This study explores procedural preferences in the historical development of labour dispute resolution systems at the national level and employees’ pre-experience preference to resolve disputes at the individual level. Drawing on two datasets – one from national public statistics and one from China’s employer–employee matched data – we find that mediation has fluctuated in its use and efficacy, and it has re-emerged as an important method to stabilize labour relations. Employees choose internal mediation only if they feel that the enterprise’s mediation committee is selected fairly. Organizational structure factors, such as the enterprise’s size and the effectiveness of the Staff and Workers Representative Congress, moderate the relationship between employees’ perceptions of justice and procedural preferences. This study contributes to the dispute resolution literature by highlighting the interactions between individual perceptions of justice and organizational factors of procedural preference. Additionally, practical implications are offered to aid in the design of dispute resolution systems and improve organizational justice.
This study examines the differences between migrant and urban workers in labour dispute mediation and the moderating role of the nature of the dispute (direct work-related vs indirect work-related disputes). Combining power-dependence theory and social stratification theory, our analysis reveals how migrant workers’ lack of citizen rights harms their mediation capabilities. Drawing on archival data on individual labour dispute cases from 2011 to 2015 in the Beijing Labour Mediation Centre (10,515 cases in total), we find that migrant workers with low power are more likely to make great concessions in mediation, and their mediation agreements are less likely to be executed immediately by employers than are those of urban workers. However, when the dispute is directly work related, the difference between migrant and urban workers in concession making is less prominent than when the dispute is indirectly work related. These findings enrich our understanding of both migrants and labour dispute resolution.
Drawing on job embeddedness theory, this study investigates how and when the industrial relations climate influences employees’ preference for particular labour dispute resolution procedures. Analyses of multisource and multilevel data from China show that organizational embeddedness mediates the relationship between the industrial relations climate and preference for internal dispute resolution (IDR) and this indirect effect is stronger in organizations with a high level of turbulence. These findings provide novel theoretical explanation of the linkage between the industrial relations climate and employees’ preference for IDR and highlight the interactions between the industrial relations climate and organizational turbulence. Practical implications are also offered to facilitate employees’ preferences for IDR by improving the quality of the industrial relations climate.
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