JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. Academy of Management is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Academy of Management Journal.The grievance procedure is a very important aspect of labor relations. It serves as a mechanism for the peaceful resolution of conflict, provides a system of private law, extends the relationship between the parties, serves as a means for continuous collective bargaining, acts as a diagnostic device, and facilitates communication and consultation (Thomson, 1974). It occupies a significant proportion of time of labor and management officials and may be the best indicator of the stability and maturity of labor relations in a particular setting.Of the many questions posed by the grievance procedure, one of the most significant is why certain groups in a given plant have higher grievance rates than others. A leading study dealing with grievance rates was conducted by Leonard Sayles (1958). He hypothesized that grievance rates are based on technology. He argued that grievance rates are high in certain groups because of the social system erected by the technology, not because the technology makes certain jobs unpleasant, repetitive, mechanically paced, heavy or dirty, or exacting in terms of quantity and quality of output required. It is the internal organization of the work and the status of the work independent of supervisor skills, management and union pressures, and individual personality that determine grievance rates. The nature of the jobs does play a role, but the social system that results from technological factors is a basic and continuing determinant of work group attitudes and actions.Sayles's hypothesis was based on his observation of 300 work groups in 30 plants. He distinguished four patterns of grievance behavior, which he labeled apathetic, erratic, strategic, and conservative. Apathetic groups had a low level of grievance activity because they were not likely to challenge management decisions or to try to get something extra for themselves. Erratic groups had a medium level of grievance activity. They were labeled as erractic because there was no relationship between the seriousness of the grievances and the intensity of their protests and IThe author would like to thank William Sickman, a graduate student at Cleveland State University, for his assistance and also his colleagues in the Department of Management and Labor for their suggestions.
This study provides a structural model of arbitral decision making that depicts arbitrators as deciding cases by ascertaining the facts, attaching weights to the facts, and combining the facts and weights to form decision elements that determine their decisions. The model further posits that arbitrators' biographical characteristics affect their decisions by influencing their fact finding and weight assignments. It also allows for arbitrators' characteristics to have a direct impact on their decisions. A test of the model indicates that the decision elements determine the arbitrators' decisions but the arbitrators' characteristics have a limited impact.
The grievance activity of work groups has received surprisingly little attention by either organizational behavior or industrial re-lations researchers. This study explores the impact of different work environments on the rate of grievance filing in a large, unionized manufacturing plant. The two aspects of the work environment exam-ined, (a) size of the primary work group and (b) type of work technology, were both significantly related to grievance rates. A batch production environment was associated with a substantially higher rate of grievance filing than were either mass or craft pro-duction. When the work technology effect was held constant, the size of the primary work group was negatively related to grievance rates.
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