German or Nordic-based companies. More stringent confidentiality clauses,
enabling management to withhold potentially detrimental information, are also
significantly more evident amongst agreements in UK-based MNCs.
Third is a ‘sector effect’, which cuts across countries. This arises from the
similarities in production methods, employment practices and industrial rela-
tions traditions within sectors, but also from the influence of the European
trade union industry federations which have played an important role in initi-
ating and coordinating negotiations across MNCs within their respective
sectors (Rivest, 1996). Such an effect is evident, for example, in the basic structure
of EWCs where, controlling for country, joint structures are significantly more
evident in chemicals and food and drink as compared with metalworking,
arguably reflecting different industrial relations traditions in the respective
sectors. Sector differences are evident too in the incidence with which agreements
explicitly provide for trade union officials to participate in the EWC, with such
participation being more evident in EWCs in chemicals, food and drink and
textile and clothing than metalworking. Following Rivest (1996), this can be
attributed to the differing emphasis placed on such provision by the respective
European industry federations. Fourth, a ‘learning effect’ is evident, under
which innovations in earlier agreements which come to be regarded by one or
other, or both, of the parties as good practice become generalized in later agree-
ments. Like the ‘sector effect’, the ‘learning effect’ cuts across countries and is
evidenced by the growing incidence of clauses in agreements dealing with
training for employee representatives and opportunity for employee represen-
tatives to convene their own meeting immediately following the EWC, both
matters on which the directive is silent.
Overall, the evidence on the provisions of EWC agreements shows that
national systems of workplace representation and consultation do have an
influence, as also do systems of corporate governance. But it also points to the
salience of sector influences and learning effects which are cross-country in
nature. This is at odds with the contention that EWCs are primarily inter-
national extensions of national systems: cross-border processes and European-
level actors, trade unions and MNCs, also appear to be influential in shaping
the provisions of agreements. From this perspective, EWCs represent an inter-
sectionof country-specific and transnational, sector-specific, influences.
EWC practiceSo much for the nature of the agreements which have established EWCs, but
what of their actual functioning? Drawing on research on the functioning of
eight EWCs in multinationals based in four European countries, Lecher and
Rüb (1999) identify three trajectories of development. On the basis of a study
of ten EWCs, Stoop and Donders (1998) posit three similar paths of develop-
ment. Under the first two of these, the operation of EWCs results in bodies
472 International Human Resource Management