Introduction

This chapter introduces reasons for interest in (EPV). It centres around who has organisational control, the ways such control can be deployed, and impacts on employees, their welfare and performance. A prime aim of the book is to examine links between control, EPV and their interaction. Motives of state, employers and employees are introduced, from early radical ideas to secure control of the means of production by workers, through the rise of trade unions to impose regulation on organisational decision-making, to contemporary managerial efforts to promote individualised initiatives designed to engage employees while constraining collective influence. Competitive neoliberal economic policies underpin and legitimise more recent EPV developments.