Michael Barry

Pro‐Social or Pro‐Management? A Critique of the Conception of Employee Voice as a Pro‐Social Behaviour within Organizational Behaviour

For many years, the employment relations (ER) literature took the perspective that employee voice via trade unions could channel discontent and reduce exit, thereby improving productivity. In organizational behaviour (OB) research voice has also emerged as an important concept, and a focus of this research has been to understand the antecedents of the decision of employees to engage or not engage in voice. In OB research, however, voice is not viewed as it is in ER as a mechanism to provide collective representation of employee interests. Rather, it is seen as an expression of the desire and choice of individual workers to communicate information and ideas to management for the benefit of the organization. This article offers a critique of the OB conception of voice, and in particular highlights the limitations of its view of voice as a pro-social behaviour. We argue that the OB conception of voice is at best partial because its definition of voice as an activity that benefits the organization leaves no room for considering voice as a means of challenging management, or indeed simply as being a vehicle for employee self-determination.

Contrasting Systems? 100 Years of Arbitration in Australia and New Zealand

Supporters of collective employment regulation in New Zealand would have celebrated a centenary of arbitration a full decade before Australia, in 1994. Yet fate intervened and New Zealand’s arbitration system formally collapsed in 1991 following the introduction of the Employment Contracts Act. Despite a series of challenges during different periods, the Australian arbitration system has survived, if badly scathed, to see its 100- year anniversary. The present paper traces the historical similarities and differences in the advent, development and decline of the Australian and New Zealand systems of compulsory arbitration. Given the many structural similarities between the two systems, the paper explores important differences in the economic and political interests that both underlay the introduction and development of the two systems, and contributed to the earlier demise of the New Zealand system. The experience of the more extensive labour market reform in New Zealand provides some salutary lessons for those seeking further changes to weaken the Australian arbitration system.

Reconceptualising employer associations under evolving employment relations: countervailing power revisited

The decline of institutional industrial relations has led to a major reassessment of the way that traditional industrial relations actors operate. Yet, the debate about institutional change has been characteristically asymmetrical in as much as some institutional actors have figured extensively while others have been much less prominent. Historically, employer coordination has not captured the attention of the industrial relations community and there are relatively few contemporary studies of the activities of employer associations. The purpose of this article is to review and critique the literature on employer associations and explain how the traditional concept of countervailing power can be developed to reconceptualise employer coordination. We then argue for a research agenda to re-examine employer associations in light of ongoing changes to employment relations systems that require these bodies to revise the ways that they coordinate employer interests.

Coordinated market economy/liberal employment relations: low cost competition in the German aviation industry

This paper examines the German low cost airline industry by analysing how the growth of low cost competition has influenced the industrys pattern of employment relations. The paper highlights the role of Lufthansa, as both the traditional flag carrier and the leading site of employment relations within the German aviation sector. The paper explains how Lufthansa has positioned itself to face low cost competition by, among other initiatives, creating its own low cost subsidiary (Germanwings). Competitive pressures, stemming from the liberalization of European aviation and demand for low cost travel, have produced a marked divergence in this industry from the typical pattern of German employment relations. The paper explains this divergence by situating the case study within the varieties of capitalism literature.

Research Handbook of Comparative Employment Relations

Contents: PART I: INTRODUCTION 1. Re-examining Comparative Employment Relations Michael Barry and Adrian Wilkinson PART II: PERSPECTIVES 2. Comparative Employment Relations: Institutional and Neo-Institutional Theories Bruce E. Kaufman 3. The Political Economy of Comparative Employment Relations John Kelly 4. Legal Origins, Labour Law and the Regulation of Employment Relations Sean Cooney, Peter Gahan and Richard Mitchell 5. Cross-Cultural Studies Terence Jackson PART III: PAIRED COMPARISONS 6. Employment Relations in Chile and Argentina Maurizio Atzeni, Fernando Duran-Palma and Pablo Ghigliani 7. Employment Relations in Canada and U.S. Sara Slinn and Richard W. Hurd 8. Employment Relations in China and India Fang Lee Cooke 9. Employment Relations in the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland Tony Dundon and David G. Collings 10. Employment Relations in Japan and Korea EeHwan Jung 11. Employment Relations in Belgium and the Netherlands Hester Houwing, Maarten Keune, Philippe Pochet and Kurt Vandaele 12. Employment Relations in Australia and New Zealand Nick Wailes 13. Employment Relations in South Africa and Mozambican Geoffrey Wood 14. Employment Relations in France and Germany Stefan Zagelmeyer 15. Employment Issues in Oil-Rich Gulf Countries Kamel Mellahi and Ingo Forstenlechner PART IV: CURRENT ISSUES 16. Corporatism Meets Neoliberalism: The Irish and Italian Cases in Comparative Perspective Lucio Baccaro 17. The Role of MNEs David G. Collings, Jonathan Lavelle and Patrick Gunnigle 18. Regulating Global Capital through Public and Private Codes: An Analysis of International Labour Standards and Corporate Voluntary Initiatives Tony Royle

