This book introduces new empirical research from scholars brought together through a seminar series funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) entitled âReframing Resolution â Managing Conflict and Resolving Individual Employment Disputes in the Contemporary Workplaceâ that concluded in September 2013. This in turn developed from a programme of research into conflict management in the UK funded by the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (Acas) from which a number of the contributions in this volume are drawn.
For the most part, the evidence presented in the following chapters is located within the setting of the UK economy. However, the issues raised have relevance worldwide, and so to facilitate wider international contextualisation and comparison, as well as reflect international contributions to the seminar series itself, there are chapters focusing on experiences in the USA, Ireland and Australia. The aim of the book is to advance our understanding of contemporary theory and practice relating to the management of employment conflict and the extent to which innovative approaches are being developed and diffused. It seeks to contribute not only to academic debates but also to provide key insights for management and union practitioners responsible for day-to-day handling of conflict in the workplace.
Each chapter is self-contained and can be read independently of the other contributions. However, when taken as a whole, the content of this book presents a general argument that changes in the management and regulation of work have created a âresolution gapâ that current policy approaches and organizational strategies fail to acknowledge or address. For instance, the erosion of workplace representation, the changing nature of the human resource management function and the questionable people management abilities of many front-line managers are trends that are not confined to the UK, and so a particular emphasis of this book is to examine how organizations in the UK, USA, Ireland and Australia are responding to such challenges in the development of new and innovative approaches to the management of conflict and dispute resolution. What follows is divided into four parts that take us from a careful delineation and conceptualization of workplace conflict, through an exploration of how conflict is experienced on the front lines of organizational activity and consideration of alternative dispute resolution theory and practice, to an examination of contemporary perspectives on conflict management.
The first part â Surveying the Terrain â begins with a chapter by Richard Saundry that seeks to overcome the lack of definitional clarity that has hampered our understanding of conflict management and dispute resolution over the years. There is a tendency in both academic and practitioner literature to conceive of conflict in generic and malleable ways. For many stakeholders conflict refers simply to the manifestations of discontent, which in turn shapes debates over the impact and importance of conflict as an organizational phenomenon. If, for instance, conflict is treated traditionally as synonymous with collective industrial disputes, then the decline in the incidence of industrial action across developed economies may be interpreted as reflecting either the decline of workplace unrest or the individualization of conflict (or both). Saundry counters such an assumption by arguing that the nature and extent of workplace conflict have altered relatively little, whereas the channels through which conflict is expressed and potentially resolved have changed considerably.
In Chap. 3, John Forth and Gill Dix draw on a range of large-scale survey data to examine the changing patterns of workplace conflict in the UK. In keeping with Saundryâs assessment, they find little evidence of significant change in the incidence of employment disputes, but do suggest that despite the UK (in common with many countries) suffering the longest recession in living memory, there may be a progressive trend towards lower levels of conflict at work. Nevertheless, they also question the effectiveness of dispute resolution in UK organizations given the limited coverage of employee representation combined with questions over the ability of managers to tackle difficult human resource issues. Indeed, in Chap. 4 Jonny Gifford, Matthew Gould, Paul Latreille and Peter Urwin identify a disconnection between the perceptions of managers and their subordinates regarding their experiences of conflict and disputes. A key finding from their analysis of a representative survey of employees undertaken by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development is that those occupying managerial roles seem much more positive about the extent to which disputes have been resolved than those they manage, which has important implications for the handling of such problems.
The fourth and final chapter of Part 1 is a contribution from the USA by Ariel Avgar, Eric Neuman and Wonjoon Chung. They emphasize the importance of social structure and social capital as constructs that underpin and contextualize workplace conflict. They cite recent empirical research and earlier work by Avgar to argue that the strong social ties within small workgroups (organizations and teams) are likely to help resolve or suppress emergent conflict, and they find that the negative impact of internal disputes on group relationships are less likely where organizational leaders create social structures that anticipate successfully the likelihood and nature of inter- and intra-team conflict.
Having set the scene, Part 2 of this book sets out to examine how conflict and its resolution is experienced by personnel on the âfront lineâ of organizational product and service delivery. Chapter 6, from Carol Jones and Richard Saundry, goes straight to the heart of the matter by evaluating the evidence from a series of in-depth UK case studies that point to a crisis of confidence among operational line managers. The inherent contradictions for such managers seeking to, on the one hand, satisfy organizational performance demands, while on the other hand trying to maintain constructive relations with and between their subordinates are exacerbated by a fear of litigation or internal censure that leads them to avoid options for informal dispute resolution and to defer to formal procedure and their professional HR colleagues instead. Jones and Saundryâs analysis points to the importance of a constructive relationship between line managers and HR practitioners. In particular, they argue that the prevailing attitude of HR professionals can over-emphasize the procedural aspects of conflict handling and that the increasing âdistanceâ between the HR function and operational managers makes creative and early dispute resolution less likely.
