Employment Relations 4th edition by Mark Bray -Test Bank

·         Personalised control: Employees work under the direct supervision of owners or supervisors

·         Technical control: The content and pace of work are determined by production technology and machinery

·         Bureaucratic control: Providing strong incentives for employees to adhere to company rules

·         Commitment: Attempting to align the interests of workers with the organisation.

1.       Innovation: Jobs that require close interaction and coordination amongst groups of individuals; performance appraisals; jobs that allow the development of skills that can be used elsewhere in the organisation; pay scales emphasising internal equity; pay rates that tend to be low but allow employees to be shareholders; broad career paths.

2.       Quality enhancement: Relatively fixed and explicit job descriptions; high levels of employee participation in decisions about immediate working conditions; a mix of individual and group criteria for performance appraisal that is focused on the short-term and on achievement of results; egalitarian treatment of employees; extensive and continuous training and development of employees.

3.       Cost reduction: Relatively fixed and explicit job descriptions; narrowly defined jobs and career paths; short-term, results-oriented performance appraisals; close monitoring of market pay levels; minimal levels of employee training and development.

·         Individualism: Refers to the extent to which firms take into consideration the feelings of each employee

·         Collectivism: Refers to the extent to which an organisation acknowledges the rights of employees to take part in decisions that impact on them.

Stated intentions of new work and HRM practices appear laudable, but research indicates very mixed results regarding the uptake and success of new work practices, particularly high-commitment work practices.

Team process can result in an atmosphere of ‘peer pressure’, which negatively affects workers and increases stress.

There appears to be a divergence in experience depending on the industry. This is particularly evident in the comparison between the service and manufacturing sectors.

Call centres demonstrate the use of intensive control systems and perhaps reveal a trend away from ‘new’ work practices to a more Taylorist approach.

1.       The interests they act for (owners, shareholders etc.)

2.       The type of business strategies used to compete in the market

3.       The values that management may hold about employees and employment relations.

·         The structure and policies of trade unions

·         Decisions of tribunals and courts

·         The state’s restrictions on managerial autonomy

·         The type of technology and production processes

·         The influence of labour, product and capital markets in addition to the market for corporate control.

Both a generic term, used to describe the people who direct activities of an organisation on behalf of its owners, and the function performed by those people.

Collective organisations of employers; the employer equivalent of unions for employees. They are typically organised along craft, regional and industry (or multiple-industry) lines.

To realise the full potential of labour power to transform the potential to work into actual productive activity.

Responsible autonomy attempts ‘to harness the ability of labour power by giving workers leeway and encouraging them to adapt to changing situations in a manner beneficial to the firm’. To do this, management gives workers status and authority with some degree of responsibility and decision-making power.

Technical control was embedded in technical organisation and work design. It was a form of control where the degree of discretion in work was low.

1.       Low-wage employment pattern

2.       HRM employment pattern

3.       Japanese-oriented employment pattern

4.       Joint team-based approach.

·         Sophisticated human relations: Based around the concept of developing employees as a resource

·         Paternalist: Seeks to avoid unions; sees conflict as a failure of communication; emphasises the welfare of employees, stability, order and hierarchy

·         Traditional: Also known as cost-minimisation; sees labour as a commodity or factor of production.

·         Bargained constitutional: A style that accommodates itself to unions but developed around the need to achieve control and the institutionalisation of conflict

·         Modern paternalist: Embraces a welfare-oriented approach to employees but recognises and values relationships with unions and other employee representatives

·         Sophisticated consultative: A strong commitment to the development of employees and to their involvement in the processes of decision-making and problem-solving.

·         Collegial: An egalitarian culture where power, rewards and resources are evenly distributed, and employee commitment and participation are emphasised

·         Meritocratic: Shares many of the egalitarian qualities of the collegial culture but with an increased emphasis on rewarding people for performance

·         Elite: The most non-egalitarian culture, with power, resources and rewards concentrated at the apex

·         Leader-focused: While unequal in its distribution of power and rewards, builds cohesion by creating a team system around a group of loyal leaders who are delegated some of the elite’s power.

A HPWS can be defined as a set of complementary management or work practices designed to engage employees in the achievement of stated organisational goals. It is a management strategy designed and implemented to improve organisational productivity and performance by engaging the workforce through practices to broaden and deepen employee skills and understanding, increase opportunity for decision-making, improve equity and reward improved performance.

·         There is an assumption that organisations can make a clear choice between strategies to adopt. Conceptual problematics and fuzziness permeate major strategy models and this raises doubts about their operationalisation

·         The notion of a conscious ‘fit’ or match between a clearly articulated business strategy and a tailored set of employment relations or HRM policies is said to exaggerate the coherence and consistency of management strategies

·         Many organisations have adopted ‘new’ management practices in an ad-hoc or ‘pick and mix’ way and there is still no agreement on which practices work in which context

·         There is a lack of adequate representation of employment relations and HR at the executive decision-making level of organisations

·         There may be a lack of understanding by HR and ER managers of the goals, performance and plans of the business

·         The power and influence of HR and ER managers are challenged because of the perceived slowness to change.