Worker participation & employee involvement - a comparative study

Traditionally, worker participation systems in most countries have been promoted by labour movements. This was done for both ideological and practical reasons. Worker participation, or industrial democracy, has been conceived as a means of democratising workplaces as well as of realising both intrinsic and extrinsic work values. This paper explores the experiences of two different forms of worker participation or employee involvement/empowerment schemes operating in two of Malta's leading enterprises: Malta Drydocks (MDD), an old ship-repair, state-owned company; and Micro-Malta (MM), the pseudonym for the local subsidiary of a foreign company producing micro-electronic components.peer-reviewe