The determinants of workers' direct participation in Spain

This thesis explores the detenninants of workers' direct participation in Spain, through a representative survey of Spanish workplaces. Hypotheses are drawn from a wide range of existing theoretical strands of the literature on participation. Therefore, predictions of the detenninants of direct participation deriving from institutionalist industrial relations work, models of human resource management, labour process research, neo-Weberian theory, network theory, systems theory and contingency theory were brought together in a model of detenninants that could be tested through quantitative analysis. The research is also original in that it develops measures used to evaluate the effects of managerial beliefs on the practice of direct participation. The model thus developed is {'lot only of use for the Spanish context, but could serve as a baseline for further comparative'research, as could the scale used to measure the scope and depth of indirect participation workplace practice. The empirical results ofthe research offer limited support, within the Spanish context, for any individual theoretical approach on the detenninants of direct participation considered with the exception of the. institutional industrial relations approach stressing the importance of workers' collective strength. In contrast with previous research on Spain, indirect participation workplace practice is revealed here to be a potentially important positive detenninant of direct participation, challenging existing views of Spanish 'exceptionalism' in this regard. Surprisingly, there is a negative relationship between the complexity ofjobs and direct participation; when combined with the findings that price competition is negatively associated with direct participation, and size positively associated, this leaves us to propose that the ideal-typical participatory workplace in Spain uses direct participation primarily as a means of integration within a broadly neo-Tayloristic approach to labour management. The wider institutional environment of industrial relations and labour management also helps explain further the general overall pattern of low emphasis on direct participation practice in Spain. More specifically, employers' societally-shaped reluctance to extend workers' voice is posited as the main obstacle to the expansion of direct participation in Spain. .These findings point to the need for sensitivity to institutional context within cross-national theorisation and research on participation, and, by extension, to that on other human resource management practices.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo