Ian McAndrew

Exploring the ideological undercurrents of HRM: workplace values and beliefs in Ireland and New Zealand

Despite hints of more pluralist undercurrents, workplace values and beliefs have rarely been surfaced to inform our understanding of HRM. This paper examines management and employee workplace values and beliefs in the national contexts of Ireland and New Zealand. The findings indicate (a) a divergence of managerial beliefs at the level of society and at the level of their own workplace, (b) an overall pluralist orientation among employees. These findings highlight the importance of greater sensitivity to ideological orientation and more pluralist understandings of HRM.

Shakedown in the Shaky Isles Union Bashing in New Zealand

In late 2010, the New Zealand Parliament passed legislation that offers film industry employers an option to effectively immunize the New Zealand film industry against union activity and employment regulations, by simply insisting on engaging workers as independent contractors, regardless of their real status. The topical story behind this change in employment law reads like a multiscene play on how a powerful American entertainment-industry conglomerate was able to take advantage of a union’s strategic missteps to pressure a small country into not only substantial tax breaks and subsidies, but also a fundamental change to its employment laws. The article tells the story and provides an analysis of how this can happen in a modern democracy.

Mutual gains or conflicting outcomes? How HRM benefits professionals

Purpose - – Using the mutual gains model as a framework, the purpose of this paper is to explore the important issue of mutuality in employment relationships. Design/methodology/approach - – This study uses a sample of 215 New Zealand professionals to assess the relationships between commitment-oriented HRM practice, work intensification, work-life balance (WLB) and task and contextual performance. Findings - – The authors find commitment-oriented HRM practice does not intensify the work experiences of professionals, but nor does it contribute positively to the achievement of WLB. Both these well-being types do, however, contribute to explaining professionals’ task and contextual performance outcomes. Research limitations/implications - – The findings suggest current narrow interpretations of well-being need to be revisited, with the meaning of well-being, its measurement and its role in delivering performance outcomes afforded greater attention within HRM studies. Practical implications - – A primary goal of managers is to deliver optimum performance outcomes. For professionals, the research suggests an important means to achieving this is by promoting positive well-being. Originality/value - – This study offers some important insights into the role mutuality plays in influencing performance outcomes. In addition, by exploring two contrasting facets of well-being, one health- and one happiness-related, the authors provide some empirical insights into how employees’ well-being affects performance outcomes.

Collective bargaining interventions: contemporary New Zealand experiments

New Zealand has a long history of negotiation assistance to collective bargaining parties, and this paper assesses two contemporary experiments in this tradition. Negotiation of Police pay and conditions is assisted by the simultaneous involvement of mediation and arbitration, with the maturation of the negotiation process in recent years seeing a gradual shift in influence from the mediator to the arbitrator. Assistance to other negotiating parties getting into difficulty is available, where mediation has failed, through an evolving ‘facilitation’ process. Of several approaches tested in the name of ‘facilitation’, conciliation in the New Zealand tradition is assessed as providing the most effective assistance to settlement for bargaining parties, while both conciliation and adjudication approaches to facilitation can have a more strategic impact on bargaining impasses.

The impact of employer ascendancy on collective bargaining style: A review of the New Zealand experience

Union density and collective bargaining coverage is on a downwards trend in many developed countries, and this is evident in New Zealand. Some suggest this decline is resulting in traditional approaches to collective bargaining being replaced with a more collaborative style. This article empirically explores the nature of collective bargaining and examines the attitudes and behaviours of managerial negotiators, in the New Zealand environment, which has seen unions marginalized then recently afforded some degree of legitimacy. The study supports the traditional vs collaborative dichotomy, and the attitudes and behaviour comprising these styles is consistent with the literature and managerial self-reports.

Labour Market Deregulation: Perspectives from New Zealand and Abroad : An Introduction

It is now nearly four years since the enactment of New Zealands Employment Contracts Act 1991. Since then this journal has had two symposia on industrial law. One, in August 1991, considered the implications of the Act and another, two years later, considered the changes proposed by the Labour Opposition. It was decided to have this third symposium for two main reasons. The first was to enable leading writers to reflect back on the changes wrought by the Act, rather than simply predicting consequences. The second reason was to help the Journals readership put the Act into international perspective by considering significant changes in industrial law overseas. To meet these two objectives the Journal invited two papers from leading New Zealand authors and three from leading Australian and British authors