ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the key concepts covered in the book. This book examines a wide range of participation and control practices which have emerged from the ranks of working people. Contemporary politicians have commonly advocated four classes of participation: profit sharing and co-partnership schemes; works councils, whether based on the trade union structure or not; board-level representation either through works councils or unions; lower-level forms of participation at workgroup level to prevent job monotony, and so on. The main point to be made here, of course, is that since a great deal hinges on economic, technical and political variables and on the constellation of values current in any given time or place, a blanket answer to the question would be unrealistic. Works councils are unlikely to be an especially impressive medium for participation at plant level.
