Thursday, December 2, 2010

The unitary and pluralist perspectives of employee relations

FIRST ASSESSMENT TASK
The unitary and pluralist perspectives of employee relations
            Since the 1980s, there has been a significant paradigm shift in managing employee relations (ER) to one focused on more strategic and integrated frameworks that are based on employee commitment and shared workplace interests, instead of the traditional managerial control and conflicts between employers and employees (Cully et al. 1999: 57; Kaufman 2008: 317). These ER initiatives can be traced back to the 1950s in the United States, where three human resource (HR) models became prominent, namely Fombrun, Tichy, and Devanna’s (1984) ‘matching model,’ Beer et al.’s (1984) ‘Harvard model,’ and Walton’s (1985) ‘control to commitment’ model (Farnham 1993: 34).  Similar ER changes occurred in the United Kingdom (UK), although mainly in larger organisations. Authors argued that the manager’s frame of reference impacts how these perspectives are interpreted and used or not used (Farnham 1993: 36, Ackers and Payne 1998: 533,and Gennard and Judge 2002: 52).  The three common kinds of ER perspectives are: unitarist, pluralist, and neo-unitary (Farnham 1993: 37). This essay critically evaluates only two approaches to ER namely, the unitary and pluralist perspectives and demonstrates the implications for managing successful ER in organisations adopting the unitarist perspectives.
Unitarist perspectives
Fox (1996) stated that there are two major frames of reference for ER, the unitarist and pluralist frameworks (cited in Farnham 1993: 36).  There are several main elements of the unitarist perspective. First, there is only a single source of authority in organisation, which is usually the management, and oppositionary leaders are non-existent (Ross and Bamber 2009: 25).  Second, the role of organisational leaders is to promote loyalty and commitment among workers (Farnham 1993: 36, and Ackers and Payne 1998: 540).  Third, organisations are seen as consisting of teams that are working together for mutual goals, and there are also no conflicts of interests between managers and employees (Leat 2001: 23).  The unitarist perspective believes that employers and employees can join forces for common objectives, interests, and values (Ackers and Payne 1998: 540, and Burchill 1997: 7, cited in Dzimbiri 2008: 2). Fourth, the management should exemplify strong leadership to attain organisational objectives (Farnham 1993: 36).  Fifth, trade unions are not legal intrusions to management objectives (Farnham 1993: 36).   Trade unions are not seen as essential for the harmonious managing of conflicts (Ackers and Payne 1998: 540, and  Dzimbiri 2008: 2). Sixth, conflicts in the organisation are perceived negatively; they are dysfunctional and lead to disloyalty, thereby impairing the well-being of the organisation (Giles 1989: 131; Farnham 1993: 36, and Curseu et al. 2009: 20).   Seventh, the state is autonomous and shapes industrial relations systems (IR) (Giles 1989: 131).
Strengths of unitarist perspective
A major strength of the unitarist perspective is that it explicitly wants to integrate employer and employee interests, so that it can enhance employee commitment and loyalty (Guest and Peccei 2001:209). This can be used as a basis for stakeholder management, wherein employees are seen as important stakeholders of the organisation, and so their well-being is carefully considered in ensuring the welfare of the organisation (Ackers and Payne 1998: 540).
The unitarist perspective also emphasizes the role of managers in attaining win-win situations for employees and organisations, wherein their interests can be properly aligned with each other (Giles 1989: 131). Managers are compelled to go beyond their managerial styles of managing ER and emphasise also their leadership capabilities (Ackers and Payne 1998: 539). If they can be convincing and influential leaders in the organisation, there will be no strong demand for trade unions.
Furthermore, the unitarist perspective assumes that all stakeholders are rational members, who will consider finding common interests. This belief provides a steady rationale for stressing common goals, so that a stable ER system can be achieved (Giles 1989: 131).
Finally, the unitarist perspective is essentially individualist in its ER approach, which works best for individualist IR systems (Giles 1989: 131). Many IR systems all over the world has shifted from the collectivist (trade-union-led) IR paradigms to individualist paradigms, including in the UK, and so the unitarist perspective will be particularly useful for this kind of IR perspective.
Weaknesses of unitarist perspective
A major weakness of this theory is the lack of realization that there are power inequalities between employers and employees which will generate diverse kinds of conflicts (Kessler and Purcell 2003: 315). Managers often exert greater power over their employees in determining work conditions, especially for blue-collar jobs, and instead of the workers acting as owners of power too, they will tend to accept decisions of the management and submit to the former’s power.
