BOOK REVIEWS

Date01 November 1980
Published date01 November 1980
DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8543.1980.tb01036.x
BOOK REVIEWS
Company Organization and Worker Participation:
A
Survey
OfAttitudes
and Practices in
Industrial
Democracy with Special Emphasis
on
the Prospectsfor Employee Directors,
by Ian B. Knight.
Office of Population Censuses
&
Surveys: Social Survey Division.
HMSO,
London,
1979,
158
pp.,
€8.25.
Boards
of
Directors
in
British
Industry,
by Christopher Brookes. Social Science Branch: Research
&
Planning Division, Department
of
Employment,
HMSO,
London,
1979,84
pp., no price.
ALTHOUGH
it is clear that the Bullock Report was prepared in some haste, social scientists
sympathetic to its underlying assumptions (if not its detailed conclusions) were rather mystified by
why it was
not
backed up by the kind of painstaking, empirical, background research associated
with the Donovan Commission’s
(1968)
findings. After all, this was the time-honoured way of
broaching institutional change, even
if
as on many a previous occasion a
Minority
Report
might
satisfy some more than others.
We are not to be entirely disappointed,
or
so
it seems. Unknown to much of academia, although
not of course the
firms
sampled, the Department of Employment had initiated a major survey in
1976,
as
part
of a wider programme of research into industrial democracy. The
two
publications to
be
reviewed here hence join the earlier, but essentially institutional, study
of
industrial democracy
in Western Europe by Batstone and Davies
(1977).
and a preceding title, largely descriptive (in the
Department of Employment series), by Marsden
(1978).
The central thrust of the present survey is to explore the role
of
boards of directors in British
companies, and, first, to compare current and other possible approaches to decision-making as
perceived by key persons; next, to describe existing industrial democracy practices; and last, to see
if
workerdirectors are a feasible alternative
(p.
1).
The method pursued was based on sampling a
wide range
of
manufrrcluring companies
in the private
sector
of British industry
(N=296),
and
interviewing directors, management and employee representatives (pp.
6-12).
This
was a substan-
tial sample indeed. The majority of the sampled firms turned out to
be
subsidiaries of larger
businesses without much autonomy; nine out of ten
of
these for example needed the parent
company to endorse major board initiatives; coexisting with this, a very high proportion
of
the
sampled
firms
in fact recognised trade unions
or
staff associations and negotiated with them.
The chapter in Knight’s study undoubtedly of most use to social scientists interested in industrial
democracy and worker participation is the one dealing with current
practicesregardinginformation
disclosure, collective bargaining
and
joint
coILFu11otion.
The data unearthed confirm the Wamick
University, SSRC Unit study (as yet unpublished) that joint consultation committees (especially
when involving shop stewards) are very widespread. Over half the firms for example had JCCs at
company-wide level, according to Knight’s study, with two in five keeping the representation of
blue-collar distinct from white-collar std. Most firms said ‘joint discussions’ operated either prior
to managers’ decisions
or
to exchange information.
Indeed, the emphasis in the study on
how
decisions
arc
made makes it noteworthy compared
with many other efforts in the field.
On
the other hand, there is no strong conceptual base for this
visible in the study.
Not surprisingly, shop stewards saw the ideal of ‘joint discussion’ rather differently from the
managers’ samples (see
pp.
35-39).
The range
of
specific findings in the study as a whole is very
wide and constitutes a substantial contribution to knowledge in the field. It is raw
empiricismpar
excellence.
It confirms much received wisdom in the field; for example, that consultative machinery
in Britain overlaps with collective bargaining institutions; that the trade unions function as a central
channel of communication; that management spokesmen often have
a
very difkrent pcrspective
from employees’ representatives; that worker-director schemes would have to fit in the wide
variety of boards’ functions found; and
so
on.
393
394
BRITISH JOURNAL OF INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS
The findings on company boards in the Brookes’ monograph are, alas, rather dull. The size
of
boards appeared to increase with company
size,
although this effect tapered off when over a level
of
1,500
employees was reached. Even
so,
this has no major applications for organisational design.
