Flexible Wages and Workers Participation in the Economic Theory (J.E.L. J30, J33)
The Aim of the paper is to analyze the most recent theoretical literature about
flexible wages, with a specific attention to the role of workers participation inside the firm. The core question is whether workers participation is simply related to
economic factors (through the adoption of a flexible wage) or it includes also
organizational factors, through workers involvement in the decision making process of the firm.
The economic literature considers three different schemes of flexible wages:
the gain-sharing schemes, the profit-sharing schemes and the participation schemes.
The analytical frameworks of each of the three kinds of schemes are investigated for with the aim of showing the basic assumptions about the kind of workers
participation considered. The analysis shows that only the participation schemes include an organizational participation of workers. In these schemes flexible wages are thought and designed for sharing, among workers and firm, the rent deriving by new organizational investments, based on workers involvement in the decision making processes of the firm.