Furthermore, conflict is treated too negatively, and not seen as a force that reflects inequalities and which can be used as opportunities to regain work harmony (Dzimbiri 2008: 2, and Kitay & Marchington 1996: 1267). Although there are different kinds of conflicts, some authors say that there are certain kinds of conflicts that are good for organisational development. For instance, there are two kinds of conflict- one that is unhelpful to team effectiveness, also called A-conflict, and the other that is helpful to the team, termed as C-conflict (Esquivel and Kleiner 1996: 43). Task conflict, an example of task conflict, arises when team members have disparities in how tasks are defined and divided among the group, such as major decision areas and processes (Chuang et al. 2004: 28). Studies showed that task conflict can improve positive outcomes for the group (Chuang et al. 2004: 28, and Choudrie 2005: 65). Simons and Peterson (2000) asserted from their study that intragroup trust affected the relationship between tasked-related conflict and relationship conflict (cited in Chuang et al. 2004: 28).  Hence, by ‘demonising’ conflict, the unitary perspective delimits how task conflicts can also be used to enhance performance.
In addition, it is unclear how individual worker sentiments can be adequately integrated into the organisational objectives, because the unitary perspective is very normative and lacks description of how common interests can be identified and shared across organisations (Ackers and Payne 1998: 539). For instance, it does not provide any guidelines for HR, so that it can pursue unitarism effectively (Storey 2000: 12). The unitarist perspective only assumes that members are rational enough to reach solid decisions on how personal and organisational interests are to be combined.
Pluralist perspectives
First, pluralist theory believes that the workplace is composed of diverse sets of beliefs, values, attitudes, and behaviours (Giles 1989: 131). Second, there are opposing sources of leadership and attachment in organisations (Farnham 1993: 36).   Third, conflicts are inevitable because there are inherent competing interests (Dabscheck 1989: 59, and Dzimbiri 2008: 3). Conflicts can even be helpful, if identified and controlled within institutional responses (Farnham 1993: 36).   Fourth, the role of the management is to mediate among competing interests (Farnham 1993: 36).   Fifth, Trade unions are legitimate representatives of employees, and they are viewed positively because they help employees emphasise their decision-making power (Leat 2001:23).   Sixth, the state promotes public interest (Kaufman 2008: 320). Seventh, ER stability can be attained through a series of concessions and negotiations between managers and employers through the collective bargaining process (Bacon and Storey 2000: 410 and Kaufman 2008: 321).
Strengths of the pluralist perspective
Unlike the unitarist, the pluralist theory emphasises that effective IR interventions can resolve conflicts (Dzimbiri 2008: 3). A consultative approach can be used by the management in responding to conflicts. Furthermore, it also considers other alternative decision-making processes (Dzimbiri 2008: 3 and Giles 1989: 131).
Conflict is not overlooked, but managed effectively through stakeholder participation (Hunter 1998: 560). Conflict can then be used to understand underlying tensions, so that they can be identified and properly addressed (Kessler and Purcell 2003: 315, and Bacon and Blyton 2007). The pluralist perspective makes use of conflict management strategies to engage groups that are in conflict, so that resolutions can be discussed and implemented (Kessler and Purcell 2003: 315).
The pluralist perspective embraces a wider array of employee relations policies (Gennard, and Judge 2002: 56). Some companies can adopt no-union policies, as long as there are employee organisations, while other companies can motivate the use of trade unions. The girth of employee relations policies can make pluralism specifically beneficial for diverse organisational and national cultures (Gennard, and Judge 2002: 56). For instance, trade unions can be effective allies also in aligning individual and organisational interests compared to the unitarist approach to ER (Badigannavar and Kelly 2005). The pluralist perspective is also suitable for collective IR systems, because it does not disregard the role of trade unions in managing employee-employer conflicts (Badigannavar and Kelly 2005).
Weaknesses of the pluralist perspective
The weakness of the pluralist theory is the inclination to dwell on on rules and procedures and disregard the processes that also contribute to the resolution of conflicts. For instance, through IR, laws can be made that impose certain ways of resolving workplace conflicts. These rules, however, cannot adapt to emerging and different workplace conditions (Gennard, and Judge 2002: 56).
In addition, the pluralist perspective is incapable of realising that the state also represents commercial interests and not just public interests (Kitay & Marchington 1996: 1267). The pluralist perspective may focus too much on worker interest, which can lead to the inefficiencies of collective bargaining processes.
Managing unitarist ER successfully
            There are different ways of managing successful ER that has adopted the unitarist approach. First, the management can focus on providing financial incentives and shared ownership, so that the former can integrate employer and employee interests (Guest and Peccei 2001: 210, and Singh and Loncar 2010).  The management can stress on different kinds of profit-sharing and share ownership that are made to ensure that every employee is provided the chance to have a “financial stake” in the company (Blinder 1990, and Guest and Peccei 2001: 210).
