The use of cycles? explaining employee involvement in the 1990s

Industrial Relations Journal ISSN 0019-8692 53.00

The use of cycles? explaining employee involvement in the

1990s Peter Ackers, Mick Marchington,

Adrian Wilkinson and John Goodman

Drawing on evidence from twenty-five case studies from different sectors and parts of the country, the authors challenge Ramsay's influential 'cycles of control' theory o f participation as a managerial response to industrial relations pressures from below. Through a series of 'ideal type'scenarios, they indicate the range of management motives behind the new 'wave' of employee involvement schemes.

Employee participation is a recurring theme of British industrial history. The main objective of this article is to address its latest incarnation as 'employee involvement' (EI), and to challenge the view that nothing much changes in British capitalism except the pattern on the boardroom wallpaper and the sign on the personnel office door. We argue that the new EI does not fit easily into the old theories of participation, and point to the exhaustion of explanatory concepts

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Peter Ackers is Lecturer in Industrial Relations at Loughborough University Business School. Mick Marchington is Senior Lecturer in Employee Relations at Manchester School of Management, UMIST, where Adrian Wilkinson is Lecturer in Human Resource Management, and John Goodman is Frank Thomas Professor of Industrial Relations. An earlier version of this article was resented as a paper at the April 1991 UMISTlASTON Conference on the Organisation and Control of the Labour Process held in Manchester. The research was funded by the Employment Department. However, the views expressed are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of the funding organisation.

'remoulded from a different industrial era- and specific to certain sectors-to fit the wheels of modern industrial society. The new EI is much more heterogeneous in its detailed motives, methods and impact, and this demands a conceptual retooling of aca- demic analysis. Consequently, we try to deconstruct the participation concept to account for the diversity of EI in practice. Furthermore, we attempt to place this diversity within an explanatory matrix and to explain how and why the meaning and significance of EI varies from company to company, and industry to industry. Our conclusions are based on a major study of EI in British industry, including 25 case- studies, from a wide range of regions and sectors. The method was primarily qualitat- ive, including interviews with managers and workplace union representatives, and an employee questionnaire.

The article is organised as follows. First, we locate the 'labour process' perspective in relation to three influential theoretical approaches to industrial participation, broadly defined as Unitarist, Pluralist and

268 lndustrial Relations Journal

Radical[l]. Then, after briefly discussing the orthodox Braverman position and more revisionist accounts, we explore in greater detail Ramsay’s influential ‘cycles of control’ theory. This raises four main questions concerning employee participation. What do we mean by participation, and which techniques does it include and which does it exclude? Why is it introduced by management? How extensive is it, and how has its popularity varied over time? And, what impact does it have on the nature and experience of work, from management and employee perspectives? These issues of definition, motive, extent and impact are dealt with in our discussion of Ramsay’s perspective, which is set against the recent history of participation in Britain, from the 1970s high noon of ’Industrial Democracy’, through its apparent demise at the end of that decade, to a form of renaissance, as EI, in the 1980s. Above all, we question whether he can account for the diversity of context and character in the new EI. As an understanding of motive is often the key to solving the crime, the second issue-the reasons for management’s recourse to participation-is subjected to a more extended treatment. Drawing on our empirical work, we suggest an alternative taxonomy of participation ’ideal types’ to Ramsay’s ’cycles of control’ explanation.

Theories of industrial participation

Unitarists start from the assumption that industrial organisations are characterised by shared interests and values. This view could theoretically restrict itself to a strong, auth- oritarian ’right to manage’; but, in practice, the ideal of the ‘team’ or ‘family’ usually entails some commitment to the involvement of employees in the running of the organisation, tempered by the need for each person to fulfil their allotted role within the functional hierarchy. Although this ’frame of reference’ is widely described as an instance of management self-deception, ill-suited to understanding the conflictual realities of industrial relations, it remained a popular perspective in many sectors of UK industry throughout the ’collectivist’ 1970s, and has enjoyed a renaissance in recent years, as trade union power has been rolled-back. If Unitarism usually endorses the participation ideal, and would probably expect such

initiatives to succeed, it has little more to add in explaining the motives, forms and impact of participation. This is because its harmonistic assumptions imply that any specific participation arrangements are superfluous-a view found in many companies-and neglect to offer guidelines as to those specific situations where participation is necessary, what form it should take, and what impact can be anticipated. In short, it is ahistorical, and prone to degener- ate into pious hopes[2].

Industrial relations Pluralists have generally combined a sense of the inevitability of conflict in industrial life, with a balancing awareness of the grounds for co-operation and compromise[3]. Because of the key role they allot to independent trade unions in this dynamic, they have been unhappy with any forms of industrial participation appear- ing to challenge it, which they tend to suspect of either triviality, ill-advised management unitarism or equally ill-advised trade union radicalism. Management may have to regain control by sharing it, but primarily through collaboration with their trade union representatives. In common with most of the perspectives below, they tend to consider participation in a zero-sum relationship to mainstream collective bargaining institutions, with the latter normally triumphant. Pluralism developed in the conflictual post-war years, when strong trade union organisation seemed an inevitable feature of British industrial life. It tended to stress representative institutions and conflict resolution procedures. Hence, its interest in participation was mainly confined to collective institutions with a strong, direct, formal industrial relations content, and a trade union input; notably Joint Consultation and Industrial Democracy.The former was widely held as a means of ‘incorporating’ a strong trade union organisation, which would become redundant once the union’s strength waned and management no longer needed to bother[4]. As for the latter: trade unions are ‘an Opposition which can never become a government”51. In short, classical Pluralism tends to downplay the type of communications and involvement initiatives which constitute the new EI, but would associate any decline of the union-centred channels with an ebb in union bargaining power.

Radical theory takes many forms, most of which start from broadly Marxist assumptions that UK industry constitutes a

Explaining employee involvement in the 1990s 269

distinctively capitalist power structure, in which capital and labour have antagonistic interests and ideologies. For ease of exposition, we will divide it into two representative schools of thought on participation: Braverman[6] orthodoxy and more recent revisionist and voluntarist accounts, in particular the work of Ramsay.

The cynical and dismissive attitude of most ’labour process‘ writers towards all manifestations of industrial participation derives directly from Marx and Braverman. Capital owns the means of production and hires labour to produce the goods it wishes to sell at a profit. The task assigned to their management agents in the workplace is to transform this labour power or potential into real productive work. Capital then realises its profits by extracting a proportion of the surplus value produced by these workers. This exploitation lays the basis for a permanent conflict of interests between capital and labour which pervades all aspects of the employment relationship. Management constantly seeks to increase this rate of exploitation by enhancing its control over the work process, mainly by the Taylorist methods of fragmenting and deskilling work.

’The ’labour process‘ view of participation, or of any management policies which purport to improve or ameliorate the condition of the worker, derives from this conception of control. Thus these devices are deception, seeking to lure the worker further into collaborating in hidher exploitation’(7].

Management participation practitioners are merely the ’maintenance crew for the human machinery’[8] subjected to Taylorism. Their ’faddish’ policies offer:

’A studied pretence of work ’participation’, a glamorous liberality in allowing the worker to . . . move from one fractional job to another, and have the illusion of making decisions by choosing among fixed and limited alternatives designed by a management which deliberately leaves insig- nificant matters open to choice’.[9]

The biggest problem for this bald ‘labour process’ approach is to explain why participation occurs at all. If management’s control through Taylorism is so complete and successful, why should it bother with ‘ideological adaptions’(l01 like participation, which have regularly arisen at various periods in industrial history? Are they just a product of guilt or social conscience, along with other examples of employer paternalism? Or does the continued occurrence of participation

expose ’fundamental flaws’[ll] in the orthodox ‘labour process’ analysis? Taken literally, orthodoxy would suggest that participation is inherently trivial and hardly worth further investigation.

Braverman has a determinist and sche- matic attitude to the relationship between the development of the capitalist labour process and industrial participation. Much recent ‘labour process’ analysis has been inspired by a ’voluntarist variant’[lZ], which emphasises the ever-present potential of worker resistance and industrial conflict, and the part this can play in shaping management’s labour control strategy. ‘The view of management intent is little changed’, this is still greater control, work intensification, more surplus value. Even so, the voluntarist variant does allow the outcome of management strategy to be much more open-ended, as it responds creatively to shopfloor pressure, and seeks to manipulate their consent. Participation of some ilk is likely to play a part in any ’hearts and minds‘ strategy, and as labour can be organised and powerful, the prospect may at least be entertained that the workforce can influence and benefit from this. Two important recent ’revisionist’ contributions[l3], which fall somewhere outside the ‘labour process‘ cannon on the road to Pluralism, merit a short mention here. Kelly’s shift of emphasis from the problem of labour control to the ‘full circuit of capital’ allows other business considerations, such as product and labour market pressures, a say of their own in the development of management strategy. Cressey et al. began their research in 1979 and deal mainly with Joint Consultation. They take the orthodox bull by the horns on the issue of participation; rejecting the zero-sum version of the capitalist employment relationship, and pointing out how both sides are bound together in a complementary dependence. Instead of employee representatives facing a crude dilemma of militant oppositionalism or incorporation, areas of cooperation and conflict co-exist, as Pluralism suggests, potentially leaving some space for positive-sum participation. In UK industrial relations, however, participation becomes marginal, not because there are no common organisational goals, but because managers are not prepared to lose ‘the right to manage’, while their trade union counterparts eschew taking any responsibility for management decisions about which they have limited knowledge

270 Industrial Relations Journal

and expertise. The issue of ’incorporation’ does not arise because neither side is seriously interested in sharing powedrespons- ibility .

Ramsay’s publications over more than a decade represent the most tenacious and detailed exposition of the voluntarist perspective. His ’cycles of control’[14] analysis retains the central Marxist assumption that the CapitaULabour relationship is necessarily exploitative and zero-sum; but steers the analysis of participation away from the point of production and the labour intensification argument developed by most labour process theorists. Instead of regarding participation as just another ruse to confuse workers into still greater work rates, he stresses its historical character arising from ’cycles’ of working class resistance, creating periodic crises of management legitimacy. Participation emerges not as a conspiratorial tactic aimed at labour intensification, but as an attempt at ’regaining legitimacy’[lS]. Management is looking for longer term ’ideological gains rather than directly profit- able or productive ones’. Once these moments have passed, and management initiatives have ‘headed off or restrained the demand for more substantial changes in authority relations’, the once celebrated participation initiative quickly falls into disuse, as management quietly loses interest in it.

Ramsay’s approach represents a considerable advance on Unitarist eulogy and Braver- man dismissal, expanding a similar, earlier Pluralist explanation of Joint Consul- tation[lb]. First, it addresses the full range of particiption phenomena, and offers some general explanation for the ebb and flow of participation. Second, it shifts the discussion on management strategy away from a narrow productivism, to a wider consideration of the balance of economic, social and political forces in society. Third, by introducing a voluntarist element of worker resistance and management response, it departs from Brav- erman’s conspiratorial, omniscient and deterministic view of management strategy. In Marxist terms, it marks a change of emphasis from the deterministic logic of the mode of production to the more open outcome of class struggle; and from econo- mism to a wider view of society as a whole. There are, nevertheless, major shortcomings in even Ramsay’s voluntarist approach, mostly associated with his manichean atti-

tudes to the fundamentals of workplace relations.

Definition: What is participation? As Ramsay himself implies[l7], his definition of participation is unstated and potentially circular. To qualify as genuine participation-which is ’phantom’ anyway[l8]- techniques should serve the industrial relations legitimation function. Otherwise, this logic suggests, they may be shunted off into another theoretical branchline: works engineering for job redesign; perhaps customer care for many of the EI techniques discussed below. However, any such attempt to pick and choose which techniques qualify as real participation simply throws the theoretical and definitional problems into sharper relief. Indeed, it risks the charge of a ‘conven- tionalist twist’ whereby hypotheses, like the ’cycles of control’, may be bent to deflect contradictory evidence. Ramsay recognises that:

’The possibility exists that all job reforms are not reducible to just another participation innovation, having instead a distinctive genesis and nature’

The same qualification applies to the numerous techniques which, over the years, have been lumped together under the heading of participation. On the one hand, there is the danger of conflating quite different phenomena. On the other, there is no credible way of drawing a definitional boundary around ‘genuine‘ participation, designed to keep the phantoms out.