In Chap. 7 Gemma Wibberley and Richard Saundry draw on the same UK case studies to explore the relationship between employee voice and conflict management. Their assessment indicates that effective channels for employee voice are important in identifying and resolving workplace disputes between individuals, but they express reservations about the decline of employee representation in organizations and especially through recognized trade unions. There is some evidence that non-unionized employee representatives and employee engagement strategies in high-trust environments may help workers to voice their concerns pertaining to conflict and dispute, but that such alternatives do not replace sufficiently the absence of trade union representation. In the last Chap. 8 of Part 2, Ian Ashman examines a context specific site for organizational conflict â the downsizing or restructuring event. His own field study of âdownsizing envoysâ â the people that deliver face-to-face the news of redundancy to victims â shows that whilst downsizing and restructuring is generally traumatic and rife with potential for conflict, it is by no means inevitable or predictable. He provides a compelling account of the challenges faced by âenvoysâ and highlights the unexpected disputes and alliances that can occur among the various protagonists during downsizing exercises.
Part 3 of this book retains the empirically grounded approach to understanding conflict but shifts attention to dispute resolution. Mediation and other alternative dispute resolution practices are often seen as an antidote to some of the problems and challenges outlined in Parts 1 and 2. Mediation in particular, is argued to provide a successful and cost effective way of resolving conflict, as well as having a positive effect on the conflict-handling abilities of any parties who experience it first-hand. As such it may therefore offer an opportunity to counter the management skills deficit identified in Chap. 6. Some commentators and indeed policymakers have even suggested that mediation can transform the culture of conflict management. Ultimately, however, most mediation research has tended to adopt either a managerial focus, emphasizing the organizational experiences and impact of mediation, or one which highlights the role of mediators themselves, so the voice of disputants has largely been absent. In Chap. 9, Tony Bennett examines the mediation process from the disputantâs perspective by drawing on a unique dataset of in-depth interviews with employees who have taken part in workplace mediation. He explores the trajectory of individual disputes and assesses participantsâ views of the effectiveness of mediation provision and the sustainability of the outcomes. The chapter not only sheds light on key issues such as workplace justice and the voluntary nature of mediation but also highlights lessons for organization in implementing mediation strategies. He finds that while mediation offers a positive and often cathartic opportunity to voice concerns, the more pragmatic focus on resolution often fails to address underlying concerns of justice.
Justice, and how it is seen to be done, is clearly a major concern for trade unions, which have often adopted a somewhat sceptical opinion of mediation, viewing it suspiciously as a managerial tool designed to undermine the ability of unions to enforce the ârightsâ of the members through more conventional grievance processes. Perhaps surprisingly then, Virginia Branney, in Chap. 10, argues that whilst union representatives do place significant store in rights-based procedures, they nevertheless have a generally positive attitude to the use of mediation in specific contexts. Branney draws on her own recent survey of trade union representatives, the first such study of the attitudes of union activists and officers towards workplace mediation, and asks whether the wider use of mediation offers an opportunity to extend trade union influence over decision-making, or whether it may be a threat to their traditional representative role? She argues that mediation is not a replacement for more conventional grievance procedures but might provide a means through which unions can achieve improved outcomes for their members and at the same time demonstrate their effectiveness.
The next two chapters offer examples from outside the UK of how ADR techniques have been used in innovative ways. While much of this book emphasizes and examines trends towards the management of individual conflict, it is important not to neglect the collective dimension. To this end, in Chap. 11, Bill Roche looks at the growing field of the private facilitation of collective bargaining in Ireland during both dispute and non-dispute situations. Drawing on interviews with prominent and experienced privately-engaged facilitators and on detailed case studies, his discussion explores the nature and objectives of private facilitation, the influences on the use of private facilitators and the consequent outcomes. By contrast, Bernadine Van Gramberg, Julian Teicher and Greg Bamber, in Chap. 12, examine developments in the approach taken by the Australian Fair Work Commission (the national employment tribunal provider) in responding to the growing number of unrepresented parties appearing at tribunals. Using evidence from interviews with tribunal members, they explore and discuss apparent the shift towards using ADR methods in the context of the growing individualization of Australian employment relations.
To end Part 3, Louise McArdle and Pete Thomas offer, in Chap. 13, a critical account of the development of in-house mediation schemes by applying critical discourse analysis to a body of Acas-funded qualitative case study research data to explore the antagonistic relations in an organization and the role of articulation in the development of mediation. They focus on the importance of organizational context, and caution against the use of mediation as a panacea for workplace conflict. In some respects their conclusion is fairly consistent with more mainstream accounts which argue that mediation alone is unlikely to have any material impact on organizational approaches to conflict management. Their emphasis that the role of key actors (in their case particular managers and trade union officials) in the development of mediation schemes must be placed in context of the conjuncture of social and power relations and institutional structures that are found in organizations echoes aspects of the arguments presented by Ariel Avgar, Eric Neuman and Wonjoon Chung in Chap. 5.
To close the book, Part 4 provides an assessment of significant innovations in conflict handling across the USA, UK and Ireland. The idea of âi...