New Publication: “Determinants of the Perceived Bargaining Power of Works Councils – Results of an Empirical Investigation in 1000 German Firms”

We (Heiko Hoßfeld and Werner Nienhüser) have just published a paper titled “Determinants of the Perceived Bargaining Power of Works Councils – Results of an Empirical Investigation in 1000 German Firms“. We decided to use a new publication media, The Winnower, an “Open Scholarly Publishing” platform.

Abstract: The paper analyses the subjectively perceived bargaining power of the Works Councils, relative to the power of the management. We draw on a representative sample of telephone interviews with 1000 human resource managers and 1000 works councils in as many companies. First, we present empirical findings about the bargaining power relationship between works councils and management. Second, we identify causes for differences in power from firm to firm. All in all, our empirical results do not confirm hypotheses of the determinants of the perceived bargaining power derived from power-dependence theory. Only the degree of unionisation proved to have an impact on perceived power. Our findings indicate that subjectively perceived power is not sufficiently explained by resource control and its corresponding structural characteristics. Thus, other features of the bargaining relationship and its history as well as the characteristics of participants and the personal relationships should also be considered in future research. (Source)

You can read and review the paper here: https://thewinnower.com/papers/4639-determinants-of-the-perceived-bargaining-power-of-works-councils-results-of-an-empirical-investigation-in-1000-german-firms. That means, one can publish a paper immediately and for free, it can be reviewed by anyone, and we can revise the paper. A final version can get a DOI (for 25 $).

So if you would like to, you could write a short (or long) review; we would appreciate this very much.
Using this kind of publishing is some kind of experiment for us. Normally we submit our papers to academic journals with a double-blind review process. The reason for trying out an alternative way of publishing, is on the one hand, that we were not successful in publishing the paper. One reason might be, that it tells a negative story, to simplify it: We could not confirm most of our hypotheses and we have only ad-hoc explanations why our hyptheses were not confirmed. On the other hand we think that the results of our analysis are interesting. So we decided to publish it on The Winnower.