Employee involvement and participation: An evaluation in the context of organizational change
Organizational change is inevitable for businesses in the present business environment since they have to adapt to emerging trends and competitive threats. The most vital resource that can help an organization in implementing change and leveraging it to its advantage is human resource capital. Therefore, it is essential to focus on the involvement and participation of employees in decision making in the context of changes introduced in the organization (Hodgkinson, 1999).
Employee involvement could be defined as the direct participation of employees of an organization to address its objectives as well as fulfil the organization’s mission by leveraging their expertise, efforts and ideas for decision making and solving problems. The notion of employee involvement has often been overlapped with employee voice, employee participation, democracy, engagement etc. Employee participation, on the other hand, could be defined as a function of the ability of employees to exert influence over their work environment (Bullock & Scontrino-Powell, 2018).
The essential facets of employee participation could be observed in the tenets of work and control which reflect on the relationship between control over the work environment and the emotional well-being of an individual. Hence a general impression regarding the positive relationship between employee involvement and employee participation and implementation of organizational change could be derived.
Employee involvement and employee participation are however noted for specific differences and the foremost one could be identified in the prominent role of management in the case of EI while EP is driven by government or state policies as well as workforce representative bodies. The objective of employee involvement is primarily directed towards fostering contributions of individual employees while employee participation is aimed at obtaining collective outputs from employees by applying market regulation (Hodgkinson, 1999).
Employee involvement is also associated with the concentration of influence among management for guiding the development and implementation of change initiatives. Employee participation tends to provide a positive aspect for change implementation by focusing on the distribution of influence other than management (Marchington, 2016). Employee involvement is associated with the employees as the passive recipients of influence over the work environment. On the other hand, employee participation implies the active representation of employees’ opinions regarding influence and control at the workplace through employee representatives.
In the context of change, the requirement of employee involvement and employee participation can be considered mandatory. The tenets of employee involvement are specifically crucial for establishing the direction of the change implementation process. The paradigms of employee participation are also essential to safeguard the interests of employees through financial participation and meaningful roles through association with trade unions. Another profound implication that can be drawn in the context of the importance of employee involvement and participation for change decision making and problem-solving is in the forms of employee involvement (Bullock & Scontrino-Powell, 2018).
The forms include references to downward and upward communication flows that serve as a crucial foundation for implementing change in an organization. Therefore, it is recommended for organizations to adopt an organizational change to improve the speed of introducing reforms. Initially, the process included the adoption of new process technologies which required the contribution of individual employee efforts and ideas for accomplishing organizational objectives (Hodgkinson, 1999). The scope for future research in this context is vested in the identification of various aspects about the influence of employee participation procedures and the presence of unions in the workplace on the introduction of organizational change (Marchington, 2016).
Multinational corporations and employment relations: An evaluation from the perspective of employment practices
Multinational corporations (MNCs) could be accounted as the focal points in the modern international economy. These organizations employ almost over 77 million people throughout the world and are responsible for almost a third of the total world trade. The perception of MNCs as significant drivers of the establishment of a distinct intra-organizational industry and as a global class of organizations has also been a formidable influence on the employment practices followed by them in the host environments (Edwards, Marginson & Ferner, 2013).
The research on the influence of rapidly increasing globalization and the prevalence of multinational corporations concerning employment relations has been largely limited by the coverage of specific industries and countries and focus on specific types of MNCs. One of the prominent issues, however, that has dominated the debate regarding the role of MNCs in HRM and employment relations is the global/local conflict in management practice (Edwards, Marginson & Ferner, 2013). Various other dimensions can be identified in the influence of MNCs on employment relations. The primary influence is observed in inter-firm collaborations thereby leading to management of worksites through sub-contract arrangements without ownership of the site.
MNCs could be able to obtain synergistic benefits by integrating their operations across borders and this is accomplished specifically through two primary configurations. One of the configurations is segmentation in which the local operations assume unique roles with distinct demarcations from other operations in the host environment in terms of occupancy and technology (Edwards, Marginson & Ferner, 2013). Another configuration is identified in the replication model according to which the local operations are performing similar functions and are similar in terms of occupational and technology profiles that are serving a local or national market.
The international integrations create stress on the transnational dimension of employment relations in MNCs in the form of formal arrangements such as international management-policy making authorities, informal channels for cross-border coordination (Jacoby, 2018). Segmentation configuration could be particularly resistant towards global HR policies and such MNCs could prefer to realize the synergetic relations between its various operations in the host site to base employment relations on the objective of facilitating a smooth exchange of components and knowledge in the host environment and across countries (Edwards, Marginson & Ferner, 2013). The MNCs which follow the replication configuration for international integration are generally dependent on the decision between standardization and nationalization of products for shaping employment relations.
