Exploring Employee Relations

Mike Leat

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9781136404306
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Exploring Employee Relations is a straightforward and accessible text that is aimed at students who are taking the subject for the first time. The structure is clear and logical, leading the newcomer through the topics in a way to maximise comprehension. Key issues are highlighted and supported by a small case or example from business. Chapters are structured to enable progressive learning with a logical development of the content. Each chapter ends with a summary of the key points met in the text and these are further reinforced by review and discussion questions, with answers and feedback on the activities included at the end of the book. The chapters are grouped thematically into parts and longer case studies are included that are suitable for assignment and seminar work. This new edition is thoroughly revised with a new international approach which provides new material on the European Union and the role of Government and Demography, bargaining power and securing employee commitment. The text has also been written to cover the new CIPD employee relations syllabus

Part One Introduction

Chapter 1 Employee relations and the employment relationship

DOI: 10.4324/9780080547176-1

1. Introduction
2. Definitions of employee relations
3. The employment relationship
4. A psychological contract: interests and expectations
5. Forms of attachment, compliance and commitment
   1. Compliance
   2. Commitment
6. Conflict, cooperation and perspectives
   1. Unitarism
   2. Pluralism
   3. Radical/Marxist
7. The balance of bargaining power
8. A legal contract and the relevance of ideology
9. The quality of employee relations
   1. Unitarist
   2. Pluralist
   3. Radical/Marxist
10. An industrial relations system
    1. Outputs
    2. Inputs
    3. Processes
    4. Criticisms of the Dunlop model
11. A framework for studying employee relations
12. Summary
13. References

Introduction

‘Employee relations’ is a term that has only in relatively recent years become commonly used to indicate a particular area of subject matter. Prior to this it is likely that you would have found the term ‘industrial relations’ in more common use. The question of whether there are genuine differences attached to the meanings and uses of these two terms forms part of the discussion in this chapter. Also we examine briefly the issues of the nature of the employment relationship, whether it is characterized by conflict or consensus, the significance of perspective and the relevance of expectations, interests and the notion of a psychological contract. You are also introduced to the questions of what constitutes good industrial or employee relations, what does quality mean, what does it look like and, perhaps even more relevant, whether we can actually measure it in any meaningful sense. The relevance of perspective to that debate is also illustrated. Finally in this chapter we introduce the notion of an industrial relations system and its limitations as a theory of industrial relations and, in this context, outline a framework which centres upon the employment relationship and which also provides an explanation for the structure and contents of this book.

Learning objectives

After studying this chapter you will be able to:

• Discuss the main differences of view as to the subject matter of both employee and industrial relations and the differences between them.
• Identify the relevance of contexts to the employment relationship.
• Explain the concept and relevance of a psychological contract.
• Analyse the employment relationship in terms of the form of power available to employers and the nature of employee involvement.
• Examine the nature of the employment relationship in terms of compliance or commitment.
• Distinguish between the notions of employee involvement and commitment.
• Demonstrate the significance of perspective to our understanding of the employment relationship.
• Decide whether you think the employment relationship is essentially a conflictual one.
• Examine the meaning of quality in employee relations and explain the relevance of perspective.
• Discuss the appropriateness of the many possible indicators of the quality of employee relations and the relevance of perspective.
• Critically examine the notion of an industrial relations system.

Definitions of employee relations

There are debates and differences of view as to the meaning of each of the two terms, employee and industrial relations. Some people argue that there are identifiable differences between them, that there are differences of a substantive nature which justify the use and maintenance of each term, while others argue that the concepts and phenomena described are to all intents and purposes interchangeable.

Blyton and Turnbull (1994: 7–9) discuss this in explaining why they have chosen to use the term ‘employee’ as opposed to ‘industrial’. They begin by arguing that they see no hard and fast distinction between the two, the difference being in the tendency of each to focus the subject inside different boundaries, but in reviewing various contributions to the debate they do state some of the more common views.

They point out that industrial relations:

• became inevitably associated with trade unions, collective bargaining and industrial action;
• had too strong a tendency to view the world of work as synonymous with the heavy extractive and manufacturing sectors of employment, sectors which were dominated by male manual workers working full-time and which are in decline in nearly all developed economies.

Using the term employee relations enables them to adopt a broader canvas and to:

• encompass the now dominant service sector which, in many developed countries, now employs more than 70 per cent of the workforce, and the changes in the composition of the labour force such as more women working and more part-time, temporary and fixed-term contracts;
• include non-union as well as union scenarios and relationships.

Nevertheless, Blyton and Turnbull do not go as far as some others in that they choose to continue to focus their study of employee relations upon the collective aspects of the employment relationship. They suggest that in this they are maintaining a distinction between employee relations and those other areas of study: personnel management and human resource management (HRM), each of which, they suggest, focuses upon the individual as opposed to the collective elements of the relationship.

