Commitment to Company and Union: Evidence from Hong Kong

This article examines the pattern and antecedents of employee commitment to company and union in the Hong Kong context. Findings are consistent with those from the United States. In general, company and union commitment have different antecedents, although the perceived industrial relations climate is a common predictor. Dual commitment is in evidence. Union membership is a function of union commitment. The findings caution against attempts to explain the pattern of Hong Kong industrial relations purely in terms of culture.     

Industrial Relations Climate, Attendance Behaviour and the Role of Trade Unions

In recent years there has been a growing interest in the impact of co-operative union–management relations on firm performance and organizational outcomes such as employee turnover and absenteeism. This paper seeks to identify the factors that affect the development of a co-operative industrial relations climate and analyses the effects of that climate on organizational and union allegiance and on employee attendance behaviour. The data are drawn from a study of a large automotive manufacturer in Australia. The results indicate that a positive union–management relationship is associated with higher levels of work attendance. Moreover, this outcome is consistent with the presence of strong and effective unionism at the workplace.     

Company or Trade Union: Which Wins Workers' Allegiance? A Study of Commitment in the UK Electronics Industry

A particular dimension of organisational commitment, namely identity of workers with the values and decisions of an organisation was explored with 716 employees in three electronics plants; 46 per cent belonged to trade unions. The study examined the extent, the causes and the consequences of dual allegiance to company and union, single allegiance to one or allegiance to neither. Less than 10 per cent displayed dual allegiance and a majority displayed allegiance to neither organisation. The best predictors of allegiance were perceptions of trade union performance and job satisfaction. Those showing dual allegiance also indicated lowest propensity to leave the company. These results, from a key sector of manufacturing industry, show little evidence of high employee involvement. The most typical response would appear to be: 'a plague on both your houses'.     

Experience with Company Unions and their Treatment under the Wagner Act: A Four Frames of Reference Analysis

This paper reexamines American experience with company unions (also known as nonunion employee representation plans) before they were banned by the Wagner Act (1935). For the half‐century following the passage of the act, labor historians and industrial relations scholars painted a bleak portrait of company unions as anti‐union sham organizations. Since the 1980s, additional research has documented a more positive side; similarly, concern has grown that the Wagner Act's ban is stifling legitimate employee participation programs. This paper brings new theoretical and empirical evidence to both historical and legal parts of this debate, including examination of company unions through individualist, unitarist, pluralist, and radical frames; demonstration that the pluralists’ view of company unions was more diverse and positive than conventionally portrayed; presentation of new historical evidence and testimony on the company union experience; and a substantially revisionist assessment of the merits of the Wagner Act's ban. In particular, the conclusion is that, given any reasonable weighting of the four frames, the company union ban is overly restrictive and should be modified so companies can implement the positive side of nonunion employee committees but not the negative. The paper ends by noting that the unbalanced and narrowly critical treatment of company unions in the mainline industrial relations tradition is a case study of the field's perhaps fatal post–World War II core intellectual‐normative contradiction—professed inclusiveness of all frames of employment relations but, in practice, attention to and preference for a narrow union‐centric version of one frame.     

Industrial Relations Climate and Union Commitment: An Evaluation of Workplace‐Level Effects

This paper examines the relationship between industrial relations (IR) climate and union commitment. Using a multi‐workplace sample from North East England, aggregation analysis provided support for treating IR climate as a workplace‐level variable, and workplace IR climate was negatively associated with union commitment. However, IR climate moderated none of the relationships between individual‐level antecedents and union commitment.     

Solidarity's Abandonment of Worker Councils: Redefining Employee Stakeholder Rights in Post-socialist Poland

This paper examines the rejection of employee councils by Poland's trade union Solidarity. In the historical institutional analysis in the first part of this paper, Solidarity's early commitment to employee councils is traced to the evolution of ideas about economic reform that predominated in the union leadership. The impact of these dominant ideas are examined in the second half of the paper which relates Solidarity's abandonment of employee councils to broadly held beliefs about the limited rights of employee stakeholders. Together, the qualitative and quantitative analysis demonstrates how trade unions' strategies and their ideological underpinnings have shaped Poland's postwar industrial relations institutions.     

A Two–Tier Wage Structure in a Nonunion Firm

This study examines the perceptions of nonunion workers in a permanent two–tier wage structure. Consistent with the predictions of equity and justice theories, low–tier employees are found to be more likely to perceive the wage structure as unfair, have lower pay satisfaction and organizational commitment, and report poorer worker–management relations than high– tier employees. These attitudes may make nonunion firms more vulnerable to certification campaigns since they are the same factors that have been repeatedly linked to employee intentions to vote for a union.     

Industrial Relations Climate,Employee Voice and Managerial Attitudes to Unions: An Australian Study

This article examines how employee voice arrangements and managerial attitudes to unions shape employees' perceptions of the industrial relations climate, using data from the 2007 Australian Worker Representation and Participation Survey (AWRPS) of 1,022 employees. Controlling for a range of personal, job and workplace characteristics, regression analyses demonstrate that employees' perceptions of the industrial relations climate are more likely to be favourable if they have access to direct‐only voice arrangements. Where management is perceived by employees to oppose unions (in unionized workplaces), the industrial relations climate is more likely to be reported as poor. These findings have theoretical implications, and significant practical implications for employers, employees, unions and the government.     

Unions and Work Attitudes in the United States and Japan

Examining whether Japanese enterprise unions have a negative effect on employee job attitudes or whether they forge a stronger bond between the worker and the firm, our results indicate that union membership has no effect on Japanese employees' job satisfaction, but that there is some negative impact on company commitment. Much of the union effect on U.S. workers' job attitudes stems from lower job complexity, work autonomy, perceived promotion chances, and quality circle membership.     

Do business customers perceive what salespeople believe? Perceptions of salesperson adoption of innovations

A salesperson's commitment and effort toward an innovation can determine whether the customer agrees to buy it, such that customers' perceptions of such commitment and effort are critical. But these perceptions also might differ fundamentally from the salesperson's self-perceptions of commitment and effort. Therefore, this paper presents a theoretical framework of the relation between salesperson-perceived and customer-perceived commitment and effort, as exhibited by the salesperson while selling an innovation, which represents salesperson adoption. In the framework, job satisfaction factors also exert contingent, moderating effects. The authors gather unique, dyadic data from surveys of salespeople and their (potential) business customers during visits to sell a conventional, incremental innovation, complemented by objective purchase data gathered from company records. Three key insights emerge fromt this study. First, salespeople's own perceptions of their commitment and effort have only moderate influences on customers' perceptions of salespeople's commitment and effort. Second, customers seem to recognize salesperson effort more readily than salesperson commitment, although salesperson commitment has a higher sales performance impact than salesperson effort. Thus, sales managers should seek to encourage and support both the commitment of salespeople and also perceptions of that commitment among customers. Third, while a higher organizational support or job autonomy strengthens customers' perceptions of salesperson adoption, a higher pay satisfaction diminishes it. Thus, firms might need to find ways to increase the support for the salespeople and their autonomy and to reduce salespeople's satisfaction with their (direct) payments. In total, these findings suggest significant scientific and managerial implications.     

Union Co‐operation in a Context of Job Insecurity: Negotiated Outcomes from Teamworking

This paper explores the ‘mutual gains’ argument that employees benefit when teamworking is introduced alongside employee involvement in problem‐solving and within a co‐operative industrial relations climate. It reports worker outcomes from negotiations to introduce teamworking across two steelworks. Moderate union branches and employees at one of the works (Scunthorpe) co‐operated with managers in joint problem‐solving teams to redesign work. However, contrary to mutual gains expectations, greater job insecurity at this works coerced union branches to accept teamworking agreements containing extensive demanning and a pay increase for fewer employees. Employees perceived greater job security at the other works (Teesside) and by rejecting joint problem‐solving with managers, militant union branches protected more jobs and extracted higher payment for teamworking. The findings indicate that job insecurity can lead co‐operative unions down a slippery slope of coerced co‐operation restricting employee benefits from teamworking.     

The Flip Side of Organized Decentralization: Company‐Level Bargaining in Denmark

The Danish collective bargaining system is often considered a good example of organized decentralization. It has been characterized as a centralized decentralization suggesting a reproduction of sector‐level bargaining relations at company level. A recent survey on company‐level bargaining in the Danish industrial sector confirms this hypothesis with regard to the experiences of local managers and shop stewards. However, part of the survey also questions whether the reproduction will continue in the future. Small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises and their employees tend to miss out on the mutual benefits obtained through company‐level agreements. Furthermore, shop stewards often find it difficult to gain employee support during negotiations, which jeopardizes their bargaining relations with management.     

