This book provides a critical insight into the ongoing debates and controversies that surround employee empowerment and workplace innovation. It highlights competing interests and conflicting values, and illuminates some basic tensions between confident rhetoric and everyday realities.

Academic research on employee participation has lost some of the radicalism and commitment to progressive practice that was evident through much of the 20th century, becoming more detached and coldly evaluative. While idealistic concerns are still apparent in the regular condemnation of...

Employee empowerment has become something of a managerial buzzword, conjuring up images of positive commitment and meaningful participation at the workplace. Yet guidelines on `making it happen' are typically vague and over-generalised, offering limited insights into the messy complexities of...