The most intricate level of analysis on the interplay between multinational corporations and employment relations could be identified in the roles played by subsidiaries alongside differences between them and their association with issues such as control mechanisms. It is also imperative to observe that the differentiation of roles of national subsidiaries or units of an MNC is a prominent influence on the variations in nature of employment relations. This is reflective of the phenomenon of reverse diffusion where employees working in foreign operations are transferred to domestic as well as other countries (Jacoby, 2018). The distribution of significance among the national institutions could hence be accounted as a notable factor for differential placement of the employees in subsidiaries. Employment relations in MNCs are also influenced prominently by the interactions with national systems of the host environment especially in terms of the legal dimensions.
Conflict at work and its implications for employment relations:
Despite the prospects facilitated by negotiation, there are specific scenarios in which an agreement could not be reached thereby implying the possibility of visible action from one of the parties. Conflict at work has been considered in the majority of research literature at the individual employee level or departmental level. Conflict and protest are considered as wider implications for employment relations (Abiodun, 2014).
The issues about the presence of co-operative and conflicting scenarios in union-management relations have been debated for a long time. The employment relationship is responsible for capturing convergent as well as divergent interests and the relationships between industrial parties are profoundly associated with elements of conflict as well as cooperation. The most basic example of one of the key elements of employment relationship noted in the regulation of wage rates and basic terms and conditions of employment imply divergent interests (Abiodun, 2014). The industrial action in this case in the form of strikes and protests would be profoundly characterized as conflict. However, a major share of argument in recent research literature has been directed towards improving employment relations that are limited in terms of conflict and should be highly cooperative.
Conflict could be considered as an integral aspect of organizational as well as work-life since it is considered beneficial especially in terms of the possibilities for developing alternative solutions to existing organizational problems (Henly & Lambert, 2014). However, the conflicts at work could lead to disruption of labour relations thereby leading to the reduction in productivity, limited interaction between employees and management regarding disputes, increased rates of absenteeism, dismissed workers and a decrease in employee income and employment rates.
The industrial relation disputes arising from conflicts at the workplace could also be negatively influential on the social and economic development of the country (Abiodun, 2014). The increase in several labour disputes leads to prominent setbacks for sustainable and productive economic and social growth in many countries such as China and UK. Another significant factor that can be taken into account for reflecting on conflicts at the workplace is the classification of workplace conflicts into conflicts of rights or conflicts of interests.
Conflicts of interest could be associated with the terms and conditions of employment while conflicts of rights imply the application and perception of an existing norm or legal precedent (Henly & Lambert, 2014). On the other hand, individual employment disputes have assumed collective bargaining as the most common form of industrial conflict thereby implying the insufficiency of resolving all types of workplaces by classification of conflict of interests and rights. Therefore, it is essential to consider the other essential factors about conflicts of emotions such as mistreatment and disrespect along with issues vested in interpersonal relationships between employees and employers. The use of conflict resolution values could be effective for the contexts of the workplace as well as industrial relations. The focus on participation and empowerment, justice and respect for everyone in terms of perspective, views and culture could be accounted as prolific recommendations to resolve conflicts at the workplace and in industrial relations.
References
Abiodun, A.R., 2014. Organizational conflicts: causes, effects and remedies. International Journal of Academic Research in Economics and Management Sciences, 3(6), p.118.
Bullock, R., Scontrino-Powell. 2018. “what is employee involvement?”. University Consulting Alliance, Washington.
Edwards, T., Marginson, P. and Ferner, A., 2013. Multinational Companies in Cross-National Context: Integration, Differentiation, and the Interactions between MNCs and Nation States: Introduction to a Special Issue of the review. ILR Review, 66(3), pp.547-587.
Jacoby, S.M., 2018. The embedded corporation: Corporate governance and employment relations in Japan and the United States. Princeton University Press.
Hodgkinson, A., 1999. Employee Involvement and Participation in the Organisational Change Decision: Illawarra and Australian Patterns.
Henly, J.R. and Lambert, S.J., 2014. Unpredictable work timing in retail jobs: Implications for employee work-life conflict. ILR Review, 67(3), pp.986-1016.
Marchington, M., 2016. Employee involvement. In Encyclopedia of Human Resource Management. Edward Elgar Publishing Limited.
