All about power after all? A multilevel analysis of employers’ organization membership in Europe

Lehr, Alex; Jansen, Giedo; Brandl, Bernd

Abstract

Employers’ organizations (EOs) are the voice of business interests in social partnership and socioeconomic policy making. Their legitimacy depends on the willingness of employers to join them as members. We examine the role of two types of power that EOs confer onto their members as drivers of EO membership: countervailing power against labor, and organizational power. By analyzing large-scale microlevel data on more than thirty thousand business establishments across twenty-seven EU countries in 2013 and 2019, we find that at the micro-level, company size, workplace unionization and the presence of trade unions and works councils are positively associated with membership, as is union density at the macro-level. These findings suggest that, in contrast to contemporary arguments in the EO literature, countering the collective power of labor remains an important motivation for EO membership. The positive impact of company size also suggests that organizational power, i.e., the ability to influence public policies and collective agreements through EOs, dominates the services provided by EOs to their members as a selective incentive for EO membership. Further tests of this argument however yield inconclusive results.

Citation

Lehr, A., Jansen, G., & Brandl, B. (2024). All about power after all? A multilevel analysis of employers’ organization membership in Europe. British Journal of Industrial Relations, 62(2), 233-261. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjir.12744

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Mar 21, 2023
• Online Publication Date: Apr 16, 2023
• Publication Date: 2024-06
• Deposit Date: Apr 13, 2023
• Publicly Available Date: Jun 22, 2023
• Journal: British Journal of Industrial Relations
• Print ISSN: 0007-1080
• Electronic ISSN: 1467-8543
• Publisher: Wiley
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 62
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 233-261
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/bjir.12744
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1174960