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Co-determination is a practice whereby the employees have a role in the management of a company. The word is a literal translation from the German word ''Mitbestimmung''. Co-determination rights are different in different legal environments. In some countries, like the USA, the workers have virtually no role in corporate management; and in others, like Germany, their role is more important. The first serious co-determination laws began in Germany through collective agreements in 1918.〔E McGaughey, 'The Codetermination Bargains: The History of German Corporate and Labour Law' (2015) (LSE Legal Studies Working Paper No. 10/2015 ) 〕 In 1976, a general law was passed mandating that worker representatives hold seats on the boards of all companies employing over 500 people. ==Overview== In economies with co-determination workers in large companies may form special bodies known as works councils. In smaller companies they may elect worker representatives who act as intermediaries in exercising the workers rights of being informed or consulted on decisions concerning employee status and rights. They also elect or select worker representatives in managerial and supervisory organs of companies. In co-determination systems the employees are given seats on a board of directors in one-tier management systems, or seats in a supervisory board and sometimes management board in two-tier management systems. In two-tier systems the seats in supervisory boards are usually limited to 1 to 3 members. In some systems the employees can select 1 or 2 members of the supervisory boards, but a representative of shareholders is always the president and has the deciding vote. An employee representatives on management boards are not present in all economies. They are always limited to a Worker-Director, who votes only on matters concerning employees. In one-tier systems with co-determination the employees usually have only one or two representatives on a board of directors. Sometimes they are also given seats in certain committees (e.g. the audit committee). They never have representatives among the executive directors. The typical two-tier system with co-determination is the German system. The typical one-tier system with co-determination is the Swedish system. There are three main views as to why co-determination primarily exists: to reduce management-labour conflict by means of improving and systematizing communication channels;〔Prominent views of co-determination have thus been “social” in nature, concerned with expanding democratic participation in new spheres as a good in itself, reducing “alienation,” and smoothing management-labour relations to prevent strong conflicts. A collection of views of this nature are found in Magazin Mitbestimmung: http://www.boeckler.de/92462_16613.html〕 to increase bargaining power of workers at the expense of owners by means of legislation;〔A conservative economic approach views co-determination as not benign: a political means for transfer of wealth from shareholders to employees and to increase power of political and perhaps union actors; as evidence it is noted firms rarely adopt codetermination voluntarily: see Svetozar Pejovich, "The economics of property rights: towards a theory of comparative systems," Chapter 8, Dordrecht, NL: Kluwer Academic, 1990.〕 and to correct market failures by means of public policy.〔Another economist argues that co-determination in effect corrects several market failures so lack of voluntary adoption cannot be viewed as evidence that co-determination is inefficient: see Stephen C. Smith, "On the economic rationale for co-determination law," Journal of Economic Behavior and Organisation, Vol. 16, pp. 261-281, December 1991.〕 The evidence on "efficiency" is mixed, with co-determination having either no effect or a positive but generally small effect on enterprise performance.〔For example see Felix R. Fitzroy and Kornelius Kraft, "Co-determination, efficiency and productivity," British Journal of Industrial Relations, Vol. 43, No. 2, pp. 233-247, June 2005.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Co-determination」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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