The road to partnership? ‐ Forcing change in the UK further education sector; from “college incorporation” and “competition” to “accommodation and compliance”?
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/01425450110384516 |
| Pages | 146-163 |
| Published date | 01 April 2001 |
| Date | 01 April 2001 |
| Author | Frank Burchill |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour |
Employee
Relations
23,2
146
Employee Relations,
Vol. 23 No. 2, 2001, pp. 146-163.
#MCB University Press, 0142-5455
Received July 2000
Revised December 2000
Accepted December 2000
The road to partnership?
Forcing change in the UK further
education sector; from ``college
incorporation'' and ``competition'' to
``accommodation and compliance''?
Frank Burchill
Department of HRM and Industrial Relations, Keele University,
Keele, UK
Keywords Further education, Human resource management, Employee relations,
Public sector, Organizational change
Abstract Examines change in the further education (FE) sector since the incorporation in 1993
and its effects on aspects of human resource management (HRM) and, in particular, on employee
relations. Argues that change was forced through in FE to a greater extent, and in a more
compressed period of time, than in other parts of the public sector. The results of three surveys,
carried out simultaneously, are used to support this argument, and to generate evidence on how
the process has been perceived by three sets of important actors and reveals some of the
contradictions in their interpretation of events. Highlights changes in the bargaining structure
and approaches to HRM. An overall conclusion is that the situation in FE has moved from
competition at the social level in terms of employers and employees and compliance at the
workplace, to arm's length accommodation and compliance. Nevertheless, the situation is ripe for
partnership ± cooperation at the social level and commitment at the place of work.
Introduction
Since 1979 there has been a radical change in the way in which public services have been
managed and organized ... Underlying these changes was the belief that more forceful
management, organized on a decentralized basis and held accountable for performance,
would ensure greater control of expenditure and lead to better public services. For all parts of
the public sector this involved major structural changes (Winchester and Bach, 1995, p. 304).
It is possible to argue that the changes which took place in further education
(FE) were greater and applied more rapidly than in any other part of what still
remains within the public sector in the UK. What is referred to as ``college
incorporation'' within FE took effect from 1 April 1993.
Methodology
This article begins by describing the general FE structure as background to the
changes in the FE sector. It also examines recent Government responses to
some of the problems emerging out of the process of incorporation.
The central part of the article is based on survey material. Three
overlapping surveys were carried out by the author in 1998 ± five years after
incorporation. All the branch secretaries of NATFHE, heads of personnel, and
chief executive officers (CEOs) were written to in the relevant colleges in
England and Wales. A total of 323 colleges ± 100 per cent of the relevant
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Forcing change
in the UK FE
sector
147
population ± were circularised. Sixth form colleges were generally too small to
be relevant. The response rates were as follows:
.branch secretaries, 33 per cent;
.chief executive officers (CEOs), 25 per cent; and
.heads of personnel, 27 per cent.
These were good response rates to surveys each of which was based on the
total population.
The surveys consisted of sets of questions designed to secure some
indication of the sense of the scale of change as experienced by the different
sets of respondents. However, some questions were concerned with identifying
managerial responses and attitudes to change, assessing the extent to which
the discourse of current management practices had infected their culture,
examining the response of trade union officers to the changes at their place of
work, and to some extent contextualising these.
One source of analysis ± and from the point of view of this paper, the most
significant ± is that offered by Walton et al. (1994). They describe the social
contract between US management and organised labour which had emerged in
the 1960s as one of ```arm's length accommodation' .. . while the dominant
social contract between employers and employees was premised on
compliance''. They make a distinction between the social and substantive
contracts. Attempts to change the social contract are described as strategic
level activities ± although these will interact with attempts to change pay and
terms and conditions, the substantive contract. The post-1970s they
characterise as the ``industrial-competitiveness era'', rooted in globalization,
deregulation and a ``.. . a more conservative national mood''. This new era has
produced a ``renegotiation'' of the social contract, with change driven by
employers rather than by unions.
These authors accept that the substantive management agenda has been one
of cost cutting and flexibility. In order to achieve these at the level of the social
contract they suggest that there are two main strategies, and combinations of
these, that are available ± forcing and fostering. (Escape, to a greenfield site, for
example, is not seen as particularly relevant as a strategy in terms of
negotiating a social contract.) They identify three types of institutional contract:
arm's length accommodation, containment/avoidance and cooperation. The
second of these is about weakening and destroying ± the union for example; the
third is about partnership. Partnership is the political preference of those
authors, combined with commitment. Forcing is associated with containment ±
employers use their power unilaterally to force change. Fostering is linked to
creating a new relationship based on partnership and commitment. According
to the authors, forcing, followed by fostering, is more likely to generate the
circumstances required for commitment. They also identify ``unrestrained
forcing'' ± replacing striking workers, for example ± as different from
``controlled forcing''. Later in this article it will be argued that the process in FE
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