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