Loughborough University
Browse

Transnational employee voice and knowledge exchange in the multinational corporation: The European Company (SE) experience

Download (435.04 kB)
journal contribution
posted on 2020-03-04, 12:15 authored by Antje Fiedler, Catherine CaseyCatherine Casey, Benjamin Fath
The European Company (Societas Europaea, SE) regulations include the highest mandatory provision for negotiation of transnational employee voice. What are the effects of transnational employee voice, enacted at works council and board levels, on knowledge exchange within the multinational corporation? This qualitative study of globally active SEs incorporated under the SE regulations that have ‘dual-forum’ transnational employee voice addresses that research gap. Our main contribution reveals that, over time, transnational employee voice facilitates multifaceted knowledge exchange, both widening the platform and strengthening relations for intra-multinational corporation collaboration. Alongside expressing labour interests as intended, dual-forum transnational employee voice stimulates managers and employees to develop mutually beneficial competencies and trust. These aid multilateral knowledge exchange. That knowledge, which includes factors affecting employees and quality of organizational and work life, also includes insights into country-specific market, industrial and operational issues. Importantly, dual-forum transnational voice fosters development of a participatory culture across the multinational corporation. Robust multifaceted knowledge exchange generates better-informed and more productive decision-making that yields plural socio-economic value.

History

School

  • Business and Economics

Department

  • Business

Published in

Human Relations

Volume

74

Issue

7

Pages

1033-1059

Publisher

SAGE Publications

Version

  • AM (Accepted Manuscript)

Rights holder

© The Authors

Publisher statement

This paper was accepted for publication in the journal Human Relations and the definitive published version is available at https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726720905351. Users who receive access to an article through a repository are reminded that the article is protected by copyright and reuse is restricted to non-commercial and no derivative uses. Users may also download and save a local copy of an article accessed in an institutional repository for the user's personal reference.

Publication date

2020-02-13

Copyright date

2020

ISSN

0018-7267

eISSN

1741-282X

Language

  • en

Depositor

Prof Catherine Casey. Deposit date: 4 March 2020