Network dynamics, Advice networks, Comparative statics, Membership turnover, Relational turnover, Blockmodelling,

Purpose -This paper aims to take stock and to increase understanding of the opportunities and threats for policing in ten European countries in the Political, Economic, Social, Technological and Legal (PESTL) environment. Design/methodology/approach -This study is part of the large EU-funded COMPOSITE project into organisational change. A PESTL analysis was executed to produce the environmental scan that will serve as a platform for further research into change management within the police. The findings are based on structured interviews with police officers of 17 different police forces and knowledgeable externals in ten European countries. The sampling strategy was optimized for representativeness under the binding capacity constraints defined by the COMPOSITE research budget. Findings -European police forces face a long list of environmental changes that can be grouped in the five PESTL clusters with a common denominator. There is also quite some overlap as to both the importance and nature of the key PESTL trends across the ten countries, suggesting convergence in Europe.Originality/value -A study of this magnitude has not been seen before in Europe, which brings new insights to the target population of police forces across Europe. Moreover, policing is an interesting field to study from the perspective of organisational change, featuring a high incidence of change in combination with a wide variety of change challenges, such as those related to identity and leadership.

Internationalization of organizations has been a threat for (national) industrial relations. This study compares three cases to test the influence of works councils on decision-making in multinational companies (MNCs), going through reorganizations. The authors argue it is important to take account of internal factors in the subsidiary, namely the power capabilities and interests of the actors involved. They study these by looking at the network partners of works councils and aligned interests of local management and works council. The findings show that aligned interests form an important prerequisite for positive management attitude, trust and informal relations, positively affecting reorganizations in subsidiaries of MNCs.

No abstract

This paper experimentally studies the potential effect of works councils on managerial decision-making. Empirical evidence on the influence of works councils in organizations is still mixed. Therefore, this experimental study tries to gain more insights into the mechanisms that may underlie the impact of works council advice. First, we try to explain whether advice given by a works council influences the decision managers make. Second, we attempt to explain whether works councils delay the decision-making process. In order to answer these questions, we conducted experiments with undergraduate students, who played a two-player Prisoner's Dilemma price-setting game. One group received advice from a works council, whilst the other group did not. As expected, advice does have an influence on decision-making: receiving advice for setting a low price leads to a higher likelihood to set a low price as well, and receiving advice to set a high price leads to a high price decision. Female managers are more likely to take the works council advice into account. Subjects with an other-regarding orientation tend to choose a high price, even when they are advised to opt for a low price. Further, decisionmaking is not delayed by the advice, but there is an interaction effect with gender: female managers receiving advice tend to think longer about their decision.