Marchington and Wilkinson (1996: 223) also discuss this ‘difference’ and they suggest that the term employee relations has emerged for three main reasons:

1. Usage, fashion and slippage.
2. It is increasingly used by personnel practitioners to describe that part of personnel and development concerned with the regulation of relations (collective and individual) between employer and employee.
3. There are actual and real differences of focus, with employee relations tending to focus upon management and management issues alone and on contemporary rather than historical practices; the way things are as opposed to the way things were.

Marchington and Wilkinson have chosen to use the term employee relations principally for the second of these three reasons, though they also acknowledge that they use the terms interchangeably.

A comparison of these two views indicates that both seek to argue that use of the term employee relations makes it easier to encompass change in the employment relationship, its environment and in the make up of the labour force, and both explanations would appear to allow the term employee relations to encompass union and non-union relations.

However, where Blyton and Turnbull are keen to maintain a collective focus and see this as the basis of a continuing distinction between employee relations and both personnel and HRM in which, they suggest, the focus is upon the individual and the individual employment relationship, Marchington and Wilkinson see employee relations encompassing both individual and collective relations.

Another point of difference is that Marchington and Wilkinson seem to endow the term employee relations with a managerial focus, suggesting as they do that there is a tendency for the subject matter of employee relations to be dominated by a concern with managerial issues and a managerial perspective rather than being concerned with all parties and interests in the employment relationship.

Arguably, another point of similarity is that both views tend to see employee relations as a wider concept than industrial relations, and the former can encompass the latter.

The managerial focus identified by Marchington and Wilkinson is also adopted by Gennard and Judge (2002) in their text for the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), the professional body for personnel and HRM practitioners in the UK. In seeking to explain what employee relations is they state the following:

Employee relations is a study of the rules, regulations and agreements by which employees are managed both as individuals and as a collective group, the priority given to the individual as opposed to the collective relationship varying from company to company depending upon the values of management. As such it is concerned with how to gain people's commitment to the achievement of an organization's business goals and objectives in a number of different situations …

Here we have the subject matter being defined to include both collective and individual dimensions of the employment relationship, a managerial focus is adopted and they go further and spell out what they perceive to be the purpose or objective of management in its dealings with both individuals and collectives. They also suggest that it is management that determines the priority given to the individual or collective relationship.

What is clear from this brief discussion of a number of different definitions and perspectives is that it is the employment relationship that is at the core or heart of the subject. In this text I use the term to encompass both individual and collective dimensions, union and non-union relationships, the changing nature of work and the employment relationship, and the wider contexts within which the employment relationship occurs. I do not take a managerial perspective or standpoint but do examine the management of employee relations.

The employment relationship

In this section we examine some of the more important issues and debates surrounding the employment relationship. In particular we examine the concept of a psychological contract, the importance of values, the interests of the parties and the extent to which the employment relationship is characterized by compliance or commitment, conflict and/or cooperation, the relevance of perspective and the notion of control of the labour process.

No employment relationship occurs in a vacuum and it is important to realize that there is a range of contexts within which it occurs and which, to varying degrees, impinge upon the relationship. One of these is the legal context and at the level of the individual, there is a legally enforceable contract between employee and employer. It has also been suggested that the employment relationship can be perceived as a psychological contract.

A psychological contract: interests and expectations

Schein (1988) is largely responsible for this notion of a psychological contract and his suggestion was that between employer and employee there exists an implicit contractual relationship which is derived from a series of assumptions on the part of employer and employee about the nature of their relationship. These assumptions may not be legally enforceable but they constitute a set of reciprocal arrangements and form the basis for a series of expectations which may have a considerable degree of moral force.

The main assumptions are:

• that employees will be treated fairly and honestly;
• that the relationship should be characterized by a concern for equity and justice and that this would require the communication of sufficient information about changes and developments;
• that employee loyalty to the employer would be reciprocated with a degree of employment and job security;
• that employees’ input would be recognized and valued by the employer.

Underlying this notion of a psychological contract we can also detect assumptions about what people look for in terms of returns and satisfactions from work and, indeed, there is an element of prescription in that Schein can be interpreted as specifying the way in which employees should be treated.

In this particular instance it is pretty clear that these underlying assumptions are essentially consistent with the sets of individual needs identified many years ago by American researchers such as Roethlisberger and Dickson (1939), Maslow (1943) and Herzberg (1966) and which encompass equity and justice, security and safety, recognition of worth and input and self-fulfillment. This model of a psychological contract, where fulfilled, provided the means for employees to derive intrinsic as well as extrinsic satisfactions and rewards from their work.

The notion of a psychological contract has been extended in recent years to encompass a wider range of expectations of both parties to the relationship; these, to some extent, can be perceived not only as expectations but also as the respective interests of the parties.

Gennard and Judge 2002, in discussing the psychological contract and employees’ and employers’ interests, suggest that, in addition to a reward package representing the monetary and extrinsic aspect of the relationship, employees may have the fo...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Part One Introduction
• Part Two The Global Context
• Part Three The National Context
• Part Four Organizational Context: Processes, Policies and Procedures
• Bibliography
• Index