New forms of work organisations, direct and indirect worker participation: Evidence from the Netherlands

The paper starts with a brief introduction of the ideas with respect to the connection between the introduction of new forms of work organisation and direct and indirect participation (section 2). To show that these ideas are not just theory, but sometimes are realised in practice, we add to this section a brief description of the development within one of the parts of our case study, Albert Heijn. In the next sections we present our survey evidence with respect to the existence and backgrounds of new organisational forms (section 3), the connection with direct participation (section 4) and with the position of the works council (section 5) and the connection between direct participation and the works council (section 6). At the end, we summarise and conclude our findings in section 7.