Ramsay’s[20] own, very catholic, working taxonomy of ’forms of participation’ embraces just about everything from workers revolution to managers calling employees by their first names, including: joint consultation, profit sharing, co-partnership, suggestion schemes, worker directors, productivity bargaining, collective bargaining, sit-ins/work-ins, human relations, democratic supervision, job enrichment, parti- cipative management, autonomous work- groups, gang systems, output restrictions, and work group controls. While such breadth is commendable (and Ramsay subtly sub- divides into higher/lower and consen- sus/conflict orientated participation) and close to our own research brief, it must pose problems for a single overarching theory of participation. The alternative, we suggest below, is to develop a more circumstantial

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taxonomy of ‘participations‘, based on ‘ideal type‘ scenarios rather than isolated, decon- textualised techniques, and to many this with a more open and variegated explanation of participation ‘waves’.

A brief survey of the changing context and meaning of participation over the last twenty years reinforces this point. The 1970s model reached its high point with the 1977 Bullock Report on ’Industrial Democracy’. This emerged in a period of strong union bargaining power, and the Labour Govern- ment‘s ‘Social Contract’. This corporatist atmosphere gave the Bullock approach to industrial participation several distinctive features. First, it was partly union initiated (though there was considerable dissent), through their place in the Labour Party, and consequently it was industrial relations- centred. Second, it was collectivist, with trade unions playing a central part. Third, it was based on a general principle of employee rights, established on a statutory basis (though only for larger companies). By con- trast, the 1980s produced a quite different agenda for industrial participation, retitled EI. The context was reduced union power and an anti-corporatist Thatcher Govern- ment, which resisted statutory blueprints (with the exception of legislative support for profit sharing), and encouraged firms to evolve the arrangements which best suited them. First, it is management-initiated, often from outside the industrial relations sphere, and with scant reference to trade unions. Second, the new EI is individualist, and stresses direct communications with the individual employee. Third, it is presented as driven by hard-headed business criteria concerning economic performance and affecting the bottom line. Concepts like ‘Human Resources Management’, stress the ’pay-off‘ in employee motivation and commitment, and their emphasis on business ’fit’ justifies a voluntary approach.

The new EI embraces four main types of techniques, which can be found either alone or in various combinations. First, there are representative forums, like joint consultation, which are not new in themselves. Here the debate concerns whether it has grown or declined in importance, and how this impacts on collective bargaining, where the two coincide. Second, and more novel, are the various types of direct communications, like team briefing, employee financial reports, videos, papers, newsheets,

which mainly transmit information down- wards to the individual employee. Third, are problem-solving groups on the Japanese model, which range from ‘add-on‘ techniques, like quality circles, to more endemic programmes of ’cultural change’, like total quality management (TQM) and forms of structural EI which may involve a shift to team working and major job redesign. Finally, there are forms of financial participation, such as share, profit and bonus schemes. However, an interpretative time- lag, supported by definitional slippage, has led many commentators to use concepts forged in the 1970s and before to explain the new EI phenomena. Hence in the 1970s, all forms of participation, even including Bullock-style ‘Industrial Democracy’, were regarded by most Radicals[21] as a means of ’incorporating’ and undermining strong, independent workplace trade union organisation. In the 1980s, most managements trans- parently had little need to ’incorporate’ union representatives-for these sorts of reasons at least. Yet when companies showed signs of trying to communicate with and involve shopfloor workers, their programmes were typecast, at worst, as renewed attempts at ’incorporation’-successful or not[22]--or, at best, as an equally machiavel- lian ploy to extend control over the labour process, through union by-passing. Too often such viewpoints continue to provide the unchallenged background assumptions for much empirical work in this area. For this reason, it is crucial to differentiate management thinking behind EI at different times and places.

Motive: why participation? According to Ramsay[23]:

Managements have been attracted to the idea of participation when their control over labour has been perceived to be under pressure in some way. This perception has coincided with periods of experience of a growing challenge from labour to the legitimacy of capital and its agents.

Although he does place management legitimacy crises in a broader societal framework, this reliance on worker resistance as the one truly free variable, constantly pulls him back to base/superstructure explanations which prioritise events at the point of production. The model of cycles of resistance and response, underplays the possible domi- nance of the superstructure, exemplified by


the continuity of the German and Swedish political and social settlements which underpin their stable participation arrangements. It also neglects the fact that labour resistance may be a negligible or constant factor, while other external pressures-from technology, the product and labour market, or even an international event like the 1992 Single Market-may persuade management to experiment with (or abandon) participation. In Ramsay’s framework, any pressures from the ’full circuit of capital’ or other contin- gencies, must still be funnelled through the CapitaULabour relationship to have a participation effect. And even then, the struggle which is supposed to ensue must have the decisive influence on the character of management’s strategic response in the direction of participation. Hence, his explanatory framework remains resolutely industrial relations centred; something which, as we shall see, renders it of limited value in understanding participation developments over the past decade.

Extent: EI and the renaissance of participation

Above all, the ’cycles of control’ hypothesis fails to explain the resurgence of participation over the past decade, documented by the major quantitative surveys and illustrated by numerous case-studies[24]. As Ramsay[25] has acknowledged, Thatcherism, with labour in weak opposition and trade unions and workers increasingly cowed by an economic, legal and political environment hostile to collectivism, should have seen participation fade from the scene. Indeed, early in the new decade[26], he saw employers sweeping participation under the carpet ’with the collapse of labour’s challenge to management’, and simply regaining control from workplace unions, suggesting that, in his view:

’The cycles analysis has been more dramatically vindicated than could readily have been imagined in the mid 1970s’.

In the event, ’macho management’ was a much exaggerated and rather transient phenomenon, and instead, participation has blossomed, albeit in quite novel forms. Recently, Ramsay has acknowledged the weak predictive power of the cycles analysis in this period, and called for more micro- level analysis, without, as yet, looking for a fundamentally different approach[27].

