Last decades scholars in the field of human resource management (HRM) have intensely examined the contribution of HRM to organizational performance. Despite their efforts, at least one major research shortcoming can be identified. In general, they have devoted far too little attention to an aspect of HRM potentially beneficial for organizational performance: worker participation, and especially its indirect or representative forms. In contrast, for academics embedded in the industrial relations tradition, worker participation is a prominent theme, even though less emphasized in its relationship with company objectives. One might defend traditional scholars' reservations by arguing that participations main goal concerns workplace democratization and not

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German studies already have supported the existing positive economic effects of works councils, but failed to explain how these effects are produced. New case study based research from the Netherlands has provided a theory consisting of three channels to create economic impact, also including a set of necessary conditions. This article presents a secondary analysis of this theory with the use of a large data set. This quantitative analysis further supports the theory and contains interesting nuances about how the channels work, in particular about the role of the availability of sufficient works council candidates at elections.