORGANISATION AND  EMPLOYEE INVOLVEMENT IN EUROPEDETErmInAnTS of EmPloyEE InvolvEmEnT

However, there is a difference between the private and 
public sectors in terms of the effect of workplace size on 
employees’ organisational involvement. In the public sec-
tor the size of establishment has relatively little effect on 
the likelihood of being in a high involvement organisation, 
although those in small and micro establishments are more 
likely to be in such organisations (this difference is statisti-
cally significant). In the private sector, those in small and 
medium-sized establishments are significantly less likely 
to be in high involvement organisations. Controlling for 
other factors, this effect is most pronounced in medium-
sized enterprises. Employees in the smallest workplaces 
(micro workplaces) have higher levels of involvement than 
those in medium-sized and small establishments.

The effects of employment in the public sector and of 
differences in establishment size, however, were not sig-
nificant for any of the separate country group analyses; the 
pattern was similar with or without controls for industry.

Economic structure, 
employment regulation and 
country differences

The various factors examined so far relate to the structural 
and policy characteristics of the organisations in which 
people are employed. However, there may be wider macro-
level institutional differences that form the context in which 
management choices are made. Two perspectives have 
been particularly influential in this respect. Production 
regime theory has pointed to the importance of differ-
ences in employer organisation and culture that lead to 
very different levels of bargaining coordination, which 
in turn affect the involvement of employees in decision-
making at workplace level. Employment regime theory, in 
contrast, has argued for the significance of the strength 
of organised labour in affecting government and employer 
policies about workplace relations.

This section considers how far the initial country and 
country group differences discussed in Chapter 1 remain 
after  controlling  for  differences  in  the  demographic 
composition of the workforce, occupational class and 
industry structure, typical company size and types of 
work. Residual national and country group differences 
are regarded as suggestive of the potential effects of 
macro-level structures.

The ‘without controls’ series in Figure 20 shows the initial 
country differences relative to Bulgaria. In seven countries 
(Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Malta, the Netherlands, Sweden 
and the UK), employees were two or more times more likely 
to be in a high involvement organisation than Bulgarian 

employees. The ‘with controls’ series in Figure 20 shows 
the residual country differences once demographic fac-
tors and economic structure are taken into account. This 
gives a sharply reduced differential for most countries, 
with a particularly marked decline in Luxembourg Sweden 
and the UK. In the eastern European countries, in particu-
lar, controlling for differences in workforce demography 
and economic structure eliminated previously statistically 
significant differences compared with Bulgaria. This was 
the case, for instance, with Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania and 
Slovenia. In a few cases (Italy, Malta, Poland, Portugal and 
Romania), the relative difference with Bulgaria grew greater 
once compositional factors were controlled for.

Turning to the country groups, Figure 21 shows the differ-
ence in the probability of an employee working in a high 
involvement organisation in each country group relative 
to an employee in the East-South country group. The 
‘without controls’ series shows the overall difference, while 
the ‘with controls’ series shows the adjusted difference 
once account is taken of country differences in workforce 
demography and economic structure.

Before taking account of compositional factors, employ-
ees in the Nordic, Continental, North-West and East-
North groups all had a higher probability of working in 
a high involvement organisation than an employee in the 
East-South group. The odds were 130% higher in the 
Nordic group, 70% higher in the North-West group, 50% 
higher in the East-North group, and 15% in the Continental 
group. However, these differences diminished sharply in 
all country groups once compositional differences were 
taken into account. Net of compositional effects, it is only 
employees in the Nordic countries that stand out as still 
having a statistically significant higher level of participa-
tion in high involvement organisations.

Most of the country group differences in employee involve-
ment can therefore be accounted for in terms of differences 
in the composition of the workforce and the economic struc-
ture. However, this is not the case for the especially high 
level of involvement in the Nordic group. This suggests addi-
tional effects of national institutional differences in employ-
ment regulation, some of which may have been reflected 
in differences in organisational practices considered in the 
previous sections of this chapter (that is, flexibility, human 
resources orientation and worker representation practices). 
In a further analysis, these factors were also introduced. 
This led to a further substantial reduction in the effect for the 
Nordic group. When demographic and economic structure 
variables were controlled for, the odds of employees in the 
Nordic group being in high involvement organisations were 
80% higher than those of employees in the East-South 
group, but they were only 43% higher once these specific 
organisational policy factors were taken into account (a 
difference, however, that remained significant statistically).

39

Figure 20:  Likelihood of working in a high involvement organisation by country

5

4.5

4

3.5

3

2.5

2

1.5

1

0.5

0

UK

IE DK

FI

SE DE FR AT BE NL

LU EL

IT

PT

ES BG CZ HU SK

SI

PL

EE

LT

LV RO MT CY

Notes: Relative odds of an employee working in a high involvement organisation compared with employees in Bulgaria.

Countries are ordered by country group (see p. 4).

With controls 

No controls 

Figure 21:  Likelihood of working in a high involvement organisation by country group

2.5

2.0

1.5

1.0

0.5

0.0

North-West

Nordic

Continental

Southern

East-Central

East-North

East-South

With controls 

No controls 

Notes:  Relative odds of an employee working in a high involvement organisation compared with employees in the East-South country group.

Results with controls include age, gender, tenure, occupational class, industry, size of establishment, ownership sector and type of 
work.

40

WORK ORGANISATION AND  EMPLOYEE INVOLVEMENT IN EUROPEDETErmInAnTS of EmPloyEE InvolvEmEnT

Finally, employer policies may also be affected by the 
broader ethos of industrial relations deriving from macro- 
institutional arrangements. The two institutional perspec-
tives that offered interpretations of country variations 
emphasised the importance, respectively, of employer 
bargaining coordination and the strength of organised 
labour. However, an aggregate country-level analysis, 
using a well-established measure of bargaining coordina-
tion,10 did not show a significant relationship between the 
extensiveness of employer bargaining coordination and 
the proportion of employees in high involvement organisa-
tions. Countries with high and low degrees of bargaining 
coordination both had very diverse proportions of the 
workforce in high involvement organisations (Figure 22).

In contrast, there was a strong relationship (a significant 
correlation of 0.48) between the prevalence of high involve-
ment organisations and the membership strength of trade 
unions.11 The three Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland 
and Sweden), which had high levels of employee involve-
ment, stand out very sharply in terms of the strength of 
their trade unions, while the majority of the Southern and 
eastern European countries had relatively weak unions 
(Figure 23). Strong national union membership was not 
a necessary condition of high involvement as is shown by 
the cases of Estonia and the Netherlands, where unions 
were also relatively weak, but it does seem likely that 
a high level of union membership encouraged an organi-
sational culture based on dialogue and greater employee 
influence over their job tasks.

Figure 22:  Employees in high involvement organisations by country and degree of bargaining coordination (%)

i

s
n
o
i
t
a
s
n
a
g
r
o
t
n
e
m
e
v
o
v
n

l

i

h
g
h

i

n

i

%

60

50

40

30

20

10

MT
EE

UK

LV

LT

PL

DK

FI

SE

PT

IE

SI

ES

BE

NL

IT
AT
DE

EL

LU
HU

CZ

FR

CY

SK

RO

BG

1

2

3

4

5

Bargaining coordination

Notes:  Vertical axis shows the proportion of employees in high involvement organisations in each country and the horizontal axis shows 

the degree of bargaining coordination. 
Measure of bargaining coordination taken from the ICTWSS dataset, version 3, May 2011 (Visser, 2011).

10  The indicator WCOORD in the ICTWSS (Institutional Characteristics of Trade Unions, Wage Setting, State Intervention and Social Pacts) 

dataset (Visser, 2011). The correlation was -0.07, p = 0.75.

11  The measure of union density (UD), averaged over the period 2006–2010, was also drawn from the ICTWSS dataset.

41

 
 
 
 
Figure 23:  Employees in high involvement organisations by country and national trade union density (%)

i

s
n
o
i
t
a
s
n
a
g
r
o
t
n
e
m
e
v
o
v
n

l

i

i

h
g
h
n

i

%

60

50

40

30

20

10

DK

FI

SE

UK

SI

AT

IE

LU

IT
RO

MT

BE

CY

EE

NL

LT

FR

LV

CZ
HU

PT

ES

PL

DE

BG

SK

EL

0

20

40

Union density

60

80

Notes:  Vertical axis shows the proportion of employees in high involvement organisations in each country and the horizontal axis shows 

the proportion of employees who are union members. 
Measure of union density taken from the ICTWSS dataset, version 3, May 2011 (Visser, 2011).

The impact of bargaining coordination and union mem-
bership can be examined in more detail by looking at the 
relative importance of different factors in accounting for 
country variance in the constituent dimensions of high 
involvement (that is, task discretion and organisational 
participation) using a multilevel model (Figure 24).12 A test 
of the effect of the indicator of the extent of bargaining 
coordination on country variance showed that it was not 
statistically significant for either task discretion or organi-
sational participation. Union density, however, was highly 
significant and on its own accounted for 33% of country 
variance with respect to task discretion and 40% with 
respect to organisational participation.

However, since union density could at least in part be 
acting as a proxy for differential characteristics of the 
workforce, the next step was to enter it only after a range 
of individual characteristics (age, gender and tenure), fac-
tors relating to economic structure (occupational class, 

employment contract status, industry, ownership sector 
and size of establishment) and variables relating to the 
type of work task (routine machine work, computer work 
and people work).

Individual characteristics, together with basic controls 
for differences in economic structure, accounted for 11% 
of the variation between countries in terms of task dis-
cretion. Introducing type of work made a further 11% 
reduction in the unexplained variance. Once these fac-
tors had been taken into account, however, union density 
still made another major contribution, leading to a further 
22% reduction in the unexplained variance. Overall, the 
three factors accounted for 44% of the difference in task 
discretion between countries.

The pattern was similar for organisational participation. 
Controls for individual characteristics and economic struc-
ture accounted for 35% of the country differences and 

12  Model used MLWIN software.

42

WORK ORGANISATION AND  EMPLOYEE INVOLVEMENT IN EUROPE 
 
 
 
DETErmInAnTS of EmPloyEE InvolvEmEnT

Figure 24:  Country variance in task discretion and organisational participation by various factors (%)

70

60

50

40

30

20

10

0

Industrial and economic structure  

Industrial and economic structure +
type of work

Industrial and economic structure
+ type of work + union density

Task discretion 

Organisational participation 

types of work for a further 11%. Even with these factors 
included, however, union density led to a further 18% 
reduction in the variance. Taken together, the three factors 
accounted for 64% of the difference between countries 
in organisational participation.