Company Prospects and Employee Commitment: an Analysis of the Dimensionality of the BOCS and the Influence of External Events on Those Dimensions

The study described in this paper addressed two key objectives. Using structural equation modelling, the study examined first the dimensionality of the British Organizational Committment Scale (BOCS) and second, how employee perceptions of their company's prospects and their perceptions of their own career opportunities might affect each commitment dimension. Analysis of the data (from an oil company) suggests that the BOCS has three principal dimensions but that there is a fourth (measurement artefact) factor, consisting of the negatively phrased items. Analysis also reveals that improved company prospects are positively related to the 'loyalty' dimension of the BOCS but are inversely related to the 'involvement' dimension. The paper considers explanations for this phenomenon.     

Updating the Determinants of Firm Performance: Estimation using the 1998 UK Workplace Employee Relations Survey

We examine the determinants of establishment performance in the UK, using cross‐sectional data from the 1998 Workplace Employee Relations Survey to replicate research by Fernie and Metcalf (1995) who used data from the 1990 Workplace Employee Relations Survey; specifically, we test whether employee representation, contingent pay and efforts to boost employee participation affect a set of economic and industrial relations outcome indicators in the manner they suggest. We also re‐estimate the influential WERS90‐based study of Machin and Stewart (1996) on the links between union status and financial performance. In both cases we report very different results.     

An Attitudinal Revolution in Irish Industrial Relations: The End of ‘Them and Us’?

Intensified international competition and high unemployment have characterized many Western economies since 1980. A firm's survival in such an environment demands a flexible and co-operative work-force, a requirement incompatible with traditional adversarial industrial relations. Drawing on a survey of employees in nine unionized companies in the Irish manufacturing sector, this paper examines the effect of these changes in the economy and workplace in facilitating a significant reduction in 'them and us' attitudes and an associated weakening of union structure and influence in the workplace. We found no evidence of a reduction in 'them and us' attitudes, but a cohesive and influential union was associated with less intense 'them and us'.     

Contrasting union orientations and engagement with international private regulation: The agency and role of labour in MNC subsidiaries in Ghana

This article focuses on multinational company subsidiaries in Ghana with contrasting approaches to international private regulation. The findings explore the nature and outcomes of international private regulation but also the agency of unions and their orientations in terms of whether they valued and engaged with international private regulation or otherwise. Local union orientations and industrial relations dynamics are key influences on whether international private regulation is meaningfully applied or perceived as useful, and these contrasted notably within the research underpinning this article.     

Employee Participation in Health and Safety in the Australian Steel Industry, 1935–2006

Occupational health and safety (OHS) representatives and committees are the principal form of employee participation mandated by legislation in Anglo‐Saxon countries, and therefore have a strong base. However, their existence precedes legislation in some significant cases. This article undertakes a 70‐year historical analysis of the effectiveness and operations of one significant example of pre‐legislative OHS committees in an Australian steelworks. The study finds that effectiveness of the committees as a form of participation depended on a complex complementarity of variables, including relationship with unions, the nature of management commitment, the organizational industrial relations climate and the political and institutional macro environment, consistent with ‘favourable conjunctures’ theory.     

An Individual‐Level Study of Contract Ratification Support

This study uses constructs developed from theoretical models of both unit‐level ratification studies and individual‐level studies of strike support to predict individual employee ratification voting behavior and contract satisfaction. Surveys were given to union members before and after ratification voting. The results suggest that constructs assessing economic factors, employment relations, union relations, and the importance of contract information from the union all influence ratification support. While the bargaining issues are important in explaining ratification support, factors beyond the bargaining issues, such as employer and union loyalty and providing information about the contract, are related to ratification support.     

Environment, Corporate Ideology, and Employee Involvement Programs

Corporations are implementing employee involvement programs in both union and nonunion settings in response to growing environmental pressures. This study examines the relationships among environmental pressures, corporate ideology, and participative practices in union and nonunion settings and tests two industrial relations models. Questionnaires measuring environmental pressures, corporate ideology, and participation were completed and returned by the Vice President of Human Resources (or similar corporate executive) in 159 of the largest manufacturing companies in the United States. Multiple regression results show that environmental pressures exert little effect on corporate ideology, but ideology has a significant effect on participative practices in both union and nonunion settings.     

Environment, Corporate Ideology, and Employee Involvement Programs

Corporations are implementing employee involvement programs in both union and nonunion settings in response to growing environmental pressures. This study examines the relationships among environmental pressures, corporate ideology, and participative practices in union and nonunion settings and tests two industrial relations models. Questionnaires measuring environmental pressures, corporate ideology, and participation were completed and returned by the Vice President of Human Resources (or similar corporate executive) in 159 of the largest manufacturing companies in the United States. Multiple regression results show that environmental pressures exert little effect on corporate ideology, but ideology has a significant effect on participative practices in both union and nonunion settings.