Employee Participation in a Japanese‐owned British Electronics Factory: Reality or Symbolism?
| Date | 01 January 1989 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/EUM0000000001013 |
| Published date | 01 January 1989 |
| Pages | 3-9 |
| Author | Philip Lewis |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour |
EMPLOYEE PARTICIPATION IN A
JAPANESE-OWNED BRITISH
ELECTRONICS FACTORY: REALITY
OR SYMBOLISM?
by
Philip
Lewis
Bristol Business School, Bristol Polytechnic
The Background: Old Tune; New Lyrics?
Employee participation has spent a decade simmering on the back burner since the heady
days of the Bullock Report in 1977. Given the industrial relations climate of the 1980s, this
could be seen as hardly surprising. Yet it would be wrong to assume that the process of joint
consultation is in terminal decline. Indeed, there is much survey evidence to suggest that
this is far from the case.
Research by Brown[1] in the manufacturing sector found that consultative committees existed
in more than 40 per cent of
the"
workplaces. This figure had doubled between 1973 and 1978.
The 1980 Workplace Survey by Daniel and Millward[2] confirmed the Brown research with
a larger sample and a wider representation of industries. They found that in the 2,000
workplaces surveyed (Brown sampled 970), 37 per cent reported the existence of consultative
committees, with over half of these no more than five years old.
The trend seems to have continued in the 1980s.
A survey by Edwards[3] of 229 chief executives
in private-sector manufacturing companies
showed that 78 per cent of these had joint
consultative committees, one fifth of these having
been introduced between 1981 and 1984.
More recently, the 1984 Workplace Survey[4]
reports that the growth in consultative committees
has been maintained, there being no overall
change in the percentage of establishments having
consultative committees between 1980 and 1984.
However, there is some evidence that management
interest in participation is increasing, with
improvement in two-way communications being
a significant initiative that management reported
having taken in the 1980-1984 period. Further
evidence that employee participation is firmly back
on the industrial relations agenda can be found
in the importance attached to employee
participation by the architects of the so called no-
strike,
single-union deals. Both trade unions,
exemplified by Eric Hammond of EETPU and
management, by Peter Wickens of Nissan, have
extolled the virtues of employee participation as
part of the "new" industrial relations packages.
Wickens[5] typifies this when quoting from the
Nissan-AEU agreement setting up the company
council,
which exists: ". . .to promote and
maintain mutual trust and co-operation between
the company, its employees and the union. . .to
recognise that all employees at whatever level have
a valued part to play in the success of the company
. . .to seek actively the contributions of all
employees in furtherance of these goals".
Yet the motives for management introducing
employee participation have often been viewed by
academic commentators with considerable
suspicion.
I wanted to assemble some tentative
evidence about the reasons for the introduction
of participative schemes in the 1980s. In essence,
I was anxious to know if the management motives
were now any different from those that had fuelled
the creation of participative mechanisms in the
past.
Marchington[6] lists a number of explanations for
the upsurge of interest in participation in the
1970s. The first of these was the continuing
economic and industrial decline of the UK and the
management response to this which could be
paraphrased crudely as "let's all pull together or
we'll all pull apart". This tends to support
Ramsay[7] who has argued that management's
interest in participation has tended over this
ER 11,1
1989
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