The strength of trade unions would therefore appear to 
be an important factor underlying national differences in 
employee involvement over and above differences in the 
demographic composition of the workforce and economic 
structure. In addition, union density was substantially 
more important than the degree of employer bargaining 
coordination.

43

CHAPTER 3

Consequences of 
employee involvement

5thEuropean Working Conditions SurveyConsequences 
of employee 
involvement

An important claim in the literature advocating the ben-
efits of employee involvement is that it is beneficial for 
both economic performance and employee well-being. It 
is therefore a positive development that has advantages 
for both employers and employees.

The  argument  with  respect  to  economic  performance 
hinges on two principal assumptions. The first is that 
involvement in decision-making enhances learning oppor-
tunities in the job, while the second is that is that it leads to 
higher levels of motivation. The view that it at the same time 
improves employee well-being is based on the belief that:

 Ô greater scope for employees to share in decision-
making leads to improvements in the quality of 
work and employment conditions;

 Ô it provides an important source of protection 

against psychological stress at work.

However, there is also scepticism in the literature of the sup-
posed economic and well-being benefits of employee involve-
ment. This chapter investigates which of these arguments 
receives greatest support from the comparative evidence.

Learning opportunities

knowledge about the work process and the skills they 
use at work. At the level of the work task, greater scope 
for decision-making should enable employees to experi-
ment with different ways of performing tasks and learning 
through a process of problem-solving through trial and 
error. At the level of the organisation, greater employee 
involvement should provide a better understanding of the 
way individual tasks relate to the wider work process, while 
higher levels of employee influence could be expected to 
encourage employers to invest more in the skills of their 
employees through the provision of training.

In assessing this, two types of employee learning at work 
can be discerned – informal learning and formal learning. 
Informal learning is acquired by the individual employee 
through discussion and problem-solving in everyday task 
activity, while formal learning involves instruction either 
by another person in the organisation or by someone 
external to the organisation.13

Informal learning

The fifth EWCS included three useful proxies of informal 
learning. The first asked people whether their job involved 
learning new things, the second whether it involved solving 
unforeseen problems and the third how frequently they 
were able to apply their own ideas to their work.

There are a number of grounds for thinking that involve-
ment in decision-making should improve employees’ 

The four types of employee involvement were associated 
with rather different informal learning profiles (Figure 25). 

13  The selection of relevant items for the two types of learning is based on the results of a principal components analysis with varimax 
rotation, which revealed two distinct dimensions with an eigenvalue greater than 1. However, the items representing informal learning 
had a low scale Cronbach’s alpha and should be seen as discrete forms of informal learning; the training items had a Cronbach’s alpha 
of 0.58, close to the threshold for accepting that they represent a scale.

46

WORK ORGANISATION AND  EMPLOYEE INVOLVEMENT IN EUROPEConSEquEnCES of EmPloyEE InvolvEmEnT

All measures were lowest in low involvement organisations 
and improved substantially in discretionary organisations 
(high task discretion, but low organisational participation). 
Consultative organisations (high on organisational partici-
pation, but low on task discretion) were associated with 
still higher learning opportunities. Finally the combination 
of high task discretion and high organisational participa-
tion that characterised a high involvement organisation 
produced the best informal learning environment on all 
measures. This remained the case even when a wide set 
of controls were introduced for individual characteristics 
(age, gender, tenure) and for other features of the work 
situation that might have been underlying the effect of 
type of involvement (occupational class, employment 
contract status, industry, size of establishment and type 
of work – whether routine machine, computer-based or 
people work). The same pattern emerged in separate 
analyses for men and women.

Formal learning

The indicators of formal learning focus on the provision 
and consequences of training. People were asked in the 
fifth EWCS whether they had undergone any training in the 
previous 12 months to improve their skills. It was possible 
to differentiate between training paid for by the employer 
and training paid for by the employee. On-the-job training 
could also be distinguished from other types of training. 
Finally, there was a question that sought to capture the 
quality of the training by asking those who had received 

it whether the training had helped to improve the way 
they worked.

For the EU overall there was a strong association between 
the type of employee involvement and both the overall 
level of training and the nature of the training provided 
(Figure 26). Employees in low involvement organisations 
were the least likely to have received training. The provi-
sion of training was successively greater across discre-
tionary, consultative and high involvement types. Whereas 
only 42% of employees in low involvement organisations 
had received training in the previous 12 months, this was 
the case for nearly 60% of those in high involvement 
organisations.

Of those who did receive training, those in low involve-
ment organisations were the least likely to have received 
dual off-the-job and on-the-job instruction. The relative 
importance of dual on-the-job and off-the-job training 
was highest in both the consultative and high involve-
ment types, suggesting that it depended primarily on 
the strength of wider organisational participation. Given 
its relevance for work performance, the proportion of 
employees who had received training that improved the 
way they did their work increased across the different 
involvement types and was highest among those in high 
involvement organisations.

More detailed statistical analysis confirmed the positive 
effects of higher involvement for both informal and formal 

Figure 25:  Employees involved in informal learning by type of employee involvement (%)

100

90

80

70

60

50

40

30

20

10

0

Learning 

Problem solving 

Applying ideas 

Low involvement organisation 

Discretionary organisation 

Consultative organisation 

High involvement organisation

47

Figure 26:  Employees involved in formal learning by type of employee involvement (%)

70

60

50

40

30

20

10

0

Training 

On-the-job training only 

Off-the-job training only 

On-the-job and off-the-job
training 

Quality training 

Low involvement organisation 

Discretionary organisation 

Consultative organisation 

High involvement organisation

learning even when other potential influences with respect 
to individual characteristics and work factors were con-
trolled for. Separate analyses for men and women showed 
that the same pattern was evident for both sexes. Overall, 
more participatory organisations, and in particular high 
involvement organisations, provided a better learning 
environment.

Separate analyses for each country group were conducted 
for the informal learning indicators and for the training 
quality indicator (which has the clearest relevance for 
work performance) with controls for individual and other 
work characteristics. They showed that the positive effects 
of high involvement for learning emerged very consist-
ently. High involvement organisation was significantly 
associated with the informal learning and training quality 
indicators in all the country groups. In the great majority 
of cases, it had the strongest effect of any of the types 
of employee involvement on informal learning. It was the 
form of employee involvement with the strongest asso-
ciation with employees’ ability to apply their own ideas 
to their work in all country groups, with their likelihood 
of dealing with unforeseen problems in six of the country 
groups and with learning new things at work in five. While 
it was highly significant with respect to training quality, 
the effect coefficients were lower, although very close 
to, those of consultative types of organisation in four of 
the country groups. Discretionary organisations had the 
least clear effects for formal learning. In both Cyprus and 
Malta, high involvement organisations were associated 

with higher levels of learning (solving unforeseen problems 
and applying one’s own ideas in work). High involvement 
organisations had a significant impact on training quality 
in Malta but not in Cyprus.

Employee motivation

A second way in which more participatory organisations 
may contribute to better work performance is through 
their impact on employee work motivation. Conceptually, 
two aspects of work motivation can be distinguished – 
task commitment and organisational commitment. Higher 
task commitment is likely to be associated with a greater 
willingness to put in discretionary effort, higher levels of 
innovation and better work quality. Organisational com-
mitment has been shown to be associated with lower 
absence rates and lower turnover (Meyer and Allen, 1997).

The fifth EWCS had two questions that can be taken 
as proxies of task commitment. The first asked people 
whether or not their work involved ‘monotonous tasks’, 
implying a negative view of the work task. Those who 
rejected this description of their work can be seen as 
having a higher measure of task commitment. The second 
question focused on positive perceptions of the job, ask-
ing how often ‘your job gives you the feeling of work well 
done’. This could be seen as an indicator of satisfaction 
with the job task. There were three relevant questions for 
organisational commitment. The first asked people how 

48

WORK ORGANISATION AND  EMPLOYEE INVOLVEMENT IN EUROPEConSEquEnCES of EmPloyEE InvolvEmEnT

satisfied they were with the working conditions in their job, 
the second how much they agreed that they felt ‘at home’ 
in their organisation and the third how much they agreed 
that ‘the organisation I work for motivates me to give my 
best job performance’. These three scaled well, indicat-
ing that they reflected a similar underlying dimension.14

Type of employee involvement was indeed strongly related 
to both task commitment and organisational commitment 
(Figure 27). Employees in low involvement organisations 
were lowest on all measures. The proportion of committed 
employees then rose successively across the discretionary, 
consultative and finally the high involvement types. The 
differences were substantial; for instance with respect to 
task commitment only a minority of employees (46%) in low 
involvement organisations considered that their work tasks 
were not monotonous compared with 64% of those in high 
involvement organisations. Similarly, whereas only 32% of 
those in low involvement organisations always felt that their 
job gave them the feeling of work well done, the proportion 
rose to 53% in high involvement organisations. The same 
pattern is evident for organisational commitment. Those 
very satisfied with working conditions rose from 15% in 
low involvement to 35% in high involvement organisations, 
the feeling of being at home in the organisation from 56% 
to 81%, and the view that the organisation motivated them 
to give best performance from 47% to 76%.

It  is  possible  that  the  relationship  between  forms  of 
involvement and work motivation reflected differences in 
the characteristics of employees in these types of organi-
sation, for instance, in the type of work they did. How-
ever, statistical analysis of the separate task commitment 
questions and of a scale of organisational commitment 
(combining satisfaction with working conditions, feeling 
at home in the organisation and being in an organisa-
tion that motivates best performance) showed that more 
participatory forms of organisation had employees with 
higher work motivation even when differences in individual 
and other work characteristics had been controlled for. In 
all cases, the strongest effects were for high involvement 
organisations, followed by consultative organisations. 
The pattern was the same in separate analyses for men 
and women.

The different forms of employee involvement were not 
only statistically significant for work motivation for the 
EU27 as a whole, but in almost all cases in the separate 
analyses within country groups. This was the case even 
controlling for individual and other work characteristics. 
In all country groups as well as in the Mediterranean 
islands,  high  involvement  organisations  were  those 
that had the strongest effects. These were followed by 
consultative organisations and then by discretionary 
organisations.

Figure 27:  Task commitment and organisational commitment by type of employee involvement (%)

90

80

70

60

50

40

30

20

10

0

Not monotonous

Job well done

Very satisifed with work
conditions

At home in organisation

Organisation motivates

Low involvement organisation 

Discretionary organisation 

Consultative organisation 

High involvement organisation 

14  The three items had a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.73.

49

Working and employment 
conditions

One of the ways in which work organisation may improve 
employee well-being is through its implications for work-
ing and employment conditions. Three aspects are likely 
to be particularly relevant:

 Ô the level of risk in the physical work environment;

 Ô the degree of work intensity;

 Ô the availability of time flexibility arrangements that 

make it easier for employees to manage the joint 
demands of work and family.

