The rights of the employee and the themes of employee ownership and participation have been central, recurring themes as the body of Catholic Social Thought has developed. There is now a unified corpus of official Catholic teaching that focuses the resources of moral theology and natural law theory on the important social issues of the day such as this. The description and explanation of the essential elements of Catholic Social Thought and its relationship to these themes helps the reader think about the place of the corporation in the economy and whether British and European corporate governance and labour law do what they should to put the employee at the centre of corporate governance.

This volume is an examination of the origins, characteristics and performance of employee-owned firms. It focuses on firms that have converted to either partial or full employee ownership using recent institutional, fiscal and legal innovations. Based on five years of empirical research, this is a topical contribution to recent debates on the challenging nature of employment.

This title was first published in 2001. Management of the employment relationship changed markedly in the last two decades of the 21st century, and a major part of this has been the extension of employee involvement and participation in the workplace. Modern management theorists and researchers have commonly emphasized the importance of two-way communication and co-operation between management and labour in determining the success of human resource management (HRM) strategy and in maximizing workplace efficiency. Some researchers argue employee participation and empowerment are progressive management practices which have universal benefits to performance enhancement, as opposed to most other HRM practices whose success is contingent upon the organizational context. This title explores these themes through an international collection of case studies, which are the outcome of a comparative project of the Workers' Participation Study Group of the International Industrial Relations Association (IIRA).

"Principal author ... was Charles Steinecke III"--P. [3] of cover.

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. In its various guises, the topic of employee participation has been a recurring theme in industrial relations and human resource management. One of the problems in trying to develop any analysis of participation is that there is potentially limited overlap between these different disciplinary traditions, and scholars from diverse traditions may know relatively little of the research that has been done elsewhere. Accordingly in this book, a number of the more significant disciplinary areas are analysed in greater depth in order to ensure that readers gain a better appreciation of what participation means from these quite different contextual perspectives. Not only is there a range of different traditions contributing to the research and literature on the subject, there is also an extremely diverse sets of practices that congregate under the banner of participation. The handbook discusses various arguments and schools of thought about employee participation, analyzes the range of forms that participation can take in practice, and examines the way in which it meets objectives that are set for it, either by employers, trade unions, individual workers, or, indeed, the state. In doing so, the Handbook brings together leading scholars from around the world who present and discuss fundamental theories and approaches to participation in organization as well as their connection to broader political forces. These selections address the changing contexts of employee participation, different cultural/ institutional models, old/'new' economy models, shifting social and political patterns, and the correspondence between industrial and political democracy and participation.

First published in 1997, this is an important and wide-ranging book. It is rooted in a fascinating, research-based case study of employee participation in the state-owned Greek public power (electricity) corporation. Drawing on extensive familiarity with the relevant literatures, however, it also provides a full appreciation of the significance of this case by placing it within both the history and current framework of employee organisation and industrial relations in Greece, and the development of Greece as a peripheral capitalist society in a global economy. By exploring the issue of employee participation in this way Dr Psimmenos not only makes a unique, original contribution to the study of industrial organisation and management-worker relations in Europe but also shows the impact which the institutions and processes of globalisation have upon a society and economy like Greece – part of the European Union and also subject to the constraints of international capitalism. Globalisation and Employee Participation will be welcomed by academics and researchers in sociology, politics, industrial relations and political economy, as well as those concerned with the history and present state of Greece and other Mediterranean societies. It is a valuable, scholarly addition to the literature in these areas.

The Corporate Responsibility Code Book has become the go-to guide for companies trying to understand the landscape of corporate responsibility and searching for their own, unique route towards satisfying diverse stakeholders. There is no one-size-fits-all approach. A company may face quite different challenges if it operates in more than one part of the world. And yet stakeholders, especially consumers and investors, are keen for some degree of comparability with which they can evaluate corporate performance. There are countervailing forces at work within corporate responsibility: on the one hand is the need for convergence in order to simplify the large numbers of codes and standards; and, on the other hand, the need to foster diversity and innovation. Many of the best codes of conduct and standards are not well known, while some CR instruments that are well disseminated are not terribly effective. Some comprehensive codes of conduct achieve nothing, while other quite vague codes of conduct become well embedded into the organization and foster innovation and change. This landmark book explains the best CR instruments available, and distils their most valuable elements. In the fully revised third edition, Deborah Leipziger widens her lens to provide detailedanalysis of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, the Gender EqualityPrinciples and ISO 26000 while updating other key tools such as the Equator Principles, the OECD guidelines and GRI’s new G4 framework. The codes in this book cover a wide range of issues, including human rights, labour rights,environmental management, corruption and corporate governance. The book also includeshow-to (or process) codes focusing on reporting, stakeholder engagement and assurance.

The Research Handbook on Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance presents a comprehensive view of a rapidly evolving area of study. Adopting a comparative approach, it goes beyond issues of sustainability and human rights, covering the whole spectrum of ESG and its regulatory developments.

The United Nations declared 2012 the year of cooperatives, emphasizing that there is an alternative to privately owned firms. While greed and mismanagement have caused world financial and economic crises, co-ops offer another type of business for economic activities that is less exposed to aggressive capitalism. This book provides a problem-oriented overview of the development of cooperatives over the last fifty years. The global study addresses the major challenges cooperatives face, such as the organizational innovations introduced to acquire necessary risk-capital and implement growth-related strategies, the wave of demutualization in developed nations and their ability to construct an original consumer politics. The contributors to this volume discuss the successes and failures of the cooperatives and ask whether they are an outdated model of enterprise. They document a wave of foundations of new co-ops, new forms of collaboration between them and a growing trend toward globalization.

The onset of the Great Financial Crisis in 2007/8 has triggered a widespread debate about the causes and the social and environmental consequences of the lack of long-term investment around the world. This volume, the third in the Sustainable Company book series produced by the GOODCORP network of academic and trade union experts on corporate governance, presents a ‘stakeholder’ approach to the problem. The analysis and policy prescriptions presented here go beyond mainstream economic analysis by highlighting the need for major changes in the way resources are saved, distributed and invested in the interests of a sustainable and just economy and society. Individual chapters explore different dimensions of the problem of short-termism and possible policy responses. Key themes in this volume include the state of the debate on long-term investment in Europe, increasing worker voice in pension fund investment and implementing financial transaction taxes to discourage financial market speculation. Policy proposals beyond the mainstream include strengthening worker participation rights (including the right to non-financial information from companies) and using international investment treaties to support social and environmental standards.