The “Iron Law of Paternalism” in Employee Grievances and Arbitration? A Comparison of Disciplinary and Nondisciplinary Cases

In the criminology literature, the iron law of paternalism suggests that women receive less serious sanctions in the judicial system. This examination of three years of grievance outcomes (n= 1216) and arbitration outcomes (n= 1146) tests this iron law in the context of organizational disciplinary and dispute resolutions. These data, across several levels of outcomes (win, lose, compromise), controlling for the severity of grievances (disciplinary/nondisciplinary) and arbitrations (termination/nontermination) provide no support for the paternalistic thesis. Moreover, we find no support for the paternalistic thesis with regard to either the incidence or length of suspensions as a function of gender.     

The issue network: reshaping the stakeholder model

Who is a stakeholder? In this paper, stakeholders are defined in terms of who has a stake in an issue instead of who has a stake in a firm, and in so doing introduces the idea of an “issue network.” Drawing on concepts familiar to the social movements (sociology) and interest groups (political science) literatures, I argue that members of an issue network can be identified as those with grievances, resources, or opportunities. To illustrate this argument, I consider the issue of land use in the western United States, showing how various environmental organizations might fit into such a land use network. I conclude with the INSPIRE model, which locates my argument in this larger model of stakeholder management currently being constructed in the stakeholder literature. Copyright © 2010 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Management rights: A topological survey of the terrain

Dramatic changes in both the business environment and practitioner attitudes have made many of the traditional views of management rights moribund. Based on an analysis of the pertinent literature and a series of field interviews, this article sketches the rough dimensions of a managerial perspective of the parties' respective rights that is far more specific, pragmatic, and reciprocal in nature than the erstwhile global normative views were. In the future, management rights researchers should strive for the following goals: (1) conducting both inductive and deductive studies, (2) considering both positive and normative elements, (3) achieving a better balance between global, middle range, and particularitstic theories, and (4) recognizing the diverse disciplinary approaches that can be brought to bear on the subject.     

Managerial Justice: A Field Study of the Initial Steps of Appeal

Most of the existing grievance literature has focused on formal legalistic processes. This exploratory field study discovered that many issues in the instant case site were dealt with informally via negotiation outside the formal hearings. Based on the author's experiences while working as a union officer for 20 months and an employee for 11 years, we attain a more accurate political portrait of what transpires in the initial stages of appeal. A largely tacit managerial system of justice comes to light in the author's encounters with stonewalling, runarounds, double talk, threats, coercive acts, snow jobs, misdirection, smoke screens, and disinformation.     

Lawyers,gender and grievance arbitration outcomes

Why should the grievant’s gender or the presence of legal representation affect arbitration outcomes? The “chivalry hypothesis” holds that male arbitrators will tend to favor female grievants; its theoretical mirror image, the “evil woman” hypothesis, suggests that female grievants suffer a comparative disadvantage vis-à-vis similarly situated males. However, neither hypothesis (both drawn from criminologists’ studies of judicial sentencing patterns) applies all that well to the grievance arbitration process where, unlike in the court system, the parties themselves select their decision-maker. This is not to say that the grievance arbitration process is free of gender discrimination, only that arbitrators are probably not the source of any pro- or anti-female bias which may be uncovered.     

A comparison of blue- versus white-collar grievance behavior: A field assessment

This study examines the differences between blue-collar and white-collar employees with respect to grievance behavior in the work place. Specifically, the grievance-filing behavior of blue-collar and white-collar bargaining unit workers-members of the same union local-were compared with respect to number of actions, their severity, and their outcomes. Analyses of these grievances (n=604) indicated gross differences in the grievance-filing activity of these groups. These groups are, however, invariant with respect to severity or outcomes of the contested issues.     

The practical view of employee rights

Advocates of employee rights, relying upon moral and legal perspectives, have used moral appeals and the threat of legal sanctions to persuade managers to act responsibly. Drawing on a behavioral perspective and analyzing interviews and literature about employee complaints, this paper develops the practical view. This view emphasizes employees' perceptions of their rights, as represented by eight broad categories of asserted rights, and the subtle costs that employees can impose when their standards of proper treatment are violated. While important differences between the behavioral, legal, and moral perspectives are identified, a general standards-setting framework is presented that indicates the complementarity of the three perspectives and the advantages of a multidisciplinary combination.     

Dynamics of group grievances from a global cohesion perspective

Grievances are vulnerable to state development and harmony; however, some factors provoke the masses and groups to vulnerability and state fragility (SF) by disturbing social cohesion. Under the grievance assumptions on the political process, this study has been designed to gauge the nexus of group grievances (GG), an essential parameter of social cohesion, institutional governance (IG), government legitimacy (GL), economic growth (EcG), and population growth (POPG) from the global perspective from 2008 to 2022 in a global panel of 158 countries considering the critical aspect of SF. The statistics reveal that PS is essential in controlling and managing the GG in the state. PS is the most significant factor in harmonizing the state's ethnic minorities, focus, and religious groups with stable policies and their grievances issues. It also states that apart from PS, another aspect of IG, Control of Corruption (CoC), helps mitigate malpractices and provides a transparent environment supporting grievances. It further demonstrates that EcG provokes grievances instead of lessening them among the key groups in the state, especially in the processing of industrialization. Because of the government's partiality to provide benefits to specific groups or sectors, that partiality and injustice hype the grievances among the public. Moreover, POPG is also a significant factor in increasing GG, along with government illegitimacy and untrust. The study concludes that to make the country agile and prosperous, the government should balance developing industrialization without compromising agricultural and domestic industries. It helps states gain public trust in the IG framework and GL. The government should harmonize its policies by tackling all minorities, ethnic, and religious groups coherently to maintain social cohesion in the country. Finally, One of the significant factors in natural resources and the scarcity of global resources is population. It stated that prudent population control measures better assist in resource scarcity and conflict management, such as in EU countries compared to Asia and Africa. Recent grievance movements in Brazil, China, India, Nigeria, Pakistan, and the US, are the practical application of this study because these countries fall in the list of the top 10 most populous countries. So, population control policies should be effectively implemented to support economic and social parity and mitigate GG.