Of equal significance to the extent of the new EI, is its origin. The main impetus has come not from government, trade unions, or even the European Community (though the first and last no doubt had some background influence), but from companies themselves. Furthermore, the shrinking proportion of manufacturing employment (and especially its most strongly unionised sectors on which so much labour process theory is based), the privatisation and commercialisation of the public sector, and the expansion of private services, have all meant that a collective challenge from below can be discounted as the major, general explanation. To respond that this is not participation but something else (since it is not a response to a labour challenge), only revives the definitional problems discussed above. The character of participation has undoubtedly changed, even if considerable overlaps remain with its precursors. The question is: why is participation again in vogue with managers, what forms does it now take, what are its objectives, and how far does it meet these?

Impact: ’bound to fail?’ Even Ramsay’s voluntarist framework be- trays its background Marxist assumptions, by refusing seriously to entertain the possibility that participation can significantIy ameliorate the quality of working life, or even play a long term role in employee relations. From the outset, any participation initiative is doomed to crash onto the rock of the zero-sum CapitaVLabour relationship. Such schemes are ‘mediocre successes at best and disastrous failures at worst’[28], confirming suspicions that ‘genuine industrial democracy is unobtainable under capitalism’. Once this premise is in place, it is all too easy to disparage positive reports and highlight negatives ones(291, in a mirror image of Unitarist eulogy.

Ramsay tends to draw the holes in his participation impact net so wide that little or no positive evidence is caught, by, in effect, making Radical-style workers control the test of efficacy; does participation hand- over power to the shopfloor? He argues[30] that management and unions have contradictory conceptions of participation; the former defining it in an integrative and instrumental way as communication and involvement; the latter as democratic control.

’Management proposals are an exercise in pseudo-democracy insofar as they attempt to


impose an instrumental and integrative framework’.

Even quite major participation initiatives- the John Lewis Partnership, the Glacier Metal Company, the British Steel Corpor- ation ’Worker Directors‘-end-up in the conceptual dustbin called ’psuedo democracy’. The contradictory perspectives of management and organised labour are pre-pro- grammed to rapidly transform participation in the negative direction of ‘Triviality’, ’Instability’ or ’Change of committee status’ (effectively a collapse into collective bargaining)[31]. The two possible positive categories-’Management success‘ and ’Union success’-are virtually empty boxes, with German co-determination being con- sidered for the former but set aside for ’a lack of reliable studies’, and the latter the ’least likely’ of all. For oft-repeated reasons[32], grounded in the Marxist theory of industrial power and a rejection of any positive-sum alternative, the prospect of management and employees simultaneously benefitting from a participation is not wor- thy of consideration, even as a hypothesis.

Our argument is not so much that Ram- say’s approach to impact is invalid, just that it is too narrow and partisan to serve as a useful general test for participation. An ability to read and understand John Milton’s ’Paradise Lost’ is one test of literacy. But it is .only one; and a very high one at that, designed to exclude the bulk of the popu- lation. Ramsay’s approach has a similar effect: comparing real-world participations against some idealised democratic coun- terfactual.

’These schemes . . . are fuelled by managerial rather than labour conceptions, and are aimed at achieving integration and efficiency rather than ’democracy’ in any meaningful sense of that term (ie. as the genuine redistribution of power)’(33].

This may serve some purpose as an idealist critique of the way industry and society are currently organised, but it has limited application to the more prosaic world of everday participation and its part in management stategy. If participation techniques do not transform the whole nature of work, nobody should be surprised. Moreover, it seems unlikely that many managers and employees would expect them to. It is more important to assess empirically what the objectives of the schemes are, how these are linked to other employee relations and

business policies, and what the actual impact is? Equally, it is important to investigate empirically what worker and trade union attitudes are to participation schemes and why? ’Structuralist’ intuitions(341 of a zero- sum relationship again work to preclude an assessment of evidence from the real world.

There are clearly situations which fulfil Ramsay’s zero-sum expectations, and where participation may become marginalised as a consequence. However, this is most likely to happen in strong union situations, usually in manufacturing industry, and even there, other factors-like lack of overall management commitment-may be a more important reason for failure. Elsewhere, most notably in non-union private services, the whole dynamic of participation is likely to be quite different. Nor is a more positive- sum participation situation, even in well- organised manufacturing, quite as unthink- able as Ramsay[35] suggests. The ’complementary’ model of Joint Consultatation[36] underlines this possibility. The GM/UAW ’Joint Process’[37], and ’single-union deals’ are other possible candidates.

EI and management strategies: explaining diversity

In this section, we outline briefly the main findings of our study[38], and then consider, in greater detail, the question of management motives behind the new EI. Our terms of reference were recent EI developments, most of which are managerial initiatives designed to increase commitment and enhance employee contributions to organisational goals. Hence, those forms of participation of an earlier vintage, which were fostered either by trade unions or by legis- lation, and aimed at strengthening employee influence over higher level management decision-making, were not central to our study. For this reason, our evidence bears mainly, not on the pre-Thatcher period which occasioned the original ‘cycIes of control’ analysis, but on the past decade. Our data-base has both depth and breadth. Case studies were conducted in 25 different organisations (38 separate sites, plus regional and head office managers) drawn from a wide range of different sectors. Within manufacturing, we included chemical, engineering, footwear and textile firms. Most are relatively large and three are foreign-owned, but we also researched some smaller companies.


From private services, we included retailm finance, leisure, water, professional services, and housing organisations. These vary in size from about 50 employees through to approximately 80,000 in the two food retailers. We looked at two large public sector organisations. The sample also included organisations from different regions, so giv- ing a geographical spread. The table shows the companies covered and the range of EI techniques they each used.

The EI mix and waves of interest Virtually all the organisations practise at least two different forms of EI and many large manufacturers operate a variety of different schemes covering: downward communications (both written and verbal), upward problem-solving techniques, financial involvement, and representative participation. The most widespread forms of EI are house journals/company newspapers, TQM/customer care type initiatives, and some variant of team briefing JCCs. About half operate employee share ownership, suggestion schemes, organisational change programmes, and employee reports. A min- ority conduct attitude surveys on a regular basis, use quality circles, and operate a unit- wide bonus scheme. There is considerable diversity in terms of the mix of schemes, the reasons given for their introduction and maintenance, the organisational level and function of the people who championed these initiatives, their impact on employees, and their centrality to organisational goals and processes. However, there are also similarities in the broad forms of EI across the case study sites, and their common managerial origins. The concept of ‘waves of interest’ in EI, discussed briefly in the Conclusion, and more thoroughly elsewhere[39], is our major tool for analysing the temporal dimension of this diversity.

