The idea behind the establishment of European Works Councils (EWCs) is that these are bodies which should be informed and consulted on company decisions and actions. However, this flow of information is often disrupted by confidentiality constraints imposed by management. Three central research...

The EU is striving for an ‘Innovative Union’. Various case studies already hinted that the involvement of various types of employees is crucial for the organisational innovativeness. Using data from a large scale Belgian employee level survey in five industries, this article focuses on the...

Promoting the innovative potential of employees is a main challenge for HR professionals. Previous studies already stressed the role of job design for employee innovativeness. Building on the work of Karasek & Theorell (1990), we focus on the relation between job design, work engagement and...

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to study how employee representatives in European Works Councils (EWCs) treat confidential information and how such strategies might improve the EWC functioning. Design/methodology/approach: Building on interviews of several case studies of EWCs, this paper...

Purpose: Identify the different types of experiences of European Works Council (EWC) members based on the four fields of interaction of EWCs and evaluate their relative presence. Design/methodology/approach: Latent profile analysis using survey data of over 1600 EWC representatives from more...

This policy brief considers the lack of European Works Councils through a Belgian perspective. It discusses Belgian companies who are currently engaged in establishing one or have developed ‘functionally equivalent' structures. The remaining companies are confronted with serious obstacles to...

In 2016 it will be 20 years since the first European Works Councils (EWC) directive came into force in the EU. In the same year, the European Commission is planning an evaluation of the EWC recast directive that will undoubtedly lead to debate on the need for further review of European...

This policy brief takes as its starting point the fact that as soon as a company engages in European-level transnational restructuring, transnational information and consultation is needed to enable the social partners to consider the cross-border dynamic of the planned measures.This policy...

In 2009, Europe launched a Recast Directive on European Works Councils (EWCs) aiming to improve:(1) the effectiveness of EWCs and (2) increase the amount of EWCs. In 2016, this Recast Directive will be evaluated by the European Commission. This report feeds into this, building on data of EWC...