Towards inter‐organisational empowerment? employee participation in the development of a network of small enterprises

In this paper, a unique development in a network of small enterprises is presented and discussed. This is the creation of a network of employees that, in the first phase, had a function in parallel with the network of their managers, and which, over time, has led to tighter integration, by means of incorporating more employees in development work. The importance of trust and dialogue will be highlighted as well as the significance of both explicit and tacit knowledge. Finally, attention will be drawn to this network structure as a form of inter‐organisational empowerment of employees. This is an extended and modified version of a conference paper that was written by Marieke Hoekstra, Max Lundberg and Joakim Tell for the 5th Annual International Conference on Post‐compulsory Education and Training, Queensland, Australia, 26‐28th November, 1997.