The impact of EI We have tried to assess impact in relation to employees, managers and, where applicable, trade union representatives. The problems of benchmarking and determining the directions of causality between EI and other factors, like corporate performance, pose obvious methodological difficulties. Analy- sis of 700 questionnaire responses from employees in 18 organisations, indicates EI

has made some impact on employees, albeit a limited one. A substantial majority want the EI forms in their organisations to continue, and twice as many feel communications and involvement has improved over the last five years, as feel they have wors- ened. Though many more feel EI had made a positive, rather than a negative, impact in their organisations, a substantial majority perceive little change. This is best illustrated by the question about whether team briefing has increased, decreased, or made no differ- ence to their commitment to the organisation. Over three-quarters perceive no change. The questionnaire reveals that, while employees do see benefits from EI, it has not significantly changed their attitudes or perceptions. It suggests that, in most organisations, EI is neither peripheral to employees, nor of central importance, but a middle-order phenomenon.

There are a variety of connections between management-initiated EI and trade union organisation. In a little under half of the cases, there is some synergy and comp- lementarity between the two, especially between JCCs and collective bargaining, However, in several organisations, the development of EI-especially where this took the form of greater communication and problem- solving techniques-appeared to have a del- eterious effect on trade unionism, both in well-organised workplaces and in others where union density is low. In a few instances, trade union representatives have retarded the spread of EI. Overall, the study indicates that there is no simple unilinear relationship between EI and workplace trade unionism.

Management motives for EI A complex range of reasons are put forward by managements for the introduction of EI, in its various forms, into their organisations. We discuss these in greater depth in the main report[40], but here we simplify and dramatise them as five scenarios, which illustrate the motivational range. This taxonomy tries to illuminate the management thinking behind the various schemes, in terms of: the external pressures they are responding to (the ‘cause’ might be a material pressure or an ideological opportunity); the character and form of the EI schemes they might devise to meet these; and the impact they might anticipate.


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Obviously, the actual impact will depend on a variety of factors, including the circumstances of their introduction, management commitment and employeehnion responses. The same EI techniques, introduced for broadly similar reasons, can be experienced quite differently by two workforces[4]; while other events in the business may completely overtake and swamp an EI programme. Some organisations display elements of several ‘ideal types’, which are not mutually exclus- ive, but represent differences of emphasis. Businesses frequently prefer to adapt old, familiar structures, rather than invent brand new ones. A participation set-up conceived in one scenario may, over time, be adjusted or revived for another. Sometimes two or more scenarios may co-exist, like multiple personalities, pulling a participation programme in potentially contradictory directions. The political character of many management decisions may mean that one management functionAeve1 has a different conception of a given scheme to another. These scenarios are outlined below.The first two are industrial relations-centred, and found in organisations where workplace trade union organisation poses some obstacle to management’s control of its human resource. The other three emanate from beyond this frame.

Scenario one: incorporation participation

This is Ramsay’s ‘cycle of control’ model. The likely circumstances are strong workplace union organisation, supported by a tight external labour market, and, possibly, a competitive product market. Management would like to redirect shopfloor power in a more constructive direction, and attempts to interest union representatives into exchanging short-term economic benefits for more say in the long-term strategy of the firm. The classic case is the 1970s BL Participation scheme, and at a national level, the Bullock Report. The cause is upward shopfloor power reflected in rising unit labour costs and industrial relations problems. The character is usually some variation on union- centred joint consultation or industrial democracy. The anticipated impact is more stable and harmonious industrial relations and reasonable shopfloor attitudes to pay and working practices. This scenario has been rare since 1979, because of high unem-

ployment and weakened national trade union power, and is poorly represented in our study. The closest fit is Southern Shoe. For many years, this paternalist employer had combined collective bargaining with a strong workplace trade union, with consultation through a non-union works council system. In the early 1980s, a new Personnel Director faced the problem of persistent ’wildcat’ industrial action and very high labour turnover, while the company was struggling to compete with low-cost foreign imports. As a result, the unions were brought into the centre of the consultation system for the first time, bucking the national trend.

Scenario two: human resource management (HRM) participation

Version A is the union ‘by-passing’ mode1[42]. Here, the likely circumstances are an historically strong, workplace trade union organisation, facing a looser external labour market and unfavourable political context for trade unions, and management under pressure from a competitive product market, perhaps with limited scope for rais- ing productivity by technological innovation. Management would like to take advantage of the weakened state of its workplace trade union, short of trying to destroy it completely. It wants to communicate directly with the shopfloor the need for more flexible working practices and for performance related pay. The cause is push-pull: the pressure from the product market to cut unit labour costs and increase flexible response to the market; and the opportunity afforded by the union‘s weakened state. The character is direct communication and involvement- quality circles, team briefing, profit sharing etc.-usually in twin-track with traditional collective bargaining. If joint consultation already exists, management may shift issues from collective bargaining to it, if not, management is unlikely to invent it. The anticipated impact is a better relationship with the shopfloor, who understand better the need to change their working and payment systems, which filters through into a more cooperative shop steward attitude. This is the classic 1980s case in well-organised larger manufacturing companies, including several in our study. How far management chooses to ’by-pass’ rather than ’incorporate’ (or combine the two) its workplace union will very likely depend on how cooperative the


past relationship has been, or how quickly the union shows a willingness to adopt a more collaborationist stance. Companies may deploy a pragmatic 'twin track'[43] policy, shifting the weight from one foot to the other depending on the circumstances. Weaveco is a case in point. Over the past decade, it has supplemented a union-centred bargaining and consultation structure with a whole raft of direct EI initiatives: profit sharing, quality circles, and employee financial reports with videos and briefing. Another example, at an earlier stage of development, is the public service organisation, National Transport Corporation (NTC), which is undergoing 'commercialisation' into a business enterprise. Here a highly centralised and union-centred bargaining and consultatation structure is itself under threat from decentralisation to business units, while national TQM and team briefing schemes, and local EI initiatives, are attempting to open up a new, direct line to the ordinary employee. In both cases, major changes in working practices, previously blocked by strong workplace unions, are aimed at cutting unit labour costs.

