A growing number of econometric examinations show that works councils substantially shape the personnel policy of firms in Germany. Firms with works councils make greater use of various HRM practices. This gives rise to the question of whether employers view the shaping of personnel policy...

Examinations on the determinants of profit sharing usually focus on objective firm characteristics. Using data from manufacturing firms in Germany, this study shows that managers' subjective attitudes towards profit sharing also play an important role in the adoption and termination of this...

This paper argues that, in general, profit sharing aligns the interests of workers and the firm and that this alignment reduces the extent of conflict between workers and management. This paper also argues that this general result will not carry over to the workers least able to respond to the...

Free-riding potentially limits the effectiveness of profit sharing in motivating workers. While reciprocity can mitigate this problem, it need not be uniformly productive. We show that the probability of receiving profit sharing takes an inverse U-shape as detailed individual survey measures of...