The relation between direct participation and established industrial relations: Recent changes in the Netherlands

In the course of changes in enterprise strategy, in the organisation of the supply chain or vertical integration and in organisation of the enterprise, in many developed countries new forms of Human Resource Management and of industrial democracy or participation have been propagated or emerged. Such tendencies have been labeled as aiming towards high performance management and have often implied the multiplication of 'channels' of participation, delegation of participatory responsibility, or the replacement of more institutionally established machinery by looser forms. Within the Netherlands, a country with institutionally very established and concentrated participation, we have examined such changes in thirteen large enterprises. The picture confirms the search for new forms. However, the experience has also been that in the search for coherence of industrial relations in the enterprise, actors, both management and unions and the enterprise council, have been keen to assure an enterprise-wide framework of industrial relations, in the interest of combining coherence with devolution of responsibility to lower level authorities and direct participation. There has also been an influence of contextual characteristics and enterprise culture on enterprise-specific trajectories of change.