Version B, in non-union organisations, is the 'union avoidance' model championed by US companies like IBM and Hewlett- Packard. Four Star hotels-and, possibly, one of the Hiclass supermarkets-displayed elements of this. This non-union Housing Association charity already follows local government agreements on wages and con- ditions, but its representative consultative committee is a fairly obvious surrogate for union-based recognition, which management would like to avoid. Our one example of union de-recognition at WaterCo, fol- lowed the collapse of national bargaining, and led to the setting-up of a new consultative body. In such cases, participation arrangements, as part of a wider organisation culture, may attempt to pre-empt the advent or return of union organisation.

Union weakening or avoidance should not be assumed a priori to be management's main motive in either EI or HRM. Partici- pation may be directed more generally at improving employee performance and commitment, through nurturing the human resource. We came across few examples of full-blown 'Strategic Human Resource Man- agement'[44]. But there were cases where the potential impact on the union role, if

intended at all, was a secondary, down- stream consideration. Hence, Finance House was engaged in cultural change and business decentralisation programmes which may, as a by-product, weaken union influence, though this was not its primary objective.

Scenario three: market participation This scenario addesses those situations where economic pressures, other than labour control and union considerations, motivate participation initiatives. This applies especially to organisations where trade union workplace power is not a major consideration in management strategy, either because there is no union and the threat of organisation is weak, or because the union has never played an active part in job control beyond national wage negotiation. In both cases, economic pressures have a direct influence on the emergence of EI, unme- diated by collective industrial relations.

Version A is where product market pressures impact on the human resource problem directly, without having to pass through the distorting lense of industrial relations problems. The likely circumstances are close- ness to the customer, notably in service sector organisations, a non-union or weak workplace union situation, and strong product market competition from other organisations providing very similar services- quality of customer care is a crucial source of competitive advantage. The service sector version usually emphasises 'Customer Care', while the manufacturing version stresses 'Quality'. The focus is openly on customer service or quality, and involvement and communications is a nakedly functional means to this end. The catalyst is product market pressure, especially where this cannot be met by price alone. The character is functional, often as briefing or training, linked to some central Customer Care or TQM scheme. The anticipated impact is quite clear and limited.

We have several good examples of this, and most cases have elements of this scenario. The two supermarket chains see EI as arising from customer care programmes, a key source of competitive advantage in a market approaching saturation, with similar prices, high standards, and product ranges in their new, 'state-of-the-art' superstores, Storeco has much the higher union member-


ship, but this is not reflected in effective workplace organisation, and the union restricts itself to national wage bargaining, leaving management a free hand in the stores, circumscribed only by national griev- ance and disputes procedures. The main form of EI, a weekly briefing cascade, is closely geared to the transmission of business performance targets, and adapted so as not to interfere with running of the store. In financial services, the two building societies and the bank had similar product market motives for introducing TQM-type policies. Likewise, the TQM programmes at some unionised manufacturers, where the union takes a broadly neutral attitude, regarding them as outside their purview. For instance, Precious Metal has instituted a global TQM programme, mainly as a way of reviving and modernising the organisation after a crisis in the early 1980s. This involves a Crosby- style quality training programme, as well as more permanent quality committees and quality action teams at the workplace level. Union presence is uneven in this heterogen- ous company, but even where it is strong, in one of the engineering plants, it keeps a distance from the TQM programme, neither hindering nor promoting it.

Version B is where labour market problems of recruiting and retaining suitable employees provide the main impetus behind an EI programme. This is often linked to Version A, since problems with the quantity and quality of the human resource impinge directly on the quality of customer service. Likely circumstances are labour intensity and highly competitive markets, holding down wages and preventing the recruitment of a more stable, full-time workforce, and/or tight local labour markets for specific categories of employees. The cause is labour shortages in some or all categories, recruitment problems, or very high employee turnover levels, which are both highly costly to manage and destablising. The character may involve improving the quality of working life, by greater involvement or fringe benefits to supplement or complement staff pay. The anticipated impact is to increase employee loyalty and reduce the labour market problems. There are two distinct manifestations in private services, at opposite ends of the labour market. Both were exacerbated by the late 1980s consumer boom, especially in the South East. In the private service organis-

ations, dependence on temporary and part- time employment can limit the success of customer care programmes. In the supermarket cases, out-of-town locations made the problem worse, creating absolute labour shortages and turnover levels as high as 80%. Equally, at the top end of the labour market, Finance House, experienced very high labour turnover, particularly among computer-related staff in the London area. This provided one pressure behind EI and welfare policies, alongside other strategems, like relocating to the West Midlands labour market. Similar considerations were also an independent pressure, alongside others, in organisations like Southern Shoe and NTC, which experienced severe problems in recruiting manual workers in the tight southern labour markets. While the latter approached the problem through pay sup- plements, the former looked to large-scale job redesign as part of an EI package to make factory work more attractive.

Scenario four: philosophical participation

The genesis of participation may not be found in any of the above material pressures. Instead, its original source is primarily ideological or philosophical on the part of the state, a political party or an employer (perhaps a key personality from the family stage of company development). Rather than relating, even indirectly, to events in dom- estic industry, it reflects a political settle- ment, like the post-war European govern- ments. The cause is a political, philosophical or religious ideal. The character is likely to be formalised, representative and society or company-wide-depending on its origin. The anticipated impact probably involves some notion of economic citizenship or a virtuous linkage between ‘social justice’ and ’economic efficiency’. This idea of participation, as an end in itself, overlaps with the Radical idealism of ’workers control’, though it is likely to take a more moderate, and perhaps practicable form. The West German works council system represents one state variant, as, at the level of potential, did the Bullock proposals and, latterly, the European Community (EC) ’social charter’. Such proposals may have some material trigger, as Bullock did in rising trade union power, but equally they may be a direct response to ideological or political pressures. For


instance, were a blanket EC participation policy ever applied, its manifestation in any one European state would in no respect reflect a response to resistance from below there-though the extent to which and how it survives or thrives might do so[45]. Two organisations in our sample with a history of public ownership, Trustport and NTC, still have consultative arrangements (albeit showing signs of decay) dating from the Attlee government and Labour 1970s commitment to industrial democracy respect- ively. The voluntarist variant can be found in those philosophical paternalists[46], with a historical record of works council-style experiments in industrial participation. Sou- them Shoe, with its Quaker industrial tradition, is an example of this. ChemCo pro- vides a more secular variation. While material self-interest has played a part in the creation of such schemes, it cannot alone account for their inception and survival.

personnel function was new and weak, and the workforce largely casualised and sea- sonal. Ostensibly EI was supposed to hone the human resources to the requisite customer care standards, but, in practice, there was little substance to any of the initiatives- forms of briefing, suggestions scheme, consultation, and an induction process-which were ill thought-out, poorly resourced, and resisted by the rest of management, who felt they could not afford the luxury of releasing staff during working time. After another, recent change in the personnel office, several of the original EI ideas have been abandoned or de-emphasised, with greater priority being given to less flowery, more practical Personnel systems.

