Employee Participation on Work Environment in Food Processing Industry in Denmark & New Zealand

This article examines both direct and representative participation by employees. The hypothesis is that effectiveness of employee participation correlates positively with work environment quality. Comparison between Denmark and New Zealand (NZ) might be instructive since the representative participative practices are greater and longer in theformer. Food processing industry is critical to both the countries in terms of employment and export income. The qualitative and quantitative data for the two food processing plants case studies in each country was collected from relevant documents; three to six interviews in each plant including human resource managers, other senior mangers and employee representatives; and a questionnaire survey of a random sample of employees from each plant.