The fifth EWCS covered a range of potential physical risks 
in the working environment. A factor analysis indicated that 
these consisted of three distinct dimensions – a general 
physical risk dimension and two more specific dimensions 
relating to chemical risks and risks from handling people 
at work.15 The general risk questions involved a set in 
which people were asked whether they were exposed at 
work to vibrations from tools and machinery, loud noise, 
high or low temperatures, smoke and fumes, together with 
two questions asking whether their job involved ‘tiring or 
painful positions’ or ‘carrying or moving heavy loads’. The 
chemical risk dimension consisted of two questions about 
whether people were exposed to ‘breathing in vapours 
such as solvents or thinners’ or ‘handling or being in skin 
contact with chemical products or substances’. People-
related risks involved two questions – whether people 
were exposed to direct contact with materials that can 
be ‘infectious such as waste, bodily fluids, laboratory 
materials’ and whether their job involved ‘lifting or mov-
ing people’. Indices were created for each risk dimension 
across the relevant questions.

It is increasingly recognised that risks to health in the 
work environment can derive from high and sustained 
levels of work pressure as well as from poor physical 
working conditions. Work intensity was measured in the 
fifth EWCS through three questions. People were asked 
how frequently their work involved working at a very high 
speed or to tight deadlines. They were also asked how 
often it was the case they had enough time to get the 
job done, with responses of ‘rarely’ or ‘never’ indicating 
high work intensity. A summary measure of work intensity 

was constructed by averaging the three responses to the 
three questions.16

Work pressures may be partly offset if people have a meas-
ure of control over their work times. The fifth EWCS had 
three questions that addressed different aspect of time 
control. The first asked how working time arrangements 
were set in the organisation, with responses ranging from 
at one extreme ‘they are set by the company/organisation 
with no possibility for changes’ to, at the other extreme, 
‘your working hours are entirely determined by yourself’. The 
second question asked how difficult it would be ‘to take an 
hour or two off during working hours to take care of personal 
or family matters’, while the third asked how frequently it 
was the case that ‘you can take a break when you wish’.

In addition, the fifth EWCS contained two more general 
indicators of interest with respect to risks in the work 
environment. The first question asked people whether they 
thought their health and safety was at risk because of their 
work and the second how well informed they were about 
health and safety risks relating to the performance of their 
jobs. People’s personal assessment of whether their health 
and safety was at risk was associated with each of the 
more specific risk factors. Perception of risk increased 
the poorer the quality of the working environment with 
respect to general, chemical and people-related risks. 
It also increased the higher the level of work intensity. 
However, greater flexibility in working hours was associ-
ated with a lower perception of health risks.17

Types of employee involvement and 
working and employment conditions

Was the level of risk in the working environment affected 
by the pattern of employee involvement? The differences 
in  the  various  risk  factors  by  type  of  involvement  are 
shown in Table 4. The two types that are most clearly 
associated with reduced general physical risks are high 
involvement organisation and discretionary organisation, 
with the effect of the high involvement organisation the 
strongest. Although this might reflect differences in eco-
nomic sector and the type of work people are doing, the 
pattern remains unchanged and statistically significant 
even with the full set of controls for individual and work 
characteristics. This is the case for both men and women. 
Employees in high involvement and discretionary types of 
organisation also have the lowest scores with respect to 
chemical risks but, once other factors are controlled for, the 

15  The items for general physical risks had a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.82. The value for chemical risks was 0.74 and the value for people work 

was 0.56.

16  The three work intensity indicators had a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.66.

17  The correlations with perceived health risks were 0.40 for general physical risks, 0.24 for chemical risks, 0.31 for people related risks, 

0.21 for work intensity and -0.15 for work time flexibility.

50

WORK ORGANISATION AND  EMPLOYEE INVOLVEMENT IN EUROPEConSEquEnCES of EmPloyEE InvolvEmEnT

effect is only evident for male employees and it is equally 
strong for those in high involvement and discretionary 
organisations. For people-related risks, although those 
in high involvement and discretionary organisations also 
have lower scores, the type of employee involvement is no 
longer statistically significant once differences in individual 
characteristics and work situation are taken into account.

The  pattern  for  work  intensity  is  distinctive.  Overall, 
employees in discretionary organisations, where they 
had significant decision-making over the task but not over 
wider organisational decisions, had the lowest work inten-
sity, followed by those in high involvement organisations. 
This was still the case when individual and other work 
characteristics were controlled for. However, the pattern 
varies for men and women. A discretionary organisation 
was most strongly related to lower work intensity for men, 
whereas a high involvement work organisation was most 
strongly related for women.

All three types of participatory organisation are associated 
with better provision in terms of work time flexibility, but 
the effect is stronger (with and without controls for other 
factors) in high involvement organisations than in either 
discretionary or consultative organisations. The same is 
true for the overall perception by employees of health and 
safety risks, the strongest effect in reducing risks is that of 
being in a high involvement organisation. In both cases, this 
was confirmed in separate analyses for men and women.

Overall, greater participation would seem to improve 
outcomes for employees with respect to most working 
and employment conditions. Being in a high involvement 

organisation had particularly strong effects with respect 
to general physical risks, the provision of flexible work 
times, and employees’ overall perception of health and 
safety risks.

The pattern proved to be consistent for most aspects of 
working conditions within most of the country groups. 
The exceptions were with respect to chemical risks where 
types of involvement no longer had a significant effect in 
any of the country groups, and for the East-South coun-
tries where employee involvement was only associated 
with flexibility in working times and health and safety 
information. In all other country groups, being in a high 
involvement work organisation had the strongest effect 
among the three types of participatory organisation for 
each aspect of working and employment conditions. Sepa-
rate analysis for Cyprus and Malta showed consistent 
effects of high involvement organisations on work pres-
sure, health and safety, working time flexibility and work-
ing conditions satisfaction in Cyprus. In Malta significant 
effects were found for working time flexibility, working 
conditions satisfaction and health and safety information.

Employee well-being

Theories of participation have stressed the beneficial 
effects on employees’ psychological well-being of involve-
ment in decision-making. It is seen as inherently satisfying 
as well as an important source of recognition and status in 
societies with egalitarian norms embodied in the principles 
of citizenship. However, there is an alternative view that 
involvement in decisions at work could be detrimental 

Table 4:  Working conditions by type of employee involvement

Low involvement 
organisation

Discretionary 
organisation

Consultative 
organisation

High involvement 
organisation

Physical risks

General physical risks score

Chemical risks score

People-related risks score

Work intensity

Work intensity score

Work time flexibility

Work time flexibility index

General

% health & safety at risk

% very well informed 
about health & safety

1.31

0.63

1.00

1.63

2.07

28.5

38.4

1.05*

0.50*

0.85

1.33*

2.56*

22.0*

38.5

1.18

0.62

1.02

1.58*

2.47*

25.3*

52.5

0.82*

0.41*

0.70

1.39*

2.93*

17.9*

56.0

Note :  * Indicates that the association of type of employee involvement with reduced work environment risks compared with those in 

low involvement organisations was statistically significant in regression analyses controlling for age, gender, tenure, occupational 
class, job complexity, type of employment contract, industry and size of establishment.

51

for psychological health. Increased influence may lead to 
higher levels of anxiety in work as individuals come to feel 
personally more responsible for performance and errors.

An influential argument in the literature has focused on 
the potential importance of employees’ decision-making 
involvement for their psychological and physical vulnerabil-
ity to work pressure. While working and employment con-
ditions are a vital objective source of employee well-being, 
affecting the nature and the pressure of work demands, 
the impact of such factors on psychological well-being 
(and by extension physical health) may be moderated by 
the nature of work organisation. It has been suggested 
that, where employees have scope for decision-making 
over their tasks, a given level of work pressure will have 
less negative consequences for well-being.

Research to date has largely looked at the consequences 
for psychological well-being of individual task discretion. 
However, the logic of the argument raises the issue of 
whether the involvement of employees in wider organi-
sational decisions might also have an influence. Some 
employees with low levels of decision scope over their 
immediate jobs are in a position to influence wider deci-
sions about work organisation. Others are able to reinforce 
their capacity to take decisions over the task with the ability 
to influence wider work organisation. It was therefore of 
interest to examine whether the broader form of integration 
of employees into decision-making affects levels of psy-
chological well-being and vulnerability to work pressure.

Psychological well-being

The principal direct measure of psychological well-being 
in the fifth EWCS survey is a five-item version of the World 
Health Organization questionnaire (WHO-5). This presents 
people with five statements relating to their mood over the 
previous two weeks, giving choices on a six-point scale 
running from ‘all of the time’ at one extreme to ‘at no time’ 
at the other. The average score across the five statements 
is taken as the measure of psychological well-being, with 
scales reversed so that higher scores reflect greater well-
being. The statements in the fifth EWCS were:

 Ô I have felt cheerful and in good spirits.

 Ô I have felt calm and relaxed.

 Ô I have felt active and vigorous.

 Ô I woke up feeling fresh and rested.

 Ô My daily life has been filled with things that interest 

me.

Figure 28 shows the relationship between task discre-
tion, organisational participation and the overall type of 
employee involvement and employees’ psychological 
well-being. All three measures of employees’ involve-
ment in decision-making are clearly associated with 
the level of well-being, with higher well-being among 
those with more scope for decision-making. Notably, 
participation in wider organisational decisions made 
a considerably greater difference than the capacity to 
influence decisions about the work task. This finding is 
reflected in the pattern with respect to the overall form 
of employee involvement. The greatest difference in 
well-being is between those in discretionary organisa-
tions and those in consultative organisations where 
employees have a say in wider workplace decisions. 
The combination of involvement in task and workplace 
decisions (high involvement organisation) is linked to 
a further increase in well-being, although the difference 
is relatively modest.

Although women generally have lower well-being scores 
than men, the pattern with respect to decision-making 
involvement is very similar between the sexes (Figure 29). 
It still emerged clearly, with a high level of statistical sig-
nificance for both sexes, even when individual and other 
work situation characteristics were taken into account.

Is there support for the view that involvement in decision-
making reduces the negative psychological effects of high 
work pressure? Those above the median on the measure 
of work intensity described in the previous section can 
be taken as experiencing relatively high work pressure. 
Similarly, those above the median score on the task discre-
tion and organisational participation indicators are taken 
as having relatively high decision involvement.