These five ideal types in no way exhaust the possible motives behind EI initiatives. The ill-defined character of participation and its highly variable meaning should counsel us against any such closure of options. New perspectives constantly spring to mind. In extremis, EI may be clutched at, as a last straw component of a survival programme. The same EI mix applied at two equally beleaguered workplaces may be perceived as ’lifeboat democracy’ at one and ‘sinking autocracy”471 at another-as we found within NTC. Equally, evidence from our two Chemical companies, might support a quality control driven Technological Pariici- pation. The taxonomy offered above, merely takes the more prevalant scenarios, in order to illuminate the range of management motives for participation, both within and beyond the traditional ’labour process’ perspective.

Faddish participation Finally, there is space for Braverman’s scenario of participation as a superficial and transient fad, attuned to the latest management fashion. Here the defining character- istic is incoherence: the initiative is ‘not serious’, insufficiently thought-through or resourced, and highly likely to fail. Many organisations adopt new names-’Human Resources Manager’-and introduce fashionable EI techniques, like flashy magazines, induction manuals and mission statements, which in no way impinge upon their major method of communicating with and involv- ing their employees, be this collective union- centred or informal individualism. This can occur in all types of organisations. The likely cause is fashion: being seen to do something and keep up with the competition, and sometimes a bright idea at the top, or requirement from a major customer. The character is transient, poorly resourced (eg. briefing in work time) and weakly spon- sored, often by personnel. The anticipated impact is either ill-defined or grandiosely unrealistic: ‘transforming organisational culture’. The actual impact is likely to be superficial and transient. Accordingly, industrial relations problems need not be the main or only reason for the failure of an EI scheme. Leisureco, a new company, driven by short- term operations, cost-control and revenue generation imperatives, illustrates this. The

Conclusions The weaknesses of the traditional ’labour process’ perspective are now widely acknowledged. Together, they underpin the negative stereotype of participation discussed above. First, profits not labour control are the main objective of business. In pursuit of these, other links in the ’circuit of capital’, such as labour and product markets, may instead become the principal ’cause’ of EI. Second, there is the zero-sum concept of power, which assumes that employees and unions necessarily see El as a threat and not in a neutral or favourable light. Once this is removed or qualified, new possibilities open up for the understanding of EI. Third, and more specific to EI, there is the tendency to


conflate, under the broad brush title of ’Participation’, a range of different techniques, of differing motives, salience and effects. Lastly, there is a tendency to analyse EI from the standpoint of strong workplace organisation (as in engineering), when, in many firms, unions or employees have never posed a serious collective challenge to management control over the labour process.

Our objective here is not to replace Ram- say’s ’cycles of control’ or any other ’grand theory’ with an alternative single general explanation of either industrial participation over the years, or modem EI. One important reason for this-highlighted in our case- studies and the discussion above-is that participation is not a single coherent entity. Rather it is a vague and shifting terminology covering a complex range of techniques and contexts. Within this, there are situations where Ramsay’s two key premises-perceptions of a zero-sum employment relationship and an employee challenge from below-are met, and where the pattern of participation may well conform to the ‘cycles of control’ model. Most likely, these will be in the well- organised, large-scale manufacturing set- tings. Elsewhere, most notably in private services, quite different ’participations’ will occur. The outer boundaries of the participation concept are as indeterminant as the inner walls. For example, the Employment Department[48] considers workplace creches to have a contribution to make in the successful operation of EI. What, if anything, links them all, is some attempt by employers to either involve or communicate with their employees. Arguably, all employers always do this, at least to some extent. And for our case-studies who claim the superiority of informality, like Computerco and Northern Shoe, this poses special interpretative problems. EI becomes not a clearly discernible wave, associated with a specific mix of techniques, but some sort of amorphous and intangible organisational cultural asset-or, at worst ‘the Emperor’s new clothes’.

No static taxonomy can do full justice to the flux and development which characterise the history of participation. Ramsay’s ’cycles’ theory is one attempt to cater for this. In this, history does not stand still or evolve upwards and onwards, but it does tend to repeat itself, if not in exact detail[49], by playing ’variations’ on a fixed ‘theme’, according to the deep structural logic of capitalism. Our preferred image of partici-

pation ‘waves‘, hopefully avoids any such determinism, leaving the whole subject open to empirical enquiry. Such waves can occur both within specific organisations and in society at large, sometimes in concert, sometimes not. They may correspond to the organisation’s own internal development, or to the wider material pressures and ideological opportunities available in the surround- ing society during a particular period, or, as is often the case, to an interaction of the two. It might be argued*, that our analysis and Ramsay’s are simply at cross-purposes. While we revel in micro-level complexity in a limited number of organisations for a given period; he soars high above, mapping out a macro-level theory of participation with a much greater temporal and spatial reach. Certainly, this discussion has centred on the variety of motives prompting EI programmes in our case-studies. Our study goes far beyond ’single case exceptions’, but it cannot reach back to cover the history of participation in Britain, let alone make international comparisons. Possibly, the ‘cycles’ analysis holds for the pre-1979 collectivist era of British industrial relations, and we are witnessing a radical disjuncture[50], as management converts to a new individualist HRM agenda. Were this true, it still seems unlikely that the multiplicity of motives described in our scenarios were entirely absent in the past. Moreover, a viable macro- theory must be able to account for the range of micro-activity. For the past decade, the ’cycles’ theory cannot.

