In its various guises, the topic of employee participation has been a recurring theme in industrial relations and personnel management. The last twenty years has witnessed growing managerial interest in participation, specifically in the area of employee involvement (EI). Recent EIinitiatives have been management sponsored and, not surprisingly, have reflected a management agenda concerned primarily with employee motivation and commitment to organizational objectives. Compliance, hierarchy and following rules are seen as supposedly less appropriate for employees who areexpected to work beyond contract and exercise their initiative. Of course, there is a danger that many of the new initiatives are viewed solely in a positive and upbeat manner, so ignoring the more contested and mundane nature of participation. 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. This handbook discusses the different arguments and schools of thought,with the aim of problematizing it, not just in terms of implementation but also principles. It brings together leading scholars from around the world, to present and discuss some fundamental theories and approaches to participation in organization, and their connection to broader political and evenchange. The Handbook contains a range of theoretically-informed contributions written by leading scholars in their respective fields, giving comprehensive coverage of changes in participation. It reviews changing contexts, different cultural/institutional models, old/'new' economy models, changingsocial and political patterns, and the correspondence between industrial and political democracy and participation.

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.

Section I: Introduction1. The History of Employee Participation and Recent Developments, Adrian Wilkinson, Paul J. Gollan, Mick Marchington, and David LewinSection II: Perspectives2. A Human Resource Management perspective on Employee Participation, Peter Boxall and John Purcell3. An Industrial Relations Perspective on Employee Participation, Peter Ackers4. A Legal Perspective on Employee Participation, Glenn Patmore5. Labour Process and Marxist Perspectives on Employee Participation, Miguel Martinez Lucio6. An Economic Perspective on Employee Participation, David Marsden and Almudena CanibanoSection III: Forms of Participation in Practice7. Direct Participation, Adrian Wilkinson and Tony Dundon8. Collective Bargaining as a Form of Employee Participation: Observations on the United States and Europe, Richard Block and Peter Berg9. Employer Strategies Towards Non-Union Collective Voice, Paul J. Gollan10. Worker Directors and Work Ownership/Co-operatives, Ray Markey, Greg Patmore, and Nikki Balnave11. Employee Participation Through Non-Union Forms of Employee Representation, Bruce Kaufman and Daphne Taras12. Works Councils: The European Model of Industrial Democracy?, Rebecca Gumbrell-McCormick and Richard Hyman13. Employee Share Ownership, Eric Kaarsemaker, Andrew Pendleton, and Erik Poutsma14. Financial Participation, Ian KesslerSectino IV: Processes and Outcomes15. Labour Union Responses to Participation in Employing Organisations, Gregor Gall16. Voice in the Wilderness: The Shift from Union to Non-Union Voice, Alex Bryson, Rafael Gomez, and Paul Willman17. High Involvement Management and Performance, Steve Wood18. Employee Voice and Mutual Gains, David LewinSection V: Policy and Comparative Issues19. Paricipation Across Organizational Boundaries, Mick Marchington and Andrew Timming20. Public Policy and Employee Participation, John Budd and Stefan Zagelmeyer21. Corporate Governance and Employee Participation, Howard Gospel and Andrew Pendleton22. Cross-National Variation in Representation Rights and Governance at Work, Carola Frege and John Godard23. Employee Participation in Developing Countries and Emerging Countries, Geoffrey Wood24. International and Comparative Perspectives on Employee Participation, Nick Walies and Russell Lansbury25. Freedom, Democracy, and Capitalism: Ethics and Employee Participation, Robyn Archer