Second, the management can also focus in different kinds of direct employee participation and involvement in daily work activities (Guest and Peccei 2001: 210). This can include different empowering and participatory approaches to workplace management, so that individuals feel that they can have wider latitude in controlling their work processes and results (Guest and Peccei 2001: 210). The worker empowerment and participation can permit higher forms of autonomy that can maximise worker contribution (Guest and Peccei 2001: 210). The management should ensure, however, that it is not providing a superficial kind of participation, wherein major job processes are still provided top-down, because this can only decrease employee satisfaction, instead of increasing it (Chan et al. 2006, and Gollan 2006).
Third, the management can concentrate on the systematic use of “progressive, high-performance, or high-involvement” HR practices in domains of selection, training, job design, communications, performance evaluation, rewards, and others, so that they can be designed to maximise individual-organisation relationships and to produce high levels of employee commitment, loyalty, and satisfaction (Danford et al. 2008; Seibert, Silver, and Randolph 2004, and Schmidt 2009)
Conclusion
            The management follow different kinds of frame of references when dealing with employee relations. This essay focuses only on two perspectives, the unitarist and the pluralist. These perspectives have their own strengths and advantages, and they also fit different kinds of company objectives and IR systems. Unitarist perspectives assume that there is only one source of leadership and that conflict should and can be avoided through the alignment of individual and organisational interests. Trade unions are seen negatively by unitarists. This perspective also fits individualist IR. Pluralists believe that there are competing interests and that conflict can be properly managed. This perspective asserts the large role that trade unions can play in the collective bargaining process, which makes it appropriate for collectivist IR systems. Organisations that have unitarist ER can make it more effective for organisational goals through having a wide array of efforts that improve employee satisfaction, motivation, and loyalty. Some of the suggested means are profit-sharing methods and other ways that result to high-performance work systems.





















Reference list
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Badigannavar, V. and Kelly, J. (2005) ‘Labour-management partnership in the non-union retail sector.’ International Journal of Human Resource Management 16, 8 (1529-1544).
Blinder, A.S. (1990) Paying for productivity: a look at the evidence. Washington: Brookings Institution.
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Choudrie, J. (2005) ‘Understanding the role of communication and conflict on reengineering team development.’ Journal of Enterprise Information Management 18, (1) 64-78.
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Cully, M., Woodland, S., O’Reilly, A. and Dix, G. (1999) Britain at work.  London: Routledge.
Dabscheck, B. (1989) ‘A survey of theories of industrial relations.’ In Theories and concepts in comparative industrial relations.  ed. K Barbash. South Carolina: Univ. of South Carolina Press.
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Wednesday, December 1, 2010

How is escape from being possible?



In “The Ego and the Totality,” Emmanuel Levinas believes that an individual being can understand itself to be a total being, “only if it is thoughtless” (25). This is conceived through the freedom or violence of human beings. When people want to understand the expression of violence, Levinas states that this can be done through viewing being that has life in the totality that exists as a totality (25). The thinking being integrates into this totality, its needs and enjoyments. The totality becomes both the immediate element and the medium, where the living being is transformed to a concrete man (25). Furthermore, Levinas argues that every human experience can be described through phenomenological description; every human experience is from the beginning meaningful and can be understood through the process of intentionality. However, Levinas stresses that the embodied (sentient) self has a need to escape from the intentional ego.  The escape from this being can be approached from a phenomenological description. This paper contents that Levinas asserts that escape from being is possible by breaking that most radical and steadfastly binding of chains that link I to oneself until autonomy is finally attained.
Levinas is heavily influenced by Husserl's phenomenological method, which revolved around the centrality of the “transcendental ego.” Husserl’s approach to essence, however, is too intellectual for Levinas and he moves away from this approach to being and transcendence to create his own counter-ontology. Levinas redefines transcendence as a need for escape. This escape involves the living being that is not absence of consciousness (Levinas 26). But this consciousness has problems; it has a “purely inner world whose center in occupies” (Levinas 26). It is a consciousness that is not involved in placing itself relative to an exteriority, does not understand itself as a part of the whole, and it also lacks the consciousness to which the unconscious corresponds (Levinas 26). In addition this living consciousness is completely inward, wherein if the exteriority strikes it, it will be killed; hence, it is rather free or dead (Levinas 26). This centrality makes it difficult to escape the being, when it is inward looking and does not correspond to something exterior to it. In a sense, the being possesses a certain power over its power over the self. Breaking apart will not be immediate for it can be fatal to the consciousness of the being (Levinas 27). The possibility of creating a thought of freedom is considered a “miracle” (Levinas 28). This miracle divides the biological consciousness and becomes the intermediate between the “the lived and the thought” (Levinas 28). The miracle, however, does not suffice for the commencement of the thought (Levinas 28). The thinking individual should still be able to posit the self to the totality, and in relation to it, which, as a result, defines the self with respect to the parts (Levinas 28).