Figure 30 compares the psychological well-being of those 
who experience high work intensity while at the same 
time having significant decision-making influence with 
those who experience high work intensity but have little 
decision-making influence. Those who have higher task 
discretion have better well-being scores than those who 
have lower levels of task discretion, although the effect is 
stronger for men than for women. Participation in wider 
organisational decisions is also associated with higher 
well-being scores, but in this case the effect is stronger 
for women than for men. Finally, there is a further increase 
in the well-being scores for those in a high involvement 
organisation (which combines opportunities for employee 
involvement with respect to both the task and the wider 
work organisation). However, this is largely accounted for 
by the higher psychological well-being of male employees, 
with the level for women very similar to that for organisa-
tional participation taken on its own.

52

WORK ORGANISATION AND  EMPLOYEE INVOLVEMENT IN EUROPEConSEquEnCES of EmPloyEE InvolvEmEnT

Figure 28:  Employee involvement and psychological well-being (WHO-5) scores

4.50

4.45

4.40

4.35

4.30

4.25

4.20

4.15

4.10

4.05

Low task
discretion

High task
discretion

Low
organisational
participation

High
organisational
participation

Low
involvement
organisation

Discretionary
organisation

Consultative
organisation

High
involvement
organisation

Figure 29:  Employee involvement and psychological well-being (WHO-5) scores by gender

4.6

4.5

4.4

4.3

4.2

4.1

4.0

3.9

Low
task
discretion 

High
task
discretion 

Low
organisational
participation 

High
organisational
participation 

Low
involvement
organisation 

Discretionary
organisation 

Consultative
organisation 

High
involvement
organisation 

Men

Women

53

Figure 30:  Employee involvement and psychological well-being (WHO-5) scores in conditions of high work 
intensity

4.6

4.5

4.4

4.3

4.2

4.1

4.0

3.9

3.8

3.7

Low task
discretion

High task
discretion

Low
organisational
participation 

High
organisational
participation

Low involvement
organisation 

High
involvement 
organsation

Note: All categories are combined with high work intensity.

All employees 

Men

Women

Physical health stress symptoms

Psychological stress can also translate into physical 
symptoms such as muscular pain and headaches (West-
ergaard and Winkel, 2011). The fifth EWCS asked whether 
or not people had experienced a range of such problems 
over the previous 12 months. These problems included 
backache, muscular pains in the shoulders, neck and/
or upper limbs, muscular pains in the lower limbs, head-
aches or eyestrain and stomach ache. The number of 
such problems reported is taken here as a second indi-
cator of well-being.

Taking all employees, physical health stress symptoms 
were highest among those in low involvement organisa-
tions. They then declined across the successive employee 
involvement types, with the lowest level found among those 
in high involvement organisations (Figure 31). However, it 
was only male employees in high involvement organisa-
tions who had fewer symptoms than those in consultative 
organisations, while the lowest frequency for women was in 
consultative forms of organisation where they had influence 
over wider decisions but relatively little task control. Once 
account was taken of differences in individual character-
istics and other features of the work setting, consultative 
organisations had the lowest number of physical stress 
symptoms for both sexes, although employees in high 
involvement organisations were still significantly more 
protected than those in low involvement organisations.

54

WORK ORGANISATION AND  EMPLOYEE INVOLVEMENT IN EUROPEConSEquEnCES of EmPloyEE InvolvEmEnT

Figure 31:  Number of physical health stress symptoms by employee involvement

2.0

1.8

1.6

1.4

1.2

1.0

0.8

0.6

0.4

0.2

0.0

Low involvement organisation

Discretionary organisation

Consultative organisation

High involvement organisation

Physical health stress symptoms

All

Men

Women

Sickness absence

A  third  indicator  of  well-being  is  the  extent  to  which 
employees are absent from work for reasons of health. 
The fifth EWCS included an initial question that asked 
‘Over the past 12 months how many days in total were you 
absent from work for reasons of health problems?’ and 
followed this with a more specific question about ‘How 
many of these days were attributable to an accident or 
accidents at work?’

Taking first overall absence on grounds of health, there is 
no strong evidence that employees in either discretionary 
or consultative organisations were less likely to be away 
from work than those in low involvement organisations 
(Figure 32). Men in discretionary organisations had fewer 
days’ absence, but the level for women was very similar. 
Absence for health was higher in consultative than in low 
involvement organisations. This was largely attributable to 
the higher rates among women. It is only in high involve-
ment organisations that there was a notable improvement 
in health-related absence rates and this was the case for 
both men and women.

Absence because of injuries at work was much less fre-
quent than general health absence, but the general pattern 

was very similar (Figure 32). In discretionary organisations, 
only male employees had fewer days’ absence from inju-
ries than those in low involvement organisations, while 
in consultative organisations women had higher absence 
rates than women in low involvement organisations. But 
being in a high involvement organisation was associated 
with lower absence rates for both men and women. The 
effect remained statistical significant for both sexes when 
other potential influences were taken into account.18

Taking the pattern overall within the EU27, there was 
a highly significant relationship between all the more par-
ticipative forms of organisation and the three measures of 
employee well-being. However, the pattern within country 
groups, when individual and other work characteristics 
were controlled for, was less consistent.

Employees in high involvement organisations had sig-
nificantly higher levels of psychological well-being than 
those in low involvement organisations in six of the seven 
country groups; in all but one case, the type of involve-
ment had the strongest effect. The pattern for Cyprus 
was consistent with that of other country groups but no 
such effect could be identified for Malta. Consultative 
involvement was also positive in six of the groups and 
in one case had the strongest effect. But discretionary 

18  This is consistent with the view of the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work (EU-OSHA) that employee involvement reduces 

absenteeism and accident rates.

55

Figure 32:  Days absent for reasons of health or accident at work by employee involvement

8

7

6

5

4

3

2

1

0

Low
involvement
organisation 

Discretionary
organisation

Consultative
organisation

High
involvement
 organisation

Health 

Low
involvement
organisation 

Discretionary
organisation 

Consultative
organisation

High
involvement
 organisation

Accident 

All 

Men

Women

types of organisation were only significantly associated 
with well-being in the Continental group and, at a marginal 
level of significance (p ≤ 0.10) in the East-South countries.

The effects of involvement on the other two well-being 
indicators (physical stress symptoms and days’ absence) 
were in almost all cases in the expected direction but they 
were only statistically significant within some of the coun-
try groups. High involvement organisation was associated 
with fewer physical stress symptoms in five of the seven 
groups (although in two of these at a marginal level of 
significance) and in all but one case it had the strongest 
effect of the different types of involvement. Consultative 
involvement was significant in only four of the country 
groups (two of which were at a marginal level of signifi-
cance). There was no evidence from the within country 
group analyses that discretionary type of organisation 
was related to either indicator.

Overall, the evidence with respect to the importance of 
employee involvement for psychological well-being is 
well-supported across the different types of analysis, 
but it should be viewed as more tentative with respect to 
physical health symptoms and absence on health grounds.

56

WORK ORGANISATION AND  EMPLOYEE INVOLVEMENT IN EUROPECHAPTER 4

Changes in employee 
involvement 2005–2010

5thEuropean Working Conditions SurveyChanges in 
employee 
involvement 
2005–2010

Were there significant changes in the extent of employee 
involvement between the closing years of the long period 
of economic growth and the aftermath of the severe eco-
nomic recession of 2008–2009? The evidence for change 
over time relates to the task discretion indicators, for which 
the questions were fully consistent across recent EWCS 
surveys.

This chapter first examines the evidence for change or 
stability in patterns across the EU27 and its constituent 
countries to assess whether there were any general trends 
towards either an increase or a decline in task discretion. 
It then considers whether there may have been a process 
of polarisation, whereby certain types of employees expe-
rienced an improvement in their control over their work 
tasks whereas others experienced a loss of control, focus-
ing on differences in occupational class and employment 
contract status. Finally, it examines whether the economic 
crisis between 2008 and 2010 may have had an impact 
on the pattern of change.

Patterns of change and 
stability

Taking the EU27 overall, there was a small rise in the level 
of task discretion between 2005 and 2010 (Figure 33). This 
was the case for both men and women. This primarily 

reflected a change in the control that employees could 
exercise over task order, which had been the aspect of 
the work task over which they had previously the least 
scope for decision-making. However, employee influence 
still remained most frequent with respect to control over 
work pace.

The overall pattern for the EU27 concealed substan-
tial differences in the extent and direction of change at 
country level (Figure 34). Taking only changes that were 
statistically significant, nine countries saw an increase in 
task discretion over the period, while three experienced 
a decrease. Those that saw an increase were primarily in 
southern Europe (Italy, Portugal and Spain) and in eastern 
Europe (the Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia and Slovenia). 
Employees in Finland and Malta also had a significant 
increase in task discretion over the period. The statistically 
significant decreases were in very different country groups 
– Sweden in the Nordic group, France in the Continental 
group and Ireland in the North-West group.

The country differences led to variations in pattern by 
country group (Figure 35). There was no significant change 
in either the North-West or the Nordic groups. The Conti-
nental group showed a small decline in task discretion over 
the period, primarily driven by developments in France. It 
is notably that the significant increases in task discretion 
mainly reflected change in the Southern group and in the 
East-Central and East-North groups.

58

WORK ORGANISATION AND  EMPLOYEE INVOLVEMENT IN EUROPEChAngES In EmPloyEE InvolvEmEnT 2005–2010

Figure 33:  Change in task discretion in the EU27, 2005–2010

7.0

6.8

6.6

6.4

6.2

6.0

5.8

5.6

5.4

5.2

5.0

r
e
d
r
o

k
s
a
T

e
c
a
p
k
r
o
W

s
d
o
h
t
e
m
k
r
o
W

All 

x
e
d
n

i

n
o
i
t
a
n
m

i

i

i
r
c
s
d
k
s
a
T

r
e
d
r
o
k
s
a
T

e
c
a
p
k
r
o
W

s
d
o
h
t
e
m
k
r
o
W

Men 

2005 

2010 

x
e
d
n

i

n
o
i
t
a
n
m

i

i

i
r
c
s
d
k
s
a
T

r
e
d
r
o
k
s
a
T

e
c
a
p
k
r
o
W

s
d
o
h
t
e
m
k
r
o
W

Women 

x
e
d
n

i

n
o
i
t
a
n
m

i

i

i
r
c
s
d
k
s
a
T

Figure 34:  Change in task discretion by country, 2005–2010

1.0

0.8

0.6

0.4

0.2

0.0

-0.2

-0.4

-0.6

-0.8

-1.0

UK 

IE*  DK(*)  FI*  SE*  DE  FR*  AT  BE  NL  LU  EL 

IT*  PT*  ES*  CZ*  HU  SK  SI*  PL(*)  EE*  LT  LV*  BG  RO  CY  MT* EU27 

Notes:  * Indicates a statistically significant difference and (*) a marginal significant difference. The change in task discretion between 

the five years was not statistically significant in all other countries. 
Countries are ordered by country group (see p. 4).

