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A growing literature has emerged on employee silence, located within the field of organisational behaviour. Scholars have investigated when and how employees articulate voice and when and how they will opt for silence. Whilst offering many insights, this analysis is inherently one-sided in its interpretation of silence as a product of employee motivations. An alternative reading of silence is offered which focuses on the role of management. Using the non-union employee representation literature for illustrative purposes, the significance of management in structuring employee silence is considered. Highlighted are the ways in which management, through agenda-setting and institutional structures, can perpetuate silence over a range of issues; organising them out of the voice process. These considerations are redeployed to offer a dialectical interpretation of employee silence in a conceptual framework to assist further research and analysis.

In this cross-level study, we examine the mediating influence of employee perceptions of the fairness of human resource practices associated with the high-performance work systems model. Data were collected from 187 employees in three companies in Ireland. Using cross-level analyses, employee perceptions of distributive, procedural and interactional justice were found to mediate the relationship between high-performance work systems and job satisfaction, affective commitment and work pressure. The findings also point to a 'management by stress' HPWS relationship, suggesting diminished employee well-being, less satisfaction and lower commitment. The research adds to our understanding of the mechanisms through which human resource practices influence employee outcomes and contributes to debates that move beyond the polemic high versus low employee well-being debates of HRM. The discussion reviews the theoretical and practical implications of these results. Contact:

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This article seeks to provoke that human resource management (HRM), both as an academic field of study and as a form of professional practice, is at risk of impoverishment. The main reasoning for this is because of ideological individualism and marketisation with an attendant neglect on wider organisational, employee, and societal concerns. Following a review of the context of financialised capitalism, three contemporary developments in HRM are used to illustrate the argument: reward strategies, talent management, and high performance work systems. Implications for the practice of HRM and the way the subject area is taught in mainstream business schools are considered.

In this paper we present a conceptual analysis of the literature and research surrounding voice in the non-union workplace. The paper begins with a definitional discussion of non-unionism -what it is and what it is not, and then proceeds to unpick the concept of employee voice in the non-union workplace. The core of our analysis consists of a re-conceptualization of factors affecting non-union voice, and the potential outcomes as a result of external macro market pressures such as changing regulatory and market pressures for employee voice, and internal micro organizational dimensions such as management choice and strategy towards employee voice. From the analysis it is argued that more individualized and company-specific forms of employee voice are likely to increase. This poses new challenges for traditional collective representation and the institutional structures within which employee voice operates, which requires critical analysis and future empirical investigation.

This paper presents empirical evidence about the shape and pattern of non-union employer strategies to remain union free. The data are collected from seven case studies across different industrial sectors and organisational sizes in Britain. Following a brief critique of typologies of union avoidance, the evidence suggests the 'configuration' of anti-union approaches involves an uneven and at times contradictory interaction of context-specific variables. Three mutually inclusive factors that influence employer behaviour are identified: structural, ideological and cultural dimensions. It is argued that these represent a deeper understanding of employer hostility towards unions than existing employment relationship classifications. The utility of non-union typologies and the prospects for union mobilisation are considered in the light of these findings.