Employer Associations: Assessing Plowman's Reactivity Thesis

In developing the dominant theory of Australian employer associations, David Plowman has consistently argued that Australian employers developed permanent associations as a response to the introduction of compulsory arbitration. From this developed a history of reactive employer involvement within the arbitration sys tem. By linking association formation with the introduction of a unique system of compulsory arbitration, Plowman saw formal employer combination in Australia as exceptional as well as reactionary. This paper challenges the reactivity thesis by subjecting a number of Plowmans key assumptions to historiographic and comparative scrutiny. First. permanent associations, whether organized on a trade, industry or state basis. existed before the advent of arbitration. Second, the increase in employer association formation and activity that occurred around the turn of the century can only partly be attributed to the introduction of compulsory arbitration. Finally, the development of employer associations in Australia showed striking similarities with that of other countries in terms of both periodization and impetus for formation.

New employee representation: Legal developments and New Zealand unions

Legislative protections supporting New Zealands compulsory arbitration system made unions a vital part of industrial relations from 1894 to 1991. Following a dramatic shift to a more deregulated labour market, the union movement suffered a sharp decline in influence and membership during the 1990s. In October 2000 the Labour‐Alliance Coalition that formed government in 1999 introduced its Employment Relations Act that includes new protections for registered trade unions. The early impact of the legislation has been to promote the registration of a plethora of new unions. However, the new unions formed since the introduction of the Act represent very few workers and have narrow interests. Although they exist formally as unions, these organisations are more accurately alternative forms of employee representation that exist to facilitate enterprise bargaining and, in some instances, to allow employers to frustrate the activities of larger, established unions.

Recasting industrial relations: Productivity, place and the Queensland coal industry, 2001–2013

The link between industrial relations and productivity is contentious. It is often argued that particular industrial relations models are more or less conducive to greater productivity. However, this article, in exploring this issue through an examination of the Queensland coal industry since 2001, finds no evidence of such a link. Instead, it finds that the more employer-friendly industrial relations system that has prevailed in Queensland coal mining since 1996 has been associated with both rising (1996–2000 and 2011–2013) and falling (2001–2011) productivity. Instead, the only correlation that seems to hold true is that between the productivity and the state of the labour market. Since 1996, on every occasion that productivity rose (1996–2000 and 2011–2013), employment was falling. Conversely, when employment rose (2001–2011), productivity fell. Suggestively, rising employment was always associated with rising coal prices, while falling employment was always correlated with declining price. If there is no evidence of a link between industrial relations settings and productivity, this study nevertheless finds that a profound recasting of industrial relations has occurred in this sector. This has involved systematic attempts to circumvent not only the unionized workforce, but also, more recently, the Central Queensland coal communities themselves.

Voices from across the divide: An industrial relations perspective on employee voice

In this commentary we note that there is increasing interest in the topic of employee voice; however, we argue that there has been little effort to broaden our existing conceptualizations of voice, which are artefacts of disparate disciplines. The siloed approach, we argue, applies in particular to the view of voice in the field of organizational behaviour (OB) which dominates much of this special issue. We explain how taking an Industrial Relations (IR) perspective on voice can add value to our understanding by looking at voice as a means to challenge management, or as a vehicle for employee self-determination

IR Theory Built on the Founders’ Principles with Empirical Application to Australia

The authors identify 10 core principles of industrial relations (IR) theory and policy, based on the writings of British IR founders Beatrice Webb and Sidney Webb and U.S. IR founder John Commons. These principles are then represented diagrammatically in an expanded IR version of the Marshallian demand/supply (DS) model. The DS and IR models, representing on one side the merits of abstraction and parsimony and on the other realism and complexity, are applied to a case study: an analysis and explanation of the reasons behind the formation of the Australian IR system in the 1890s and its evolution to 2010. Although the DS model captures important forces behind the shift from a centralized and unionized employment system in the early period to a significantly decentralized and deunionized system in the latter period, the evidence indicates the extra structural and behavioral elements in the IR model are important for a full and accurate explanation.