Experimental studies were conducted in two unions to examine the effects of perceptual variables–namely, reactance and intentionality attributions–on the intent to seek redress from management action. Participants responded to a series of vignettes, each of which described a management action (formal punishment, informal warning, promotion denial) taken against an employee. The vignettes varied systematically in terms of the perceived threat to worker freedom posed by the action and the degree to which the action was motivated by a dispositional rather than an environmental attribution. Both studies demonstrated that greater threat and dispositional attributions provoked stronger intent to file a grievance. Implications of the findings were discussed for investigating and screening grievances.

In the past, research on grievances generally has excluded the views of grievanfs about'the process and its consequences. This study is an analysis of self-reports of 324 grievants concerning the characteristics of a grievance-filing incident and its perceived outcomes. The results raise questions about the veracity of the industrial relations dictum that grievances should be settled at the lowest step in the process. Instead, the nature of the settlement and the type of grievance were perceived to have significant effects on outcome and attitude measures.. Grievance systems are a popular subject in the industrial relations field. Much has been written about contract provisions that establish grievance systems (e.g., Bureau of National Affairs, 1979;Thomson & Murray, 1976), and guidance has been offered concerning appropriate behavior of union and management parties to the grievance (e.g., Repas, 1984). Despite the prescriptive nature of this literature, the validity of prevailing notions about grievance systems is largely untested (Gordon & Miller, 1984).One institutionalized yet unsubstantiated proposition is that the lower the step in the grievance procedure at which a settlement is reached, the more beneficial the results to the concerned parties. Support for this notion is found in studies that have examined the obvious cost (Zalusky, 1976) and productivity (Ichniowski, 1986) implications of considering the same grievance at several organizational levels of both union and management. Beyond this economic research, two studies provide amflicting evidence regarding the impact of settlement level on relations between union and management. Turner and Robinson (1972) found that companies in which the majority of grievances were settled at low levels had harmonious unionmanagement relations. By contrast, Graham and Heshizer (1979) reported that contract language that encouraged grievance settlement at low levels in the system appeared to have little value as a guide for daily behavior of the parties, and that it was often easier to settle grievances if such language were ignored, particularly those provisions pertaining to time limits.

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