In just over half the companies, especially the bigger ones, the executive directors specialised.
Again, about one in three boards had a sprinkling
of
nonexecutive directors. The most important
items discussed in board meetings, the study found, seem to be
cash-flow
and the
company trading
position.
Most directors, in fact, saw the board
asgenerating
policy, but only a handful (3 per cent)
of companies had a specialist
I.R.
director involved in this. Finally, ‘consensus’ dominates; and in
fact, votes are hardly ever taken. The Knight study concisely covers much
of
this data,
so
that there
is excessive duplication between the two publications. The Knight monograph
isessential
reading;
the Brooke study is
of
secondary interest in the industrial democracy debate. None the less, the
latter dwells on the topic of boards of directors at greater length. The data-base is the same in the
two monographs. Brookes’ ‘straw-man’ hypothesis, that power lies where the organisation chart
and management text says it is
(p.
23), is easily disposed
of;
hardly surprising to informed
observers. None the less, the literature search (pp. 9-24) is a most useful and up-todate contribu-
tion, even if there is a serious misunderstanding
of
the Aston research
(p.
28) which in fact
emphasised
size as a central variable, rather than merely one amongst many.
The Knight study’s main conclusion, that ‘the complexity of the different subjects and contexts in
which senior management decisions must be made, would render it impossible to legislate for a
fixed scheme of participative management’ (p.
86),
does not follow from the data presented. If this
were
true, how would
West German
codetermination, for example, work? The practical problems
raised
in
the study concerning the marginal role
of
nonexecutive directors is also true of other
countries with codetermination schemes, but does not impede them. The study suggests that
stewards need to
be
seen as potential workerdirectors, to maintain the
legitimacy
of
such a
representative system.
Is
this a
necessary,
let alone a
sumient,
condition? This may however
be
possibly relevant for British industry given the ‘degree
of
mutual distrust between management and
unions in some companies’ (p.
86).
Indeed, research carried out by colleagues and myself for the
Anglo-German Foundation
(1979)
suggest this trust has grown over the last twenty years.
Last, Knight concludes that more experience is needed of ‘joint discussion’, and that the high
incidence of consultative machinery of this kind, at sub-board level, ‘suggests that there is a will to
develop industrial democracy in this direction’ (p. 86). In the present industrial relations climate,
however, this inference may
be
not only rather premature but also somewhat optimistic!
MALCOLM
WARNER
Administrarive Staff College,
Henley, and Brunel University,
Uxbridge
Sabotage in Industry,
by Pierre Dubois. Penguin Books, 1979, 224pp., f1.25.
IN
the 1930s Ernest Bevin (whose centenary we celebrate next year) devoted a lot of attention to
the tactics and strategy
of
strike action. He urged planning in the approach to strikes, including the
judicious use of secondary action.
One could deduce from this book by Pierre Dubois that Bevin was, in some respects anyway,
organising ‘sabotage’. If anyone had told the old boy in the 30s that he was a ‘saboteur’ he would
have had a fit! Of course Ernie Bevin thought, and most
of
us still do, that organising strikes and
association with them is a perfectly proper constitutional action and an essential right of work
people in protecting themselves collectively and improving their working conditions. ‘Sabotage’,
suggests the author, covers everything done by workers, individually
or
collectively, to the manu-
factured product or the machinery
of
production, that results in lowering the quantity or quality of
production, whether temporarily
or
permanently. It is difficult to reconcile this version with the
dictionary definition. ‘Sabotage’ says the
Concise Oxford Dictionary
is ‘malicious
or
wanton
destruction, especially doing
of
damage to plant etc. by workmen on bad terms with their
employers’, e.g., the de-railing of a train would
be
an act of sabotage according to the dictionary
definition.
In a very full and historical examination
of
the problem Dubois contends that inefficient
management is sabotage just as much or more than actions undertaken by working pcople; since it

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