59

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Figure 35:  Country group changes in task discretion, 2005–2010

0.9

0.8

0.7

0.6

0.5

0.4

0.3

0.2

0.1

0.0

North-West 

Nordic 

Continental* 

Southern* 

East-Central* 

East-North* 

East-South 

Note:  * Indicates a statistically significant difference and (*) a marginal significant difference. The change in task discretion between the 

five years was not statistically significant in all other country groups.

2005 

2010 

Polarisation by occupational 
class and employment 
contract status

Did changes over the period between 2005 and 2010 
lead to a greater social polarisation in working condi-
tions between occupational classes? Figure 36 shows 
the difference between 2005 and 2010 in levels of task 
discretion by occupational class. In both years there was 
a sharp occupational class gradient and little change in 
the relative position of the different occupational classes. 
However, the increase in task discretion was confined to 
relatively few occupational classes and these were found 
in very different sectors of the occupational class struc-
ture. There was a rise in the task discretion of managers 
and (to a lesser extent) professionals, but also of craft 
workers, operatives and elementary workers.

The rather surprising increase in the task discretion of the 
less skilled was, on further analysis, not found across all 
the country groups (Figure 37). The non-skilled (opera-
tives and elementary workers) had lower task discre-
tion in 2010 than in 2005 in the North-West and Nordic 
groups, and there was little change in the Continental 
group. The southern and eastern European countries 
were again the principal contributors to the pattern.

The different patterns of change for the non-skilled are 
reflected in differences with respect to overall occupational 
class relativities. The ratio of the task discretion scores of 
managers and professionals to those of the non-skilled 
can be taken as an indicator of the occupational class 
differential. The occupational class differential grew wider 
over the period in the North-West and Nordic groups and 
remained at a similar level in the Continental group (Fig-
ure 38). However, there was a reduction of occupational 
class differentials in the Southern, East-North and East-
South groups. Therefore there was no overall tendency 
to occupational class polarisation, although it may have 
occurred in two of the country groups.

A second potential line of polarisation is with respect to 
the type of employment contract. Is there evidence that 
those who hold non-standard contracts, whether tempo-
rary workers or part-time workers, experienced a deterio-
ration of task discretion over the period relative to their 
permanent, full-time equivalents? Figure 39 shows that 
the task discretion index of temporary workers increased 
between 2005 and 2010 over the five years, whereas that 
of permanent workers remained unchanged. Part-time 
workers reported slightly higher levels of task discretion 
than full-time workers in both years and the differential 
remained very stable.

60

WORK ORGANISATION AND  EMPLOYEE INVOLVEMENT IN EUROPEChAngES In EmPloyEE InvolvEmEnT 2005–2010

Figure 36:  Change in task discretion index by occupational class, 2005–2010

10

9

8

7

6

5

4

3

2

1

0

Managers

Professionals

Technicians

Clerical workers

Service workers

Craft workers

Operatives

Elementary 
 workers

2005 

2010 

Figure 37:  Change in task discretion index among non-skilled workers by country group, 2005–2010

8

7

6

5

4

3

2

1

0

North-West

Nordic

Continental

Southern

East-Central

East-North

East-South

Note: Non-skilled workers are operatives and elementary workers.

2005 

2010 

61

Figure 38:   Ratios of task discretion scores of managers/professionals to non-skilled workers by country 

group, 2005–2010

2.0

1.8

1.6

1.4

1.2

1.0

0.8

0.6

0.4

0.2

0.0

North-West 

Nordic 

Continental 

Southern 

East-Central 

East-North 

East-South 

Note: Non-skilled workers are operatives and elementary workers.

2005 

2010 

Figure 39:  Change in task discretion index by type of employment contract, 2005–2010

10

9

8

7

6

5

4

3

2

1

0

62

Permanent work 

Temporary work 

Full-time work 

Part-time work 

2005 

2010 

WORK ORGANISATION AND  EMPLOYEE INVOLVEMENT IN EUROPEChAngES In EmPloyEE InvolvEmEnT 2005–2010

Examining the pattern by country group (Figure 40), it can 
be seen that the overall increase in temporary workers’ 
task discretion was again driven mainly by the patterns in 
the Southern group and eastern European countries. The 
increase was particularly marked in East-South countries. 
In contrast, temporary workers’ task discretion declined 

in the Nordic countries and remained largely stable in the 
North-West and Continental countries. Turning to part-time 
workers, only part-timers in Southern, East-Central and 
East-North countries experienced a rise in task discretion, 
while the pattern remained unchanged in the other country 
groups (Figure 41).

Figure 40:  Change in task discretion index among temporary workers by country group, 2005–2010

8

7

6

5

4

3

2

1

0

North-West 

Nordic 

Continental 

Southern 

East-Central 

East-North 

East-South 

2005 

2010 

Figure 41:  Change in task discretion index among part-time workers by country group, 2005–2010

8

7

6

5

4

3

2

1

0

North-West

Nordic

Continental

Southern

East-Central

East-North

East-South

2005 

2010 

63

Figure 42 shows the change in the position between 2005 
and 2010 of temporary workers in each country group rela-
tive to permanent workers. As with the analysis for occu-
pational class, the ratio of permanent workers’ task dis-
cretion score to that of temporary workers is taken as an 
indication of potential polarisation. It can be seen that three 
country groups (North-West, Southern and East-South) 
saw a reduction in the differential in task discretion index 

between permanent and temporary workers over the period. 
However, the differential remained unchanged in the Conti-
nental, East-Central and East-North groups and increased in 
the Nordic group. Similarly, there was no consistent pattern 
of polarisation between full-time and part-time employees 
(Figure 43); there was some increase in the differential in the 
North-West, Southern and East-North groups, but it either 
remained stable or declined a little in all the other groups.

Figure 42:  Ratios of task discretion scores of permanent to temporary workers by country group, 2005–2010

1.4

1.2

1.0

0.8

0.6

0.4

0.2

0.0

North-West 

Nordic 

Continental 

Southern 

East-Central 

East-North 

East-South 

2005 

2010 

Figure 43:  Ratios of task discretion scores of full-time to part-time employees by country group, 2005–2010

1.2

1.0

0.8

0.6

0.4

0.2

0.0

64

North-West

Nordic

Continental

Southern

East-Central

East-North

East-South

2005 

2010 

WORK ORGANISATION AND  EMPLOYEE INVOLVEMENT IN EUROPEChAngES In EmPloyEE InvolvEmEnT 2005–2010

In overall terms, there is no evidence of increased polari-
sation between regular, permanent and full-time workers, 
and those employed on non-standard employment con-
tracts. On the contrary, the gap between temporary and 
permanent workers narrowed between 2005 and 2010 in 
the Southern and East-South country groups.

Economic crisis and task 
discretion

The period between 2005 and 2010 was marked by a rela-
tive improvement in the task discretion of employees in 
southern and eastern European countries. Was this related 
to the effects of the economic crisis that most European 
countries experienced between 2008 and 2010? This is 
a difficult issue to address rigorously with the data avail-
able, as the time points for the comparison of working 
conditions do not directly correspond to those of the 
crisis. However, it is possible to examine the plausibility 
of the connection.

One potential way in which the crisis might have affected 
patterns of task discretion is through a reduction in the 
types of jobs in which employees’ job control was particu-
larly low. As seen in Chapter 2, this was particularly the 

case for skilled manual and non-skilled workers. If such 
workers constituted a high proportion of those who were 
driven into unemployment by the crisis, the average level 
of task discretion of those who remained in employment 
would become higher. If specific countries experienced 
a particularly severe departure of such workers from the 
workforce, then the position of those of their employees 
who were still in work could be expected to improve rela-
tive to other countries.

The EWCS is focused on those who remained in employ-
ment. However, information on those who lost their jobs 
during the economic crisis can be obtained from the Euro-
pean Labour Force Surveys, which ask the unemployed 
about their employment status a year earlier. The data are 
available for all EU countries apart from France, Ireland 
and Malta. The unemployed who were in work a year ear-
lier can be considered as the ‘new unemployed’ affected 
specifically by the economic crisis.

There were wide variations between countries in the pro-
portion of the new unemployed who were from the types 
of jobs that typically have relatively low levels of task 
discretion (skilled manual and non-skilled) (Figure 44). In 
almost all the eastern European countries (the only excep-
tion was Slovenia) and in two countries of the Southern 
group (Portugal and Spain), they constituted 60% or more 

Figure 44:  New unemployed in 2009 who were in low discretion jobs a year earlier (%)

80

70

60

50

40

30

20

10

0

EE  HU 

LT  BG  RO 

SK 

LV  CZ 

PL 

ES 

PT 

FI 

IT 

AT 

SI  DE 

EL  DK  CY  UK 

SE  BE  NL 

LU 

Notes:  Low discretion jobs are those classed as skilled manual and non-skilled. 

No data available for France, Ireland and Malta.

Source: European Labour Force Survey (LFS)

65

of those who became unemployed with the onset of the 
economic crisis. In contrast, in the other western European 
countries (apart from Austria, Finland and Italy), they made 
up less than 50% of the new unemployed.

The average change in task discretion in EU countries 
between 2005 and 2010 can therefore be correlated with 
the proportion of the new unemployed in 2009 who were 
from typically low discretion jobs. There is a broad associa-
tion (a correlation of 0.41, significant at the p ≤ 0.05 level) 
between the two factors (Figure 45). In general, the greater 
the outflow into unemployment of those from low discretion 
type jobs, the greater the increase over the period of the 

average task discretion of those who remained in employ-
ment. Many of the eastern European countries and Southern 
group countries (with the notable exception of Greece) are 
found towards the top right-hand quadrant of Figure 45, 
combining a high proportion of unemployed exiting from 
skilled manual and non-skilled jobs with particularly marked 
increases in average task discretion. The pattern suggests 
that one factor underlying the relative improvement of task 
discretion levels in the Southern group and eastern Euro-
pean countries may have been the effect of the economic 
crisis in removing from the workforce employees who had 
previously been in jobs offering particularly low opportuni-
ties for influence over their work tasks.

