subtitle title hrm, organizational citizenship behaviour (ocb) conflict management: the case of...
TRANSCRIPT
Subtitle
Title
HRM, Organizational Citizenship Behaviour (OCB) Conflict Management: The case of non-union MNC Subsidiaries in Ireland
Liam Doherty and Paul Teague
The Queens University Belfast
Title Structure of Presentation
• Why the creation of OCB is an important, yet under-explored, goal of the HR function ?
• • The relationship between OCB and conflict management.• • The research methodology employed.• • Main descriptive statistics that emerge from the survey • • Findings of Interviews with senior HRM managers in some of the surveyed
subsidiaries• • The significance of the findings
HRM and Organizational Citizenship Behaviour
• Nature of HRM in organisations has been dominated by two interrelated themes.
• The organizational design of the HRM function
• The employment practices required to create high performing organizations and employees.
• Relatively little research about how the HRM function contributes to shaping the social system of an organization
•
• Paper by Bowen and Ostroff (2004) is a notable exception
• Key argument of this paper --A core function of HRM is to mould the social system of the organization in a manner that promotes organizational citizenship behaviour.
Defining Organizational Behaviour
• Podsakoff et al (2000) identify seven recurring themes in the related literature
• OCB manifests itself in employers having a positive commitment to the organization and displaying on-going discretionary effort to help the organization achieve its goals.
• A key goal of HRM is to elicit this behaviour (Ulrich 1997).
• On-going debates about the extent to which particular HR policies will engender positive employee behaviour (Caldwell 2003)
OCB --A Role for ADR ?
• Popular view in USA that firms are forging a ‘new social contract’ at work by diffusing ADR practices to solve workplace disputes (Lipsky and Seeber 2003).
• Optimum way to gain employee commitment is to recognise that workplace conflict will be part and parcel of organizational life –need to establish formal arrangements for resolution(Bendersky 2003).
• Contrast with the more orthodox view that workplace conflict can prevent organizations developing a unitarist culture (see Lewin 1987).
• Do HR managers use innovative workplace conflict management policies to help forge organizational citizenship behaviour ?
ADR practices surveyed
• Mediation
• Facilitation
• Arbitration
• Employee Hotline
• Open Door Policy
• Management Review Boards
• Peer Review
• Ombudsman
The Research • survey of 83 subsidiaries of non-union foreign-owned
multinationals located in Ireland.
• survey administered through face-to-face interviews due to the length of the survey and the nature of the topic.
• Initially, the survey contained questions about the incidence of conflict in multinationals and how these were resolved, but a pilot survey found that companies were not willing to answer these questions
• a series of in-depth interviews with senior HR managers in 10 of the subsidiaries that took part in the original survey
Conflict Management Practices in non-Union Subsidiaires
• Formal grievance procedure 100%• Mediation 39.5%• Facilitation 43.2%• Arbitration 18.5%• Employee Hotline 25.9%• Open Door policy 97.5%• Management Review 65.4%• Pier Review 6.0%• Ombudsperson 6.2%
• Does your organization have “informal” problem solving mechanisms to detect employee grievances? 96.4%
• The organization of focus groups 35%
• HR personnel interacting with employees
on an informal basis 87.5%
• Line managers responsible for interacting
with employees on a informal basis 86.3%
Views from the Inside
• evident that HR managers had a deep antipathy to the ‘conflict management’