Employee participation encompasses the range of mechanisms used to involve the workforce in decisions at all levels of the organization--whether direct or indirect--conducted with employees or through their representatives. In its various guises, the topic of employee participation has been a recurring theme in industrial relations and human resource management. One of the problems in trying to develop any analysis of participation is that there is potentially limited overlap between these different disciplinary traditions, and scholars from diverse traditions may know relatively little of the research that has been done elsewhere. Accordingly in this book, a number of the more significant disciplinary areas are analyzed in greater depth in order to ensure that readers gain a better appreciation of what participation means from these quite different contextual perspectives.

Not only is there a range of different traditions contributing to the research and literature on the subject, there is also an extremely diverse sets of practices that congregate under the banner of participation. The handbook discusses various arguments and schools of thought about employee participation, analyzes the range of forms that participation can take in practice, and examines the way in which it meets objectives that are set for it, either by employers, trade unions, individual workers, or, indeed, the state.

In doing so, the handbook brings together leading scholars from around the world who present and discuss fundamental theories and approaches to participation in organization as well as their connection to broader political forces. These selections address the changing contexts of employee participation, different cultural/ institutional models, old/'new' economy models, shifting social and political patterns, and the correspondence between industrial and political democracy and participation.

About the Series
Oxford Handbooks in Business & Management bring together the world's leading scholars on the subject to discuss current research and the latest thinking in a range of interrelated topics including Strategy, Organizational Behavior, Public Management, International Business, and many others. Containing completely new essays with extensive referencing to further reading and key ideas, the volumes, in hardback or paperback, serve as both a thorough introduction to a topic and a useful desk reference for scholars and advanced students alike.

About the Author:
Adrian Wilkinson is Professor of Employment Relations and Director of the Centre for Work, Organisation, and Wellbeing at Griffith University. He has written extensively on many aspects of Human Resource Management and Industrial Relations. He has written seven books, five monographs, eighty articles in refereed journals, as well as numerous book chapters and other papers. He is a Fellow and Accredited Examiner of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development in the UK and a Fellow of the Australian Human Resource Institute. He is on the editorial board of several refereed journals and is also Chief Editor for the International Journal of Management Reviews and an Associate Editor for Human Resource Management Journal.
Paul J. Gollan is currently an Associate Professor, Department of Business, Division of Economic and Financial Studies, Macquarie University. He is also Associate Fellow in the Employment Relations and Organisational Behaviour Group in the Department of Management and Research Associate at the London School of Economics. He is also a Fellow of the Labour-Management Studies Foundation at Macquarie University which is jointly hosted by the Division of Economic and Financial Studies and the Macquarie Graduate School of Management (MGSM). He is also currently an Adjunct Professor at MGSM and Visiting Senior Fellow at the Australian School of Business at the University of New South Wales. Paul has authored, co-authored and co-edited a number of books in the fields of human resources and industrial relations including Employee Relations in the Press (1997) and Models of employee participation in a changing global environment: diversity and interaction (2001). Mick Marchington has been
Professor of Human Resource Management at what is now Manchester Business School, University of Manchester, since 1995, having joined the University in the late 1980s. He has published widely on HRM, including about twenty books and monographs and nearly 150 book chapters and papers in refereed journals. He is best known for his work on employee involvement and participation, on the links between HRM, strategy and performance, and for more recent research examining how HRM is in danger of becoming fragmented as organisations move towards greater use of contracting and partnership arrangements. He is also Editor of the Human Resource Management Journal, one of the leading journals in the area, and he has been joint chair of the HRM Study Group of the International Industrial Relations Association since 2003. He is a Chartered Companion of the CIPD, the highest grade of membership available. David Lewin is Faculty Director of the UCLA Anderson School's Advanced Program in Human Resource
Management, Young Presidents Organization (YPO) Management Seminar, and Strategic Leadership Institute (SLI). He is the author of many published works on such topics as human resource strategy, human resource management practices and business performance, workplace and organizational dispute resolution, and compensation and reward systems, including executive compensation and public sector pay practices.