Figure 45:   Change in employee task discretion 2005–2010 and proportion of new unemployed from low 

discretion jobs

0
1
0
2
–
5
0
0
2

,

n
o
i
t
e
r
c
s
d
k
s
a
t

i

l

e
e
y
o
p
m
e
n

i

e
g
n
a
h
C

1.50

1.00

0.50

0.00

-0.50

-1.00

CZ

FI

IT

ES

EE

LV

PT
PL

SK

RO

LT

HU

BG

LU

DK
CY

NL

BE

SI

AT

DE

UK

EL

SE

30

40

50

60

70

80

% of manual and non-skilled workers among the new unemployed

Source: EWCS 2005/2010 and LFS

66

WORK ORGANISATION AND  EMPLOYEE INVOLVEMENT IN EUROPE 
 
 
 
 
CHAPTER 5

Conclusions

5thEuropean Working Conditions SurveyConclusions

The point of departure for this report was the argument 
that, as economies become increasingly dependent on 
complex production processes and highly skilled employ-
ees, there will be an increasing need to develop forms of 
work organisation that provide employees with significant 
opportunities to be involved in decision-making about 
their jobs. High involvement organisations, it has been 
suggested, contribute to higher levels of work perfor-
mance through their encouragement of skill develop-
ment and stronger motivation. The processes that ensure 
good work performance are thought at the same time to 
produce a significant improvement in the quality of work, 
leading to higher psychological well-being and lower risks 
of work-related ill health. This gives them the distinctive 
characteristic of being in the interests of both employers 
and employees.

While this argument has strong advocates, there has been 
considerable controversy both about the empirical pat-
tern of organisational development and about the claimed 
implications of employee involvement. The report seeks 
to strengthen the available evidence by examining the 
empirical relationship between specific forms of work 
organisation and employee experiences of work, using 
the enhanced data available from the 2010 wave of the 
European Working Conditions Survey.

The evidence from such cross-sectional data has to be 
treated tentatively. It cannot establish the direction of 
causality, but it can explore the consistency of the empiri-
cal patterns with specific arguments. It is evidence from 
one particular source (employees) and conclusions are 
more strongly grounded if they incorporate information 
from different perspectives. However, the EWCS does 
allow for findings to be based on large-scale sample 
numbers for the EU27 as a whole. It also provides the 
most comprehensive coverage available of the countries 
in the European Union and is therefore particularly well 
suited for examining the consistency or variability of 
findings across diverse economic, cultural and institu-
tional settings.

Patterns of employee 
involvement

Employee involvement can take place at rather differ-
ent organisational levels. Much of the previous research 
focused on either employees’ control over their immediate 
work task or their capacity to influence wider organisa-
tional decisions that affect their work. This report defines 
a ‘high involvement’ organisation as one that provides 
significant scope for involvement in decision-making with 
respect to both of these factors. Taking the overall pat-
tern for the EU, a first point of note is that only a minority 
of European employees (27%) are in such organisations, 
while a notably larger proportion (38%) are in organisations 
that offer relatively low levels of involvement.

The pattern, however, varies considerably between coun-
tries and between regional groups of countries. The most 
striking feature of this variation is the particularly high level 
of involvement in decision-making of employees in the 
Nordic group of countries (Denmark, Finland and Sweden). 
Indeed, these were the only countries where high involve-
ment organisation was the dominant organisational form. 
Some commonly held expectations were not supported 
by the results. The countries making up the Continental 
group (Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg 
and the Netherlands) are sometimes regarded as mod-
els of employee involvement because of their extensive 
works councils systems. But in terms of employees’ own 
experiences of the influence they can exercise, this would 
appear not to be the case – indeed, employee influence 
was typically lower than in the countries of the North-
West group (Ireland and the UK), which are sometimes 
regarded as examples of relatively unfettered manage-
ment prerogative.

In general, the countries with lower levels of economic 
development – those in the Southern group (Greece, Italy, 
Portugal and Spain) and eastern Europe – had relatively 
restricted forms of involvement, as might be expected 

68

WORK ORGANISATION AND  EMPLOYEE INVOLVEMENT IN EUROPEConCluSIonS

from the view that involvement will be related to the com-
plexity of production processes and the skill level of the 
workforce. But there were exceptions. The East-North 
group of countries (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) stood 
out as having a relatively high level of involvement, closer 
to the Nordic pattern than that of other eastern European 
countries. The existence of such significant variation in 
the prevalence of different organisational forms raises 
the issue of the types of factors that account for higher 
or lower levels of employee involvement.

Determinants of employee 
involvement

If greater employee involvement is particularly advanta-
geous in more advanced economic conditions, it could 
be expected to be more common where:

 Ô computerised technologies play a greater role in 

production processes;

 Ô service sector work is more extensive;

 Ô the workforce is more skilled;

 Ô work processes are adapted to rapid change.

The evidence was consistent with each of these expec-
tations. The level of employee involvement was strongly 
related to the type of production technology. Employ-
ees working in conditions of routine machine production 
were little involved in decisions, but they were extensively 
involved where work was computer intensive. Involvement 
was also common in work settings that placed a strong 
emphasis on dealing with people. The association between 
the level of employee involvement and skill level was par-
ticularly striking, with more skilled employees having nota-
bly greater scope for influencing both their work tasks and 
wider organisational decisions.

Involvement was also related to the way in which organisa-
tions handled the need for flexibility in the light of product 
market volatility. It was low where they relied principally 
on numerical flexibility or changes to staff levels to deal 
with uncertainty, but it was high where they adopted func-
tional flexibility strategies that involved adaptation through 
changes in work organisation and task allocation.

Our analyses showed that differences between coun-
tries in these industrial and economic characteristics 
went a considerable way to explaining the variations 
between countries in levels of employee involvement. 
Indeed, once they had been taken into account, it was 
only employees in the Nordic countries that stood out as 

having a significantly higher level of participation in high 
involvement organisations.

However, the analyses also indicate that institutional fac-
tors matter for both within country and between coun-
try variation. First, there was consistent evidence that 
employee involvement was enhanced by human resources 
policies that had a strong orientation towards employee 
development. Second the existence of clear institutional 
channels for direct dialogue between employers and 
employees was closely related to employees’ reports 
that they could exercise effective influence over decisions. 
It should be noted that there was also an association 
between the existence of such channels and the existence 
of an employee representative in the workplace. Third the 
distinctiveness of the Nordic pattern, and the fact that it 
could not be accounted for by workforce structure, points 
to the likely importance of the policy environment for the 
prevalence of higher levels of employee involvement. There 
are diverse views about the structural factors that might 
underlie a policy culture that favours greater employee 
involvement. One view is that a high level of coordination 
between employers is the most important factor. But this 
was not supported by the evidence. Instead the results 
point to the importance of strong trade union membership, 
possibly reflecting the fact that this tends to translate into 
higher levels of coordination between the social partners 
at national level.

Consequences of employee 
involvement

The most controversial claim of advocates of employee 
involvement is that it leads to a ‘win–win’ situation that is 
advantageous to both employers and employees. In line 
with the argument that it is advantageous for work perfor-
mance in a highly skilled economy, employee involvement 
is thought to benefit the employer by encouraging higher 
levels of work motivation. But it is also suggested the 
conditions that are conducive to stronger work motivation 
benefit employees by providing them with a better quality 
of working life. With the strong caveat that directions of 
causality cannot be tested with cross-sectional data, it is 
nonetheless notable that the results of the analysis were 
in general consistent with this view.

Higher involvement was strongly associated with oppor-
tunities for learning at work, both informal learning in the 
process of carrying out work tasks and formal learning 
in the form of employer-provided training. At the same 
time, it was related to the different measures available 
of work motivation. Employees in organisations offering 
greater scope for participation in decision-making were 
more likely to find their work interesting and to report that 

69

their jobs gave them a feeling of work well done. Both fac-
tors are likely to reflect higher commitment to their work 
tasks and high task commitment is likely to be conducive 
to good work performance. Higher levels of employee 
involvement were also related to the way people felt about 
their organisations. They were more satisfied with their 
working conditions, they were more likely to feel at home 
in the organisation and they were more likely to believe 
that the organisation motivated their best performance. 
There is substantial evidence that stronger organisational 
commitment affects organisational performance, at least 
in part because it is associated with reduced absence 
and lower levels of staff turnover. Given the dependence 
of organisations in advanced economies on highly skilled 
employees, with knowledge that derives not only from 
general education and training, but also from internal 
knowledge of the organisation and its environment, such 
factors are likely to be particularly important.

There can be quite contrasting expectations about the rela-
tionship between employee involvement and employee well-
being. The ability to have a say in the important decisions 
about one’s work and working environment may respond to 
quite basic needs for control. To the extent that involvement 
makes work more interesting and more meaningful, it is likely 
to contribute to a more favourable sense of personal identity. 
However, organisational conditions that promote higher work 
motivation are not necessarily advantageous for employee 
well-being. A greater sense of personal responsibility for 
the outcomes of work can lead to higher levels of anxiety. 
A stronger commitment to work may lead to extended hours 
and greater work intensity undermining, in the longer term, 
employees’ psychological and physical health.

In general, the results supported the view that employee 
involvement was associated with higher employee wel-
fare. There were lower levels of work environment risk in 
organisations that gave employees more say over deci-
sions. This did not reflect the greater prevalence of such 
organisations in particular types of industry or among 
particular types of employees. The pattern still emerged 
clearly when industry, occupational class and a wide range 
of other factors were controlled for. It seems plausible that, 
where there are higher levels of dialogue between employ-
ers and employees, workplace risks will be recognised 
and addressed by management more rapidly. There was 
also no evidence that higher involvement organisations 
led to more work pressure; work pressure was great-
est where involvement was low. Where employees had 
more influence over the way they did their jobs and over 
workplace decisions, they also had greater flexibility over 
their working hours, which was likely to help offset the 
tensions generated by competing demands between work 
and family life. Overall, it was in high involvement organi-
sations that employees were least likely to consider that 
their health and safety was at risk because of their work.

Consistent  with  the  positive  relationship  between 
employee involvement and the objective features of the 
work environment, the greater the extent that employees 
could participate in decision-making the higher their psy-
chological well-being. The positive effect of involvement 
on well-being was also evident in its overall association 
with lower levels of physical stress symptoms and lower 
absence rates (although the evidence here was less con-
sistent at country group level). There was some evidence 
that a factor that may have contributed to the beneficial 
effects of decision-making scope is that it helps to offset 
the effects of work intensity.

