Mutual gains? labor and management evaluate their employee involvement programs

Is labor-management climate important? some Canadian evidence

“…Although it was not possible to directly match union and employer responses, the results from the Nova Scotia union sample suggest that union officials are considerably less optimistic than employers in their perceptions of labor-management climate. This finding is consistent with past research (Juravich et al, 1993;Eaton, 1994).…”

“…4perceptual measures of performance have been utilized in a number of studies in industrial relations (Voos, 1989;Cooke, 1989Cooke, , 1990ab, 1992Drago et al, 1992;Juravich et al, 1993) and other fields, such as human resource management (Terpstra and Rozell, 1993;Cameron, 1994) and strategic management (Powell, 1995). Naman and Slevin (1993) summarize some of the relevant issues surrounding measurement of performance that have been debated in the strategic management literature.…”

“…As observed by Cooke, the labor-management climate was critical to the success of joint programs; adversarial relations decrease trust between the parties and preclude the development of commitment to joint activities. Juravich et al (1993) found that managers, when evaluating the effect of employee involvement programs on a number of social, psychological, and production/economic measures, tended to be relatively positive in their assessments, particularly with respect to the impact on union officer/plant manager relations, employee morale, and product/service quality. Although respondents from organized labor shared somewhat less optimistic perceptions concerning the effect of involvement programs, few unionists indicated that such programs negatively affected the various behavioral and economic measures.…”

“…While many of the studies examining the link between performance and industrial relations policies/practices are based on relatively small samples from manufacturing firms (Juravich et al, 1993), my data were collected from three sources --a survey of large Canadian employers, a regional survey of smaller organizations, and a regional survey of union locals.…”

The Survival of Employee Participation Programs in Unionized Settings

“…Studies that have included survey data from matched pairs of management and union representatives indicate that the two groups tend to view the programs differently. Juravich, Harris, and Brooks (1993), for example, noted striking differences between management and union 1Some of these studies focus on employee participation programs generally, others on specific types of programs like quality circles, and still others on generic programs of labor-management cooperation. Research on these subjects tends to be characterized by poor definition of terms.…”