Levinas approaches being differently, through the being for which the principal experiences of being are of its embodied, but not physiological, existence. Levinas differs from Heidegger’s approach, because the former provides primary priority to embodiment and its lived “moods” and also to the humans' unsuccessful attempts to escape the being that people belong to. Levinas believes that a human being experiences itself as if thrown into its world, without control over its commencement and ending. His approach to transcendence can be viewed in the humans’ constant urge to over the limits of their physical and social circumstances. His transcendence is not concerned of transcendence-in-the-world, but more focused on the transcendence through and because of awareness. This viewpoint of transcendence opens the question of mortality the finiteness of being. For transcendence, Levinas stresses: “Transcendence is what faces us…the essence condition for propositional truth is not in the disclosure of a being, or of the being of beings, but the expression of an interlocutor to whom I tell both the being he is and the being of his being” (Levinas 43). One confronts the identical in the being and escape cannot be easily attained, until the individuality of the “me” is apparent and accepted. Levinas states: “The individuality of the ego is distinguished from every given individuality by the fact that its identity is not constituted by what distinguishes it from others, but by its self-reference” (Levinas 43).
Recognition of the being is important. When one says “I think,” it means that there is an opposition to being. Levinas stresses, however:  “But if this recognition were a submission to him, the submission would take all its worth away from my recognition” (Levinas 43). The face of being affirms the existence of one self, but the negation of being cannot be done in a face-to-face manner says Levinas (43).  Levinas introduces the importance of speech: “Speech is thus a relationship between freedoms which neither limit nor negate, but affirms one another. They are transcendent with respect to each other” (Levinas 43).  The speech between these beings beholds a more radical phenomenological analysis.
Levinas argues that to escape, one must get out of oneself and break the most radical and steadfastly binding of chains that link I to oneself until autonomy is finally attained. The human life has to cross from the intentional to the experience of totality of one’s consciousness that is outside the being.  Levinas puts being in a cultural and historical context and to ask about the meaning of the finite and the infinite.  People are admittedly finite, as they contemplate the being as finite. Levinas says: “The idea of infinity is then not only one that teachers what we are ignorant of. It has been put into us…it is experience in the sole radical sense of the term: a relationship with the exterior, with the other, without this exteriority being able to integrated into the same” (Levinas 54).  People can escape this being through contemplating on the self and the being, and the relationships that must be withdrawn to identify the self. With the self identified in relation to its parts and the consciousness that it is part of, the self can be projected to escape from the being.
            Levinas also indicates the escape from the being itself and the beings that people are. He proceeds that the “the thinker who has the idea of infinity is more than himself, and this inflating, this surplus, does not come from within, as in the celebrated project of modern philosophers, in which the subject surpasses himself by creating” (Levinas 54). The escape comes from the escape from participation into this existence of infinite thinking. From the beginning, the “fact of existing” pertains to that of concrete human existence. In saying that existence is firstly human, Levinas underscores Heidegger's Being, or the “being of that which is,” provides an answer to the formal ontological question, to which determinations like finiteness and infinity, not to declare escape and transcendence, apply only indistinctly. He believes that the being extracts itself from this finiteness. Levinas's prolonged insistence that being is incessant presence, not, as Heidegger insisted, an occurrence of disclosure and departure.
Escape symbolizes a positive, dynamic need. But needs are not correspondent to suffering. Within numerous needs is the expectation of their fulfillment. Levinas pushes people to reconceptualize human need through discussing fullness rather than privation. He provides another definition of existence itself. He asserts that need is the ground of our existence. That means that transcendence, in Levinas' understanding of it, is continually directed toward something that is outside and more than the self. The great motivation is to escape from this material situation and embodiment. Levinas's counter-ontology redefines Heidegger's Being toward the amalgamated duality of sentient self and intentional ‘I’, here and now, not anticipated toward its ultimate departure in death
             Autonomy is also a process that can be used to escape from being. Freedom through escape can succeed through “the soul’s monologue” that has attained “universality” (Levinas 49).  The self will have to encompass first the totality of being until the dialectic of the soul conversing to itself realizes the dialogue (Levinas 49). Levinas says: “It is doubtless than for this reason that Descartes will say that the soul might be the origin of the ideas that relate to exterior things, and thus account for the real” (Levinas 49). The universality exists and the definition of the monologue proceeds exterior to the self. As a result, the being can withdraw from the monologue and exist outside of its being and its consciousness.
Levinas believes that every human experience can be described through phenomenological description; every human experience is from the beginning consequential and can be understood through the process of intentionality. However, Levinas stresses that the embodied (sentient) self has a need to escape from the intentional ego.  The escape from this being can be approached from the phenomenological description. Levinas asserts that escape from being is possible by breaking that most radical and persistently binding of chains that link I to oneself until autonomy is finally attained. From the discourse between the self and the being, relationships and context are identified and clarified, until the escape begins and leaves the limits of being’s consciousness.