Human Resource Management, Employee Participation and European Works Councils: The Case of Pharmaceutical Industry in Greece

Eleni Triantafillidou () and Theodore Koutroukis
Additional contact information
Eleni Triantafillidou: Department of Economics, Democritus University of Thrace, 69100 Komotini, Greece
Theodore Koutroukis: Department of Economics, Democritus University of Thrace, 69100 Komotini, Greece

Societies, 2022, vol. 12, issue 6, 1-18

Abstract: Employee participation is a broad notion that encompasses sets of practices that enable employees to participate in the decision-making process on issues affecting them leading to a committed workforce. According to the 2009/38/EC Directive, a European Workers’ Council (EWC) is established in all undertakings and all community-scale groups of undertakings for the purpose of informing and consulting employees. This study investigates the impact of employee participation on employees and organizations and more specifically the potential benefits and the added value of participation for employees and organizations, the potential costs and threats of employee participation and the added value of EWCs in multinational subsidiaries in the pharmaceutical industry in Greece. The data gathering was carried out through in-depth semi-structured interviews with management, HR executives, trade union representatives and EWC representatives using a semi-structured questionnaire based on the state-of-the-art literature review. Organizations participating in the study are subsidiaries of multinational companies with an active European Works Council in the pharmaceutical industry in Greece. Findings suggest that there are potential benefits of employee participation practices for the employees and added value for the pharmaceutical companies and provide a useful perspective for managers and researchers in the field of labor relations and human resource management.

Keywords: employee participation; labor relations; human resource management; European Works Councils; pharmaceutical industry; multinationals (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A13 A14 P P0 P1 P2 P3 P4 P5 Z1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4698/12/6/167/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4698/12/6/167/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsoctx:v:12:y:2022:i:6:p:167-:d:978819

Access Statistics for this article

Societies is currently edited by Ms. Farrah Sun

More articles in Societies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().