Innovations in the 2004 Workplace Employment
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INNOVATIONS IN THE 2004 WORKPLACE EMPLOYMENT RELATIONS SURVEY Editors Keith Whitfield and Katy Huxley 1 First Published in Great Britain By Cardiff University, 2007 www.cardiff.ac.uk Copyright © Cardiff University Front cover - Copyright © istockphoto.com All rights are reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright, no part of publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, in any form, or by any means, without the prior written permission of the copyright holder. ISBN: 0-902810-10-3 2 Acknowledgements Thanks are due to the WERS2004 sponsors – the Economic and Social Research Council, the Department of Trade and Industry, the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service and the Policy Studies Institute for their support of the 2004 Workplace Employment Relations Survey. Thanks are also due to the Economic and Social Research Council for their support of the project on which this manuscript was based. The WERS2004 research team are to be commended for upholding the strong WERS survey tradition and the WERS2004 steering group for the strong direction that they gave to the project. The specialist team members, both those involved in this project and those not, are to be thanked for making insightful recommendations for change. 3 CONTENTS Innovations in the 2004 Workplace Employment Relations Survey Keith Whitfield 6 Ownership, Governance, and Employment Relationships: the contribution and potential of WERS Andrew Pendleton and Simon Deakin 11 The Study of Trust and Workplace Partnership David Guest, William Brown, Riccardo Peccei, Katy Huxley 38 The Study of Employee Share Ownership Using WERS: An Evaluation and Analysis of the 2004 Survey Andrew Pendleton 56 Innovations to the Employee Representative Questionnaire Andy Charlwood, Riccardo Peccei and Mike Terry 72 The Collection of Objective Data on Workplace Performance John Forth and Robert McNabb 84 The Analysis of SMEs and Some Methodological Challenges Robert Blackburn, Paul Edwards, David Storey,George Saridakis and Sukanya Sen- Gupta 119 Well-Being in the Workplace Employee Relations Survey 2004 Stephen Wood 147 Coverage of Job Satisfaction Michael Rose 162 4 5 Innovations in the 2004 Workplace Employment Relations Survey Keith Whitfield1 1. Introduction The 2004 Workplace Employment Relations Survey (WERS2004) is the fifth in a series of nationally representative surveys of workplace industrial/employee/ employment relations that date back to 1980. WERS2004 has been developed by four sponsors – Economic and Social Research Council, the Department of Trade and Industry, the Arbitration and Conciliation Advisory Service and the Policy Studies Institute. The WERS series is regarded as world-leading in its field and has underpinned a substantial volume of high-quality research by British and overseas authors (Forth et al., 2004). The latest survey contains many innovations relative to its predecessors. A number of these result from the work of the specialist teams set up by the survey’s Steering Group, funded by ESRC and DTI. The aim of the Innovations project reported in this volume is to highlight the work of these specialist teams and to disseminate the key findings that stem from their unique contribution. It contains contributions from team members that summarise their innovations, explain why they introduced them and indicate what the preliminary findings suggest. In so doing, their contributions emphasise that the latest in the WERS series is as innovative as its predecessors, and will thereby further enhance the esteem in which the WERS series is held. 2. The WIRS/WERS Series The WIRS/WERS series spans twenty-four years of data-collection and is now in its fifth survey. It is used by researchers throughout the world and its analysis often allows the addressing of questions that cannot be tackled by researchers using data pertaining to their own countries. Many of the papers which use WERS98 data are by North American researchers and are published in North American journals. Each successive survey has a distinctive focus, reflecting the key issues presenting themselves at the time of its conception. The current survey has been especially directed towards the recent attempts to develop union-management partnership agreements at the workplace and the imminence of the European Information and Consultation Directive. The lower size threshold has also been extended downwards to establishments with just five employees (following the successful reduction from 25 to 10 employees in WERS98). A financial performance questionnaire has been trialled and a wide range of new questions on employee well-being, governance and dispute resolution have been introduced. 1 Cardiff Business School, Cardiff University 6 3. WERS5 Design and Development At an early stage in the WERS2004 planning cycle, it was decided that continuity with the previous survey (WERS98) would be the hallmark of the fifth WERS rather than change. The rationales for this were that: 1) WERS98 represented a major change from its predecessor (and that further large-scale change could potentially destroy WERS’s distinctive identity); 2) large-scale change could inhibit the development of a 24 year data-set covering two distinct phases of ER development in Britain and; 3) the broad WERS community was happy with WERS98. The academic consultation exercise raised some doubts about the desirability of too much continuity and, in particular, indicated that there were areas in WERS98 that were deemed to be short of the standards achieved in equivalent surveys in the UK and elsewhere. In general, it became clear that the academic community wished for more attention to be paid to improving WERS as a stand-alone survey as opposed to one which can map change over time. Indeed, the feeling was that the former did not fundamentally compromise the latter. Those undertaking the fifth WERS survey had a strong reputation to maintain. The first four surveys in the WERS series had widely acknowledged as leaders in their field, and had been the basis of a high volume of insightful research. A strong and experienced research team was established led by Barbara Kersley of the Department of Trade and Industry, composed of Helen Bewley (Policy Studies Institute), Alex Bryson (Policy Studies Institute), Gill Dix (ACAS), John Forth (National Institute of Economic and Social Research, on secondment to DTI), Carmen Alpin (DTI), and Sarah Oxenbridge (ACAS). The WERS2004 Steering Group decided to set up six specialist teams to examine key areas of concern raised in the academic consultation exercise and, to a lesser extent, in the other consultation exercises. These focused on: the inclusion of small establishments in the survey; partnership arrangements; the worker representative questionnaire; job satisfaction, stress and skills; organisational performance and technology; governance and issues beyond the workplace. The full Steering Group was involved in the selection of the members of these teams and in setting their terms of reference. The membership of each team is outlined in the appendix to this chapter. Each team was led by ESRC’s Senior Academic Consultant to the fifth WERS project, Keith Whitfield. Each team reported to a deadline set by the Steering Group. It should be noted that these deadlines were very tight. Many of the teams’ recommendations were adopted by the research team. 7 4. Key Innovations in WERS2004 The key innovations introduced into the 2004 survey are as follows: 1) Extension of the lower-size threshold for inclusion in the survey from ten- employee to five-employee establishments. 2) Introduction of a range of questions concerning the development of union- management partnership arrangements in Britain. 3) Development of a financial performance questionnaire to be distributed after the main management questionnaire, to be completed by a manager responsible for financial matters. These relate to more “objective” aspects of performance than those in previous surveys. 4) Development of new measures of technology. 5) Inclusion of questions on aspects of the establishment’s governance structures and the influence of the wider organisation in multi-establishment organisations. 6) Refinement of the questions on employee share-ownership schemes to more closely reflect the underlying legislation. 7) Complete redesign of the worker representative questionnaire, both to try and obtain more responses from non-union representatives and to anticipate the introduction of the European Information and Consultation Directive. 8) Re-design of the self-completion employee questionnaire in relation to questions on job stress, worker satisfaction, skills and earnings. 5. This Collection of Papers The key aim of this collection of papers is to highlight the main changes introduced into the WERS2004 survey by the specialist teams. It thereby indicates key areas in which innovative WERS-based research work can take place. Additionally, by outlining the rationales behind each of the innovations it gives an indication of what was motivating the changes proposed and therefore the literature that the innovation builds on. This will allow all of those researching in this area to better locate the work that they are doing. Possibly most importantly of all, the collection indicates what can be achieved in terms of survey design and development when an experienced and skilled research team works in harmony with teams of specialist advisers who have a keen interest in the quality of the final product. Hopefully,