Firms and Innovative Conflict Management Systems in Ireland

This article examines the practices adopted by firms in the Republic of Ireland to manage conflict involving groups of employees, focusing in particular on the uptake of 'alternative dispute resolution practices'. The article reveals that conflict management practices take the form of 'systems', and it estimates the incidence of innovative conflict management systems, incorporating alternative dispute resolution (ADR) practices, as involving about 30 per cent of firms. A series of influences are shown to be associated with innovative, ADR-based conflict management systems, especially commitment-oriented HRM practices and whether unions are recognized. © Blackwell Publishing Ltd/London School of Economics 2010.

The determinants of performance appraisal systems: A note (Do Brown and Heywood's results for Australia hold up for Britain?)

This article offers a replication for Britain of Brown and Heywood's analysis of the determinants of performance appraisal in Australia. Although there are some important limiting differences between our two datasets - the Australia Workplace Industrial Relations Survey (AWIRS) and the Workplace Employment Relations Survey (WERS) - we reach one central point of agreement and one intriguing shared insight. First, performance appraisal is negatively associated with tenure: where employers cannot rely on the carrot of deferred pay or the stick of dismissal to motivate workers, they will tend to rely more on monitoring, ceteris paribus. Second, employer monitoring and performance pay may be complementary. However, consonant with the disparate results from the wider literature, there is more modest agreement on the contribution of specific human resource management practices, and still less on the role of job control.

Taking pluralism seriously:Embedded moralities in management accounting and control systems

Professor Norman Macintosh has long been a leading, and at times a dissonant, voice in critical accounting studies, exhibiting an intellectual dexterity seldom encountered in the accounting academy. His work ranges from the application of traditional organizational theories within work organizations to poststructural renderings of capital market exigencies. Here, we consider and extend Professor Macintosh's work contemplating the morality embedded within, and propagated by, management accounting and control systems (macs). We begin with Macintosh (1995) employing structuration theory in investigating the ethics of profit manipulation within large, decentralized corporations. The work highlights the fundamental dialectical contradictions within these work organizations, demonstrates the indeterminacy of traditional ethical reasoning, and shows the extent to which macs provide legitimating underpinnings for management action. We propose to extend the conversation using the tools provided in Macintosh's subsequent work: a Levinasian ethic (Macintosh et al., 2009), and heteroglossic accounting (Macintosh, 2002)—both emerging from his poststructuralist predilections. A Levinasian perspective provides an ontologically grounded ethic, and heteroglossic accounting calls for multiple accountings representing alternative moral voices. A critical dialogic framework is proposed as a theoretic for imagining heteroglossic accounting that takes pluralism seriously by recognizing the reality of irresolvable differences and asymmetric power relationships associated with assorted moral perspectives.

Private equity and entrepreneurial management in management buy-outs

Critics claim that short-term profit orientation and high deal price strategies of private equity (PE) firms can negatively affect the ability of management buyouts to initiate and sustain entrepreneurial management. This study investigates this claim by comparing effects of majority PE backed and other buy-outs at different levels of financial leverage on post buy-out increases in entrepreneurial management. We propose that PE can be used as an organizational refocusing device that simultaneously increases entrepreneurial and administrative management. We find that majority PE-backed buy-outs significantly increase entrepreneurial management practices. Furthermore, the increased financial leverage positively affects administrative management in management buy-outs. However, the effect of high financial leverage is larger for majority PE-backed buy-outs. These results support the notion that PE firms help buy-out companies develop ambidextrous organizational change: i.e. simultaneously develop entrepreneurial and administrative management practices. The findings have important implications for practitioners and policy makers.

Multinational enterprises in Australia: Two decades of international human resource management research reviewed

This paper reviews empirical international human resource management (IHRM) journal articles on foreign- and indigenous-owned multinational enterprises (MNEs) operating in Australia. More specifically, we explore the extent to which papers using Australian data in this area are being published in 53 of the world's leading academic journals and identify the topics that have been researched. We then propose a number of research areas, of Australian and international interest, that researchers could pursue in the future. Our findings point to a picture of limited publications in the leading international journals. There is also support for recent arguments that substantial capacity exists for a greater theoretical contribution by researchers in the IHRM field.

The impact of union presence and strategic human resource management on employee voice in multinational enterprises in Australia

In this article, we examine the use and character of employee voice mechanisms of foreign-owned multinational enterprises operating in Australia, as well as the influence of a strategic human resource management approach and union presence. Findings indicate that foreign-owned multinational enterprises are high-level users of the full range of employee voice mechanisms, with the exceptions of use of employee suggestion schemes, trade union recognition and the use of joint consultation committees across all sites. Using logistic regression analysis, findings show that trade union presence, a strategic human resource management approach, greenfield site and country of origin impact the employee voice approach adopted. High trade union presence is associated with an indirect employee voice approach. A low trade union presence is associated with a direct or a minimalist approach to employee voice. Moreover, a strategic human resource management approach is associated with both direct and dualistic approaches to employee voice. Implications are drawn for theory and practice. © Australian Labour and Employment Relations Association (ALERA) SAGE Publications Ltd, Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore and Washington DC.

The Oxford Handbook of Conflict Management in Organizations

New ways of managing conflict are increasingly important features of work and employment in organizations. In the book the world's leading scholars in the field examine a range of innovative alternative dispute resolution (ADR) practices, drawing on international research and scholarship and covering both case studies of major exemplars and developments in countries in different parts of the global economy. Developments in the management of individual and collective conflict at work are addressed, as are innovations in both unionized and non-union organizations and in the private and public sectors.

New practices for managing conflict in organizations are set in the context of trends in workplace conflict and perspectives on how conflict should be understood and addressed. Part 1 examines the changing context of conflict management by addressing the main frameworks for understanding conflict management, the trend in conflict at work, developments in employment rights, and the influence of HRM on conflict management. Part 2 covers the main approaches to conflict management in organizations, addressing both conventional and alternative approaches to conflict resolution. Conventional grievance handling and third-party processes in conflict resolution are examined as well as the main ADR practices, including conflict management in non-union firms, the role of the organizational ombudsman, mediation, interest-based bargaining, line and supervisory management, and the concept of conflict management systems. Part 3 presents case studies of exemplars and innovators in the field, covering mediation in the US postal service, interest-based bargaining at Kaiser-Permanente, 'med-arb' in the New Zealand Police, and judicial mediation in UK employment tribunals. Part 4 covers international developments in conflict management in Germany, Japan, The United States, Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and China.

This Handbook gives a comprehensive overview of this growing field, which has seen an huge increase in programmes of study in university business and law schools and in executive education programmes.