Works councils as gatekeepers: Codetermination, management practices, and job satisfaction
研究德国职工委员会如何作为守门人，在引入绩效评估和反馈访谈等管理实践时保护员工利益，发现职工委员会能增强这些实践对工作满意度的正面影响，尤其在没有集体谈判协议的企业中。
This paper analyzes the role of works councils as gatekeepers safeguarding employee's interests in the adoption of management practices to monitor employee performance and provide feedback. We first introduce a formal model predicting that (i) the introduction of such management practices leads to a stronger increase (or weaker decrease) in job satisfaction when a works council is in place, (ii) that this effect should be larger the lower the prior level of employee participation and (iii) that works councils increase the likelihood of the implementation of these practices at the level of individual employees. We provide evidence in line with these hypotheses, using linked-employer-employee panel data from Germany. We indeed find that the adoption of formal performance appraisals and feedback interviews is associated with a significantly larger increase in job satisfaction when there is a works council. This pattern is driven by establishments without collective bargaining agreements. The evidence also suggests that works councils indeed facilitate the implementation of such management practices, as codetermined firms have a higher likelihood that a practice implemented on the firm level is actually applied by middle management.