Abstract:
The purpose of this research was to compare employee
participation practices in a Swedish and a British bank.
There has been considerable interest in human resource
management over the past decade, of which employee
participation forms an important part, but there have been
very few studies which attempt a qualitative comparison of
international aspects of this subject. By using a wider
study, the Price Waterhouse Cranfield Project on .
International Human Resource Management, a European context
is provided for the case study material, which examines in
depth the forms and outcomes of employee participation in a
Swedish and British setting.
A triangulation methodology was employed using two
questionnaires given to employees of each organisation, a
series of in-depth interviews, a reading of company
documentation and personal visits. This enabled the use of a
multiple of approaches with the questionnaires providing a
framework for the in-depth interviews.
Four hypotheses were posed which offered tentative
explanations for the similarities and differences in
employee participation practices in Sweden and Britain.
The findings were then analysed using Poole's Framework of
Participation which proposes a number of contingent factors
which influence the outcomes of employee participation. The
thesis showed that Swedes allow greater participation in the
workplace than the British, explanations of which are rooted
in the cultural and ideological differences of the two
societies. Secondly, it was shown that the drive for profit
or financial stability will override participation
mechanisms if it is felt necessary for survival. Thirdly,
HRM techniques of employee participation are used mainly at
a micro (workplace) level in the organisation as they can
safely be distanced from any strategic decision making. Thus
the strength of employee participation is very much anchored
to the latent power of employees which is influenced by
convergent forces such as economic, technological and
political factors, and divergent forces such as cultural and
ideological factors.