There has been a long-standing issue about whether 
work quality is as important for women as for men. The 
sceptical position is that women attach less importance 
to their work experiences because their values are more 
focused on family life. From this perspective, participation 
may have fewer positive effects for psychological well-
being; indeed it may be detrimental to it by increasing the 
potential for work–life conflict. The contrary argument is 
that women have now become integrated into the labour 
market to a point where there is little difference from 
men in the importance they attach to work quality. The 
evidence showed that women’s psychological well-being 
was generally lower than men’s, but this was true whatever 
type of organisation they worked in. The positive effect 
of being in a high involvement organisation compared 
with being in a low involvement organisation was just as 
strong for women as for men.

Trends in employee 
involvement 2005–2010

The evidence for analysing trends over time was limited 
to the pattern for task discretion. The main scenarios 
of the growth of a knowledge-based economy and its 
organisational commitments were developed at a time of 
sustained economic growth. They led to the expectation 
that there would be a steady increase in the skill levels 
of the workforce and hence an improvement over time in 
employees’ ability to influence decisions in their organisa-
tions. There was little in the way of formal prediction of 
what might happen under conditions of economic crisis. 
However, the logic of the argument would lead to the 
expectation that, in a situation of negative or low growth, 
there would be no improvement and possibly a deteriora-
tion in employee influence at work.

The evidence points instead to a small rise overall in task 
discretion, though this was primarily due to changes in 
the Southern group of countries and in eastern European 
countries. A possible explanation of this is that, in the 
less developed economies, the burden of job loss and 

70

WORK ORGANISATION AND  EMPLOYEE INVOLVEMENT IN EUROPEunemployment fell predominantly on the relatively low 
skilled and those who had the least control over their job 
tasks. The departure of those with lowest task discre-
tion would have raised the average level of employee 
involvement of those who remained in work. There was 
some empirical support for this in the positive association 
between the proportion of those in lower occupational 
classes in the flow into unemployment in 2009 and the 
extent to which task discretion increased in specific coun-
tries. To the extent that this was the case, the economic 
crisis may have accentuated the process of convergence 
in employee involvement between European countries.

Policy implications

The analyses point to the key importance of employee 
involvement as a factor that brings significant benefits 
for employers’ objectives in raising levels of work per-
formance and for the quality of employees’ lives at work. 
Furthermore, it can be seen as a critical aspect of work 
quality both in itself and arguably for other key dimensions 
of work quality such as physical working conditions and 
work intensity. Its effects are of similar significance for 
male and female employees.

The analyses point to the importance of structural fac-
tors in affecting patterns of work organisation and to the 
potential role of policy-related determinants. They gen-
erally confirmed the view that higher levels of employee 
involvement are more likely to be found in conditions of 
relatively advanced technology and a more skilled work-
force. A large amount of the initial differences between 
countries could be accounted for by such underlying 
differences in industrial and workforce structure. But 
at the same time, they indicated that policy could make 
a difference – at the level of the organisation itself and 
at national level.

To begin with, it was found that policies that encourage 
employers to invest in well-developed human resources 
capacities are likely to be beneficial for employee involve-
ment (as indeed for other important workforce character-
istics such as skills). Involvement policies can be complex 
to establish, require skilled handling of first-line manage-
ment and need to be maintained over time. Large corpo-
rations have tended to adopt such practices out of their 
own volition as a way of handling the more complex and 
inter-dependent rule structures associated with larger 
organisations. Very small organisations may well be able 
to handle potential problems in a largely informal way. The 
real difficulty lies with medium and medium–small sized 
companies for whom the cost and expertise required 
to implement advanced human resources management 
practices may be major obstacles. A way forward for such 
companies may well be through better networking between 

ConCluSIonS

companies and sharing of knowledge, skills and facilities. 
This is likely to be an area in which policy initiatives, incen-
tives and financial support will be particularly important 
at least in the initial set-up phase.

Second, it has been seen that the existence of institution-
alised channels of communication is strongly associated 
with the prevalence of effective employee involvement. 
This is facilitated where there is a strong human resources 
capacity to manage such arrangement. But it is also likely 
to be affected by formal legal requirements with respect 
to consultation and dialogue. There would seem to be 
a strong rationale behind earlier European Commission 
initiatives to spread procedures encouraging information 
and consultation. There is likely to be further benefit from 
ensuring a high level of coverage and deepening the scope 
of such practices.

Finally, at national level, it has been established that, 
even once a very wide range of structural factors have 
been taken into account, the Nordic countries within the 
EU emerge as particularly effective in their employee 
involvement practices. It seems likely that this reflects 
the fact that these countries have had policies that have 
actively pursued such objectives. In Sweden, particularly 
from the 1970s, a series of legal changes and well-funded 
initiatives were undertaken by government culminating in 
a vast programme for working life reform in the 1990s, 
the Working Life Fund (AFL), which is estimated to have 
affected approximately half of all employees across the 
range of industrial sectors. In Denmark and the Nether-
lands, improvements in work quality were driven primarily 
through reforms in health and safety measures. These 
countries appear to have developed a distinctive institu-
tional framework that emphasised inclusiveness both at 
work and in the labour market.

71

Bibliography

Atkinson, J. (1985), Flexibility, uncertainty and manpower 
management, IMS Report No.89, Institute of Manpower 
Studies, Brighton.

Barker, J. R. (1993), ‘Tightening the iron cage: Concertive 
control in self-managing teams’, Administrative Science 
Quarterly, Vol. 38, No. 3, pp. 408–437.

Bell, D. (1974), The coming of post-industrial society: 
A venture in social forecasting, Heinemann, London.

Blauner, R. (1964), Alienation and freedom. The factory 
worker and his industry, University of Chicago Press, 
Chicago.

Braverman, H. (1974), Labor and monopoly capital: The 
degradation of work in the twentieth century, Monthly 
Review Press, New York.

Burns, T. and Stalker, G. M. (1961), The management of 
innovation, Tavistock Publications, London.

Capelli, P., Bassi, L., Katz, H., Knoke, D., Osterman, P. 
and Useem, M. (1997), Change at work, Oxford University 
Press, Oxford.

Chinoy, E. (1955), Automobile workers and the American 
dream, Doubleday, New York, 1955.

Eurofound (2010), Fifth European Working Conditions 
Survey, 2010: Technical report, Dublin.

Eurofound (2012), Fifth European Working Conditions 
Survey,  Publications  Office  of  the  European  Union, 
Luxembourg.

European Commission (2010), Investing in Europe’s future. 
Fifth report on economic, social and territorial cohesion, 
Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg.

Felstead, A., Gallie, D., Green, F. and Zhou, Y. (2010), 
‘Employee involvement, the quality of training and the 
learning environment: An individual level analysis’, Inter-
national Journal of Human Resource Management, Vol. 
21, No. 10, pp. 1667–1688.

Friedmann, G. (1946), Problèmes humains du machinisme 
industriel, Gallimard, Paris.

Frobel, P. and Marchington, M. (2005), ‘Teamworking 
structures  and  worker  perceptions:  A  cross-national 
study in pharmaceuticals’, International Journal of Human 
Resources Management, Vol. 16, No. 2, pp. 256–276.

Gallie, D. (2005), ‘Work pressure in Europe 1996–2001: 
Trends and determinants’, British Journal of Industrial 
Relations, Vol. 43, No. 3, pp. 351–375.

Cronbach, L. J. (1951), ‘Coefficient alpha and the internal 
structure of tests’, Psychometrica, Vol. 16, pp. 297–334.

Gallie, D. (ed.) (2007), Employment regimes and the quality 
of work, Oxford University Press, Oxford.

de Terssac, G. (1992), Autonomie dans de travail, Presses 
Universitaires de France, Paris.

Durand, C. (1978), Le travail enchaine, Seuil, Paris.

Durand, J. P. and Hatzfeld, N. (2003), Living with labour: 
Life on the line at Peugeot France, Palgrave Macmillan, 
Basingstoke.

Gallie, D., Felstead, A. and Green, F. (2004), ‘Changing 
patterns of task discretion in Britain’, Work, Employment 
and Society, Vol. 18, No. 2, pp. 243–266.

Gallie, D., Zhou, Y., Felstead, A. and Green, F. (2012), 
‘Teamwork, skill development and employee welfare’, 
British Journal of Industrial Relations, Vol. 50, No. 1, 
pp. 23–46.

Eurofound (2009), Working conditions in the European 
Union: Work organisation, Publications Office of the Euro-
pean Union, Luxembourg.

Green, F. and McIntosh, S. (2001), ‘The intensification 
of work in Europe’, Labour Economics, Vol. 8, No. 2, 
pp. 291–308.

72

WORK ORGANISATION AND  EMPLOYEE INVOLVEMENT IN EUROPEHackman, J. R. and Oldham, G. R. (1980), Work redesign, 
Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA.

Hakim, C. (1991), ‘Grateful slaves and self-made women: 
Fact and fantasy in women’s work orientations’, European 
Sociological Review, Vol. 7, No. 2, pp. 101–121.

Hakim, C. (1996), Key issues in women’s work, Athlone 
Press, London.

Hall, P. A. and Soskice, D. (2001), ‘An introduction to vari-
eties of capitalism’, in Hall, P. A. and Soskice, D. (eds.), 
Varieties of capitalism: The institutional foundation of 
comparative advantage, Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Heller, F., Pusic, E., Strauss, G. and Wilpert, B. (1998), 
Organizational participation: Myth and reality, Oxford 
University Press, Oxford.

IDE  (Industrial  Democracy  in  Europe,  International 
Research Group) (1981), Industrial democracy in Europe, 
Clarendon Press, Oxford.

Meyer, J. P. and Allen, N. J. (1997), Commitment in the 
workplace:  Theory,  research  and  application,  Sage, 
London.

Piore, M. J. and Sabel, C. F. (1984), The second industrial 
divide: Possibilities for prosperity, Basic Books, New York.

Soskice, D. (1999), ‘Divergent production regimes: Coordi-
nated and uncoordinated market economies in the 1980s 
and 1990s’, in Kitschelt, H. (ed.), Continuity and change 
in contemporary capitalism, Cambridge University Press, 
Cambridge.

Spenner, K. I. (1990), ‘Skill: Meaning, methods and meas-
ures’, Work and Occupations, Vol. 17, No. 4, pp. 399–421.

Tannenbaum, A. S. and Rozgonyi, T. (1986), Authority and 
reward in organizations: An international research, Institute 
for Social Research, University of Michigan, Michigan.

Theorell, T. (2007), ‘Psychosocial factors in research on 
working conditions and health in Sweden’, Scandinavian 
Journal of Work and Environment Health, Vol. 33, No. 1, 
pp. 20–26.

