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Managerial Responsiveness to Union and Nonunion Worker Voice in Britain

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Managerial Responsiveness to Union and Nonunion Worker Voice in Britain BlackwellOxford,IRELIndustrial0019-8676©Ja431000OriginalManagerialAlex 2004nuary Bryson RegentsUKArticles2004 RelationsPublishing Responsiveness of the Ltd ManagerialUniversity to Union of California and Nonunion Worker Voice in Britain Responsiveness to Union and Nonunion Worker Voice in Britain ALEX BRYSON* Over the last two decades, there has been a switch in British workplaces away from union voice and representative worker voice more generally toward direct employee involvement and nonunion representative forms of voice. This article assesses the implications of this switch for the effectiveness of worker voice, as measured by employee perceptions of managerial responsiveness. In general, perceptions of managerial responsiveness are better among employees with nonunion voice than they are among employees with union voice. N , F M (1984) adapted Hirschman’s (1970) theory of consumer behavior to identify two mechanisms by which people dealt with problems they faced at work: “exit,” whereby workers leave less desirable for more desirable jobs, and “voice,” whereby workers use “direct communication to bring actual and desired conditions closer together” (Freeman and Medoff 1984:8). Union voice was the dominant voice mechanism for British workers at the time Freeman and Medoff were writing in 1984. However, since then, there has been a steep decline in voice arrangements where unions form the single channel of communication (union-only voice) and a less marked decline in dual-channel voice involving union and nonunion channels in combination. These two changes have been offset by a steep increase in voice arrangements that do not involve representative voice (either with or with- out unions). The rise in nonunion voice has resulted from a shift toward direct voice, i.e., forms of voice involving direct two-way communication between workers and management, such as regular meetings between senior management and the workforce, briefing groups, and problem-solving * Policy Studies Institute, London. E-mail: [email protected]. I would like to thank Jeffrey Smith, Michael Handel, and David Levine; two anonymous referees; and participants at a PSI seminar for helpful comments on an earlier version of this article. I acknowledge the Department of Trade and Industry, the Economic and Social Research Council, the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service, and the Policy Studies Institute as the originators of the 1998 Workplace Employee Relations Survey data and the Data Archive at the University of Essex as the distributor of the data. None of these organizations or individuals bears any responsibility for my analysis and interpretations of the data. I R, Vol. 43, No. 1 (January 2004). © 2004 Regents of the University of California Published by Blackwell Publishing, Inc., 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA, and 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK. 213 214 / A B groups (Bryson 2000). Between 1984 and 1998, the proportion of work- places with only union voice arrangements fell from 24 to 9 percent, whereas the proportion of workplaces with solely direct voice mechanisms rose nearly threefold, from 11 to 30 percent.1 Where unions were present, they existed alongside direct voice mechanisms in four-fifths of cases.2 There are theoretical reasons to suppose that managers respond rather differently to direct voice than to union voice. Freeman and Medoff (1984) argue that for worker voice to be effective in influencing managerial behavior toward employees, it must be union voice. In contrast, human resources management (HRM) theorists and practitioners maintain that direct voice has become increasingly common because it delivers for management and employees. Although these two positions are useful starting points, it is simplistic to assume that all union voice is superior to nonunion voice or vice versa because both types of voice encompass a diverse set of practices. With these considerations in mind, I examine the effectiveness of voice mechanisms in delivering benefits for employees using data on employees’ perceptions of managerial responsiveness. Throughout the article, voice is deemed “effective” for employees where it is associated with more positive perceptions of managerial responsiveness. The second section outlines the propositions tested. The third section introduces the data. The fourth section outlines the method of analysis. The fifth section presents results, and the final section concludes. Propositions Proposition 1: For voice to be effective in eliciting managerial responsiveness, it needs to be union as opposed to nonunion voice. However, union effects will be more muted in the absence of an on-site representative. For worker voice to be effective in altering employer behavior, it may need to be union voice for two reasons. First, effective worker voice must be independent of management because it requires management to “give up 1 These figures are derived from the 1984, 1990, and 1998 Workplace Industrial Relations Surveys, a consistent time-series of surveys based on workplaces with 25 or more employees. The remainder of this article uses the 1998 Workplace Employee Relations Survey (WERS98), which incorporates workplaces with 10 or more employees and contains a richer set of voice variables than the time series. This explains the differences between the incidence of voice regimes as measured in the time series and incidence as measured in WERS98. See Bryson (2000) for details. 2 For a description of the nature of worker representation in Britain and how it differs from repre- sentation in the United States, see Appendix 1. Managerial Responsiveness and Nonunion Worker Voice in Britain / 215 power and accept a dual-authority channel within the firm. Such a change in power is difficult to attain in the absence of a genuine independent union or union-like organization” (Freeman and Medoff 1984:108). Second, with- out a union, individuals will lack the incentive to pursue public goods, namely, goods affecting the well-being of everyone in such a way that one individual’s partaking of the good does not preclude others from doing so. According to Freeman and Medoff (1984:8–9): Without a collective organization, the incentive for the individual to take into account the effects of his or her actions on others, or to express his or her preferences, or invest time and money in changing conditions, is likely to be too small to spur action. It does not necessarily follow that unionized workers are more contented with their management than nonunionized workers, even if unions elicit greater managerial responsiveness than would otherwise be the case. Indeed, Freeman and Medoff’s exit-voice analysis offers two explanations for the common finding in Britain and the United States that unionized workers express greater dissatisfaction with management than nonunionized workers (Freeman and Medoff 1984; Gallie et al. 1998; Bryson 1999). The first is the greater politicization of unionized workers. Freeman and Medoff (1984:142) suggest that unionized workers are more prone to express their voice “loudly” to ensure that it is heard, resulting in “voice-induced complaining,” which they distinguish from “true” dissatisfaction. They also suggest that “some of the critical attitude of the union workers is due to their greater awareness of problems and willingness to speak out” (Freeman and Medoff 1984:142). As Gallie et al. (1998:113–4) point out, “unionism as an oppositional form of representation may highlight organizational inefficiencies and color perceptions of management competence.” The second reason is that unions increase the stock of dissatisfied workers because dissatisfied workers are less likely to quit in unionized workplaces than they are in nonunionized workplaces. This is so because the union offers a voice outlet for worker dissatisfaction that is less costly than quitting (Freeman and Medoff 1994:141). In doing so, unions raise average workplace tenure, which is associated with greater dissatisfaction (Bryson and McKay 1997). Any negative association between unionization and employee perceptions of managerial responsiveness may be attributable to these effects rather than to a “real” reduction in managerial responsiveness in the face of unions. An alternative explanation for an association between unionization and dissatisfaction is that workers may be more inclined to unionize when dis- satisfied with management, in which case union membership is endogenous. I tackle this using a “selection on observables” methodology described later. 216 / A B In practice in Britain, union effectiveness in influencing management may depend on whether there is a union representative on site (Millward, Forth, and Bryson 2000:152–9). Union representatives are increasingly operating as a communication channel between local membership and management, attaching greater importance to “dealing with problems raised by the treat- ment of employees by management, and to resolving disputes” (Cully et al. 1999:201) rather than the more “traditional” activities of maintaining wages and benefits. They also may assist in the joint regulation of the workplace through negotiation over the form and content of formal procedures. If they are effective in these roles, the presence of representatives on site may contribute to more positive perceptions of managerial responsiveness. On the other hand, perceptions of managerial responsiveness may be poorer in workplaces with union representatives than in other workplaces if repre- sentatives play a role
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