Finally, it is worth stressing the perils of interpreting local instances of EI according to any A-Z map of participation. The precise character of EI at a given workplace is always a subject for detailed empirical enquiry. Very often it is a complex compound precipitated by a variety of elements introduced at different times in varying quantities. Accordingly, a pre-existing organisational and industrial relations culture, perhaps including an established participation tradition, may be subjected to economic and other pressures. Management-or sections of it-may begin to explore the ideas marketplace for an appropriate technique or range of techniques to meet their needs. Even once the ’elective affinity’ between their ‘problem’ and the

*This point was made when we presented the original paper.


available, often fashionable, solution is established, the process is still far from complete. The final stage is to take the chosen technique back to the workplace and ‘domesticate it’, according to the specific demands of different sections of management and of the employees, individual or collective. At Storeco and Leisureco, line management accepted briefing, providing it did not disrupt working time, with important implications for the its character. The building society briefings were absorbed into weekly meetings and became much more branch orientated. Southern Shoe and Finance House employees expected briefing groups to provide for widespread discussion and upward communication, so they now do. The unionised workforce at Precious Metals expected financial reward for TQM ideas, so management devised a Suggestion Scheme to run alongside it. In this way, as dogs begin to resemble their owners, EI techniques begin to take on the colour of the culture into which they are inserted.They are as much changed by this as they change it. A similar set of pressures which sent management out to buy Team Briefing in the 1980s, may lead them to TQM in the 1990s. But once each has meta- morphosed to meet the host company‘s needs, differences in formal title may belie similarities in content; just as the same technique in two contrasting organisations may evolve in radically different directions. Our taxonomy of participations, defined by motive, is no more than an attempt to impose some theoretical order on this intrinsically complex and constantly changing reality.

References

1. Fox A. Sociology and Industrial Relations, Research paper 3, Royal Commission on Trade Unions and Employers Associations, 1968; and, The Myths of Pluralism and a Radical Alternative in Clarke T. & Clements, L. (Ed), Trade Unions Under Capitalism, 1977. A similar trilogy-Traditional, Pluralist and Incorporationist-is adopted by Cressey P., Eldridge J. & MacInnes J., Just Managing: Authority and Democracy in Industry, 1985.

2. Ramsay, H. E., What is Participation For in Knights, D. (Ed.), lob Redesign, 1985.

3. For instance: Clegg, H. A,, The Changing System of Industrial Relations in Great Britain, 1979; Royal Commission on Trade Unions and Employers Associations, 1968; Flanders, A., Col- lective Bargaining: Prescriptions for Change, in

Management and Unions, 1970; McCarthy; W. E. J. & Ellis, N.D., Management by Agreement: an Alternative to the Industrial Relations Act, 1973. Of course, Pluralists have produced a number of studies of job regulation and control at shopfloor level, such as: Armstrong, P. J., Goodman J. F. B. and Hyman J., Ideology and Shopfloor Industrial Relations, 1980; and Brown W., Piecework Bargaining, 1973.

4. McCarthy, W. E. J., The role of shop stewards in British industrial relations Royal Commission on Trade Unions and Employes Associations, Research Paper No 1, 1966.

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p. 54. 10. Ramsay, 1985 op. cit. p. 55. 11. Ibid p. 53. 12. Ibid p. 56. See Friedman, A., Industry and

Labour: Class Struggle at Work and Monopoly Capitalism, 1977; Knights, D. & Wilmott, H., Labour Process Theory, 1990; Littler, C. & Salaman, G., Bravermania and beyond: recent theories of the Labour Process, in Sociology 16 (2), 1982.

13. Kelly J., Management Redesign of Work: Labour Process, Labour Markets and Products, in Knights D. et al, Job Redesign, 1985; and Cressey, P. & MacInnes, J., Voting for Ford: Industrial Democracy and Control of Labour, Capital and Class, 11, 1980.

14. Ramsay, H. E., Cycles of control: worker participation in sociological and historical perspective, in Sociology Vol 11, 1977. See also, in chrono- logical order: 1975; op. cit.; Participation: the shopfloor view, British Journal of Industrial Relations, Vol14.2,1976; Phantom participation: patterns of power and conflict, Industrial Relations lournal, Vol 11 (3), 1980a; Partici- pation: the Pattern and Significance in Nicholls, T. (Ed); Capital and Labour, 1980b; Evolution or cycle? Worker participation in the 1970s and 19805, in Crouch, C. & Heller, F. (Eds); International Yearbook of Organisational Democ- racy. Vol 1. Organisational Democracy and Political Processes, 1983a; A n international participation cycle: variations on a recurring theme, in Clegg, S . et al (eds)-The State; Class and the Recession, 1983b; Industrial democracy and the question of control in Davis, E. & Lansbury, R. (Eds)-Democracy and control in the workplace, 1986; and The Joint Consultation Debate: Soft Soap and Hard Cases CRIDP Discussion Paper 17, 1990.

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282 Industrial Relations Journal

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25. Ramsay, 1985 op. cit. 26. Ramsay, 1983a op cit. p. 219; and repeated

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29. See Ramsay, 1980a and 1985 op. cit. for examples of this.

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38. See the main research report, Marchington,

M. Goodman J. F. B., Wilkinson A. and Ackers P. New Developments in Employee Involvement Department of Employment Research Series, No. 2, May 1992a; and also: Marchington, M. et al., New Developments in Employee Involvement Management Research News, 1991; Wilkinson, A. etal. ’Total Quality Management and Employee Involvement’ Human Resource Man- agement Journal, Vo12 No 3, July 1992; Ackers et al., ’The long and winding road: Tracking Employee Involvement at Browns Woven Car- pets’ Employee Relations, July 1992; and Mar- chington, M. et al., Exploring the dynamics of recent developments in Employee Involvement (forthcoming) 1992b).

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42. Chadwick, M. G., ‘The recession and industrial relations: a factory approach’ Employee Relations, 1983; Terry, M., ’How do we know if shop stewards are getting weaker?’ British Journal of Industrial Relations 24 2 July 1986

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44. Ibid. 45. Ramsay, 1983a p. 205 op. cit. 46. Ackers, P. and Black, J., Paternalist Capifalism:

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last’, Personnel Management April 1992; and Developments in the management of human resources: an analytical review, Blackwell 1992.


The use of cycles? explaining employee involvement in the 1990s

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