Theorell, T. and Karesek, R. (1996), ‘Current issues relat-
ing to psychosocial job strain and cardiovascular disease 
research’, Journal of Occupational Health and Psychology, 
Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 9–26.

BIBlIogrAPhy

Visser, J. (2011), ICTWSS: Database on institutional char-
acteristics of trade unions, wage setting, state intervention 
and social pacts in 34 countries between 1960 and 2007, 
Version 3 – May 2011, Amsterdam Institute for Advanced 
Labour Studies (AIAS), University of Amsterdam, Amster-
dam, available at http://www.uva-aias.net/208.

Wall, T. D., Cordery, J. L. and Clegg, C. W. (2002), ‘Empow-
erment, performance, and operational uncertainty: A theo-
retical integration’, Applied Psychology, Vol. 51, No. 1, 
pp. 146–169.

Walton, R. E. (1985), ‘From control to commitment in the 
workplace’, Harvard Business Review, Vol. 85, No. 2, 
pp. 77–84.

Westergaard, R. H. and Winkel, J. (2011), ‘Occupational 
musculoskeletal and mental health: Significance of ration-
alization and opportunities to create sustainable produc-
tion systems – A systematic review’, Applied Ergonomics, 
Vol. 42, No. 2, pp. 261–296.

Woodward, J. (ed.) (1970), Industrial organization: Behav-
iour and control, Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Wyer, P. and Mason, J. (1999), ‘Empowerment in small 
businesses’, Participation & Empowerment: An Interna-
tional Journal, Vol. 7, No. 7, pp. 180–193.

Zhou, Y. (2009), British employees’ organizational par-
ticipation: Trends, determinants and impact, VDM Verlag, 
Berlin.

73

Annex: The 
European Working 
Conditions Survey 
series

The European Working Conditions Survey (EWCS), estab-
lished in 1990, is one of the few sources of information 
providing an overview of working conditions in Europe 
for the purposes of:

 Ô assessing and quantifying working conditions of 
employees and the self-employed across Europe 
on a harmonised basis;

countries, the second wave in 1995 covered 15 coun-
tries, and from the third wave in 2000–2002 onwards, 
all 27 current EU Member States were included. Other 
countries covered by the survey include Turkey (in 2002, 
2005 and 2010), Croatia and Norway (in 2005 and 2010), 
Switzerland (in 2005), and Albania, Kosovo, Montene-
gro and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia 
(in 2010).

 Ô analysing relationships between different aspects 

of working conditions;

Fifth EWCS

 Ô identifying groups at risk and issues of concern, 

and progress made;

 Ô monitoring trends by providing homogeneous indi-

cators on these issues;

 Ô contributing to European policy development on 

quality of work and employment issues.

The EWCS was carried out in 1991, 1995, 2000 (with an 
extension to the then candidate countries in 2001 and 
2002), 2005 and 2010. The growing range of countries 
covered by each wave reflects the expansion of the 
European Union. The first wave in 1991 covered only 12 

The fieldwork for the fifth EWCS was carried out between 
January and June 2010.19 In total, 43,816 face-to-face 
interviews were carried out, with workers in 34 Euro-
pean countries answering questions on a wide range of 
issues regarding their employment situation and working 
conditions.

The target population consisted of all residents in the 34 
countries aged 15 or older (aged 16 or older in Norway, 
Spain and the UK) and in employment at the time of the 
survey. People were considered to be in employment if 
they had worked for pay or profit for at least one hour 
in the week preceding the interview – definition by the 
International Labour Organization (ILO).

19  Fieldwork continued until 17 July 2010 in Belgium due to the extended sample size, and until 29 August 2010 in Norway due to organisational 

issues.

74

WORK ORGANISATION AND  EMPLOYEE INVOLVEMENT IN EUROPEAnnEx: ThE EuroPEAn WorkIng ConDITIonS SurvEy SErIES

The scope of the survey questionnaire has widened sub-
stantially since the first wave, aiming to provide a com-
prehensive picture of the everyday reality of men and 
women at work. Consequently, the number of questions 
and issues covered in the survey has expanded in each 
subsequent wave. By retaining a core of key questions, 
the survey allows for comparison over time. By using the 
same questionnaire in all countries, the survey allows for 
comparison across countries.

The main topics covered in the questionnaire for the fifth 
EWCS were job context, working time, work intensity, 
physical factors, cognitive factors, psychosocial factors, 
violence, harassment and discrimination, work organisa-
tion, skills, training and career prospects, social rela-
tionships, work–life balance and financial security, job 
fulfilment, and health and well-being.

governments made use of the possibility offered by Euro-
found to fund an addition to the initial sample size.

Fieldwork outcome and response rates

The  interviews  were  carried  out  face-to-face  in  the 
respondents’ homes. The average duration of the inter-
views was 44 minutes. The overall response rate for the 
fifth wave was 44%, but with considerable variation in 
response rates between countries from 31% in Spain to 
74% in Latvia.

Weighting

Weighting was applied to ensure that results based on 
the fifth EWCS data could be considered representative 
for workers in Europe.

New questions were introduced in the fifth wave to enable 
more in-depth analysis of psychosocial risks, workplace 
social innovation, precarious employment and job security, 
place of work, work–life balance, leadership styles, health 
and the respondent’s household situation. The question-
naire also included new questions addressed specifically 
to self-employed workers (such as financial security).

 Ô Selection probability weights (or design 

weights): To correct for the different probabilities 
of being selected for the survey associated with 
household size. People in households with fewer 
workers have a greater chance of being selected 
into the sample than people in households with 
more workers.

Gender mainstreaming has been an important concern 
when designing the questionnaire. Attention has been 
paid to the development of gender-sensitive indicators 
and to ensuring that the questions capture the work of 
both men and women.

Revisions to the questionnaire are developed in coopera-
tion with the tripartite stakeholders of Eurofound.

Sample

In each country, a multistage, stratified random sampling 
design was used. In the first stage, primary sampling units 
(PSUs) were sampled, stratifying according to geographi-
cal region – Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statis-
tics (NUTS) 2 level or below – and level of urbanisation. 
Subsequently, households in each PSU were sampled. 
In countries where an updated, high-quality address or 
population register was available, this was used as the 
sampling frame. If such a register was not available, a ran-
dom route procedure was applied. In the fifth EWCS, for 
the first time, the enumeration of addresses through this 
random route procedure was separated from the inter-
viewing stage. Finally, a screening procedure was applied 
to select the eligible respondent within each household.

The target number of interviews was 1,000 in all coun-
tries except for Slovenia (1,400), Italy, Poland and the 
UK (1,500), Germany and Turkey (2,000), France (3,000) 
and Belgium (4,000). The Belgian, French and Slovenian 

 Ô Post-stratification weights: To correct for the 
differences in the willingness and availability to 
participate in the survey between different groups 
of the population. These weights ensure that the 
results accurately reflect the population of workers 
in each country.

 Ô Supra-national weights: To correct for the differ-
ences between countries in the size of their work-
force. These weights ensure that larger countries 
weigh heavier in the EU-level results.

Quality assurance

Each stage of the fifth EWCS was carefully planned, 
closely monitored and documented, and specific con-
trols were put in place. For instance, the design phase 
paid close attention to information gathered in a data 
user survey on satisfaction with the previous wave and 
on future needs, and an assessment was made of how 
the survey could better address the topics that are central 
to European policymaking.

To ensure the questions were relevant and meaningful for 
stakeholders and respondents in all European countries, 
the questionnaire was developed by Eurofound in close 
cooperation with a questionnaire development expert 
group. The expert group included members of Euro-
found’s Governing Board, representatives of the European 
social partners, other EU bodies (European Commission, 

75

Eurostat and the European Agency for Safety and Health 
at Work), international organisations (OECD and ILO), 
national statistical institutes and leading European experts 
in the field.

Access to survey datasets

The Eurofound datasets and accompanying materials are 
stored with the UK Data Archive (UKDA) in Essex, UK, and 
promoted online via the UK Data Service.

The data are available free of charge to all those who 
intend  to  use  them  for  non-commercial  purposes. 
Requests for use for commercial purposes will be for-
warded to Eurofound for authorisation.

In order to download the data, you must register with 
the UK Data Service if you are not from a UK univer-
sity or college. For more information, please consult 
the UK Data Service web page on how to access data 
(http://ukdataservice.ac.uk/get-data/how-to-access.aspx).

Once you are registered, the quickest way to find Euro-
found data is to open the catalogue search page (http://
discover.ukdataservice.ac.uk/) and search using the key 
words “European Foundation for the Improvement of Liv-
ing and Working Conditions”.

For more information

The fifth EWCS overview report (Eurofound, 2012) and 
detailed information and analysis from the EWCS series 
are available on the Eurofound website (www.eurofound.
europa.eu). This information is updated regularly.

For further queries, please contact Sophia MacGoris in 
the Working Conditions and Industrial Relations unit, Euro-
found, Wyattville Road, Loughlinstown, Dublin 18, Ireland 
(email: smg@eurofound.europa.eu).

76

WORK ORGANISATION AND  EMPLOYEE INVOLVEMENT IN EUROPEEuropean Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions

Work organisation and employee involvement in Europe – 
A report based on the fifth European Working Conditions Survey

Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union 

2012 – VI, 76 p. – 21 x 29.7 cm

doi: 10.2806/18346
ISBN 978-92-897-1115-9

EF/13/30/EN

SALES AND SUBSCRIPTIONS

Publications for sale produced by the Publications Office of the European Union are available from 
our sales agents throughout the world.

How do I set about obtaining a publication?

Once you have obtained the list of sales agents, contact the sales agent of your choice and place 
your order. 

How do I obtain the list of sales agents?

• Go to the Publications Office website: http://www.publications.europa.eu/

• Or apply for a paper copy by fax (352) 2929 42758

T
J
-
0
1
-
1
3
-
0
0
8
-
E
N
-
N

This report explores the opportunities open 
to employees in workplaces across Europe 
to participate in decision-making, either 
in the context of their job or in relation 
to wider organisational issues affecting 
their work. Employee involvement is a key 
component of work organisation, relating 
to other dimensions such as physical 
working conditions and work intensity. Two 
dimensions of employee involvement are 
covered: task discretion – or the influence 
that employees can exercise over their 
immediate work tasks – and organisational 
participation – or the influence that 
employees have over work organisation. 
While in the EU27 as a whole there are limited 
opportunities for employees to participate 
in decision-making, the findings point to the 
clear benefits for employees in working in 
organisations that give greater scope for their 
involvement. Crucially, employee involvement 
has been shown to have a positive effect on 
employee motivation and psychological well-
being, critical elements in fostering enhanced 
work performance and company productivity.