Employee Participation in the Management of Working Life: An Historical Analysis Focusing on Danish and Scandinavian Conditions

Abstract

It is argued that the historical development of employee participation in the management of working life is a complex process in which three different institutional logics have been at play throughout the twentieth century in industrialized societies: professional communities, collective bargaining, and co-management. Even though the logics were constructed at different times in history, none of them is necessarily obsolete. But their importance in the total picture of the regulation of working life has changed. The logics are robust as institutions in the sense that they have tried, each in their own way, to adapt to the challenges of working life—that is, to new technology and globalization. As the concrete historical development differs from country to country, requiring a contextual delimitation, I have chosen to focus primarily on conditions in Denmark and secondarily on conditions in the Scandinavian countries: Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. In a concluding perspective a number of traits characterizing international development are pointed at, traits that may become important for the three institutional logics. They concern changes in employment relations and in the nature of tasks.

Notes

1. In comparison, the unionization rate in Sweden is 81%, in Norway 57%; in Germany and the UK 30%; and in France only 9%; which is on a par with that of the USA.

2. With the permission of the publisher this sub-session and the following sub-session are slightly modified part of a chapter in Westenholz (2003b).

3. In the following discussion I refer primarily to the Norwegian experiments, but the Swedish experiments are similar. The Swedish experiment, however, was less eclectic and less rooted in a single theory, such as socio-technical theory.

4. Sandberg et al. (1992) and Sandberg ed. (1995) also make an important contribution to the debate on workplace democracy in Sweden.

5. There is a vast number of publications from this program. I refer only to some of the publications that were written in English: Engelstad and Gustavsen (1993), Gustavsen (1985), Gustavsen (1991), Gustavsen (1992), Gustavsen (1995, pp. 103–124), Gustavsen et al. (1991), Toulmin and Gustavsen (eds) (1996). See also Brulin (2000).

6. See, e.g., Engelstad (1995, 1996), Pålshaugen (1998, 2001), Pålshaugen and Quale (2000), Quale (2000b).