Employee and Industry Relations Overview

Employee and Industry Relations

• Employee relations is a complex concept, difficult to define.
• This chapter examines the basics, variables, dynamics, and models involved.
• Perspectives are explored at both the individual and organizational level.
• It's important to understand the essence of employee/industrial relations in company operations.

Employee Relations vs. Industry Relations

• There's confusion about the nuances between "Employee Relations" and "Industry Relations."
• Some see them as interchangeable; others differentiate them.
• A debate continues regarding these distinctions.

Industry Relations

• The term is synonymous with collectives like workers and trade unions.
• It's often linked to "industrial" work, manufacturing, labor-intensive tasks, and factory work.
• "Industrial Relations" was often associated with "collective action" like bargaining agreements.

Employee Relations

• This term focuses on a smaller subset of industries.
• It goes beyond factory work, encompassing the service sector, non-union entities, part-time, and contract workers.
• It focuses on restrictions and agreements between the industry and its workers (individually or collectively).

Psychological Contract

• An intangible agreement between employer and employee.
• It binds the relationship and establishes a structure based on practices and expectations.
• Norms include fairness and transparency for both parties.
• Employee impact and value are recognized and rewarded (benefits, tenure, growth).
• Both parties work toward shared goals, building on shared values, mores, and vision for growth.

Types of Psychological Contract

• Transactional: Focuses on a transactional relationship between employee and organization.
• Transitional: Occurs during organizational changes (mergers, acquisitions, restructuring).
• Balanced: Emphasizes a fair and equitable exchange.
• Relational: Focuses on building long-term employee-organization relationships.

Adding to the broad prescriptions

• Building community among peers.
• Providing tenure and security.
• Offering corporate mobility and promotions.
• Ensuring humane treatment in the workplace.
• Supporting work-life balance and integration.
• Allowing flexibility in tasks and processes.
• Employees should proactively learn and be competent.
• Employees should participate in teams.
• Employees must focus on achieving organizational goals.
• Employees should be able to perform tasks with minimal supervision.

Challenges

• Finding the right compromise regarding differences.
• Incorporating a standardized system in practice.
• Failure in finding compromise may lead to higher costs or missed opportunities arising from transactional costs and lack of compromise.
• Psychological contract understanding is essential to understanding dynamics within the organization (e.g., fairness, justice, transparency, trust).
• Job satisfaction is an area where dynamics are important, and is measured through surveys regarding various job aspects.

Relationship Attachment: Compliance and Commitment

Compliance

• A comprehensive program ensuring institutions and staff operate ethically, with integrity and respecting legal requirements.
• Etzioni's compliance theory classifies organizations based on the type of power they use (coersive, utilitarian, and normative) and the type of involvement (alienative, calculative, and moral).

Types of Power

• Coercive power: Use of force and fear to control lower-level participants. (prisons, mental hospitals, military).
• Utilitarian/Remunerative power: Uses remuneration or extrinsic rewards to control participants. (salary, benefits, job security).
• Normative power: Controls through intrinsic rewards. (interesting work, contribution to society, universities, organizations).

Types of Involvement

• Alienative Involvement: Intense negative orientation (prison inmates).
• Calculative Involvement: Low-intensity, either positive or negative (merchants with permanent customers).
• Moral Involvement: Positive orientation of high intensity

Commitment

• Emotional and psychological attachment an employee feels towards the organization.
• Measures employee loyalty, dedication, and engagement with their work and company goals.

Types of Commitment

• Attitudinal Commitment: Psychological bond based on shared norms and values between employer and employee.
• Behavioral Commitment: Going beyond expectations for loyalty to the organization.

Cooperation and Conflict

• Fox identified frames of reference within this field: unitarist, pluralist, and radical/Marxist.
  • Unitarism: Assumes companies and employees share common goals and norms.
  • Pluralism: Acknowledges diversity and differences in norms and objectives which creates various groups.
  • Radical/Marxist: Focuses on class, exploitation of workers, and the idea that Labor + Technology + Capital equal goods and services with a surplus value.

Industrial Relations as a System

• Dunlop views industrial relations as a system with inputs, processes, and outputs.
  • Inputs: Actors (laborers, managers, and exogenous agencies), contexts (economic, market, technological changes) and potentially Third-party actors (market forces, technology/other entities).
  • Processes: Substantive (concrete rules like wages) and procedural rules (decision-making). Procedural rules shape substantive rules through interactions that determine outcomes and these outcomes form the substantive rules that govern the system (varying based on national differences, culture, organization, and ethics).
  • Outputs: These outputs are shaped by the aforementioned rules, such as wage agreements(substantive) and how wage agreements are reached (procedural).

Ideology, Processes and Collective Bargaining

• Ideology: Shared values, beliefs, and ideas reinforced across hierarchies, contributing to better working relationships and stability.
• Process Synthesis: Explains how inputs are transformed into outputs through processes like collective bargaining and arbitration.
• Collective Bargaining: Negotiations to reach a consensus between parties.
• Arbitration: Third party mediation for resolution when parties disagree.

This quiz explores the complexities of employee and industry relations, examining their definitions, dynamics, and the distinctions between the two. It delves into individual and organizational perspectives and the importance of these concepts in company operations. Join to enhance your understanding of these critical workplace elements.