The foundations of work environment quality – Focus on employee participation and democracy

Abstract

This article reports main findings from a study dealing with how employee participation influences the quality of the psycho-social work environment. The study was based on case studies at 11 Danish workplaces from six different industries. Both direct participation and representative forms of participation at the workplace level were studied. The aim of the study was to explore how employee participation affects the work environment in contemporary Danish working life. Employee participation is usually considered to have positive effects on organisational efficiency as well as workers’ well-being and health. Positive effects for the work environment have been identified both for direct participation, where participation is exercised by employees individually or in teams, and indirect participation, where it takes place through representatives However, forms and contents of participation change over time, and a recent debate in Scandinavia has been questioning whether new forms, or configurations, of direct participation can still be regarded as beneficial to the work environment. On this background, the study departed from a dual assumption, namely 1) that participation on the whole plays a positive role for the work environment, but 2) that certain types of participation, or participation within certain organisational contexts, may play a negative role. The findings of the study support the assumption that participation plays a positive role for the quality of the work environment. The quantitative analyses comparing levels of participation and levels of work environment quality display a pattern where the two fluctuate together: high levels of psychosocial well-being are found at workplaces with high levels of participation, and low levels of psychosocial wellbeing and participation accompany each other at other workplaces. Regarding direct participation only two workplaces deviate from the pattern, while a few more do so when it comes to representative participation. However, it is noteworthy that the top workplaces regarding work environment display high levels of direct as well as representative participation. Regarding the alternative assumption – that certain forms of participation in certain organisational contexts may affect the work environment negatively – the brief answer is that examples of this were indeed found. Notably in the banks, the IT establishment and in one of the factories configurations were found in which direct participation is closely intertwined with performance and control systems that undermine genuine job autonomy and therefore threaten psychosocial well-being. The qualitative analysis grouping the workplaces within four models of participation finds one model in particular to be able to generate work environment quality, namely the democratic model. This can be considered the most important finding from the whole study as the data from the democratically governed workplaces leave no doubt that here participation is indeed the key to the high quality of the psychosocial work environment. At these workplaces, one school and the two hospital wards, employees, acting closely together with local managers, are able to handle threats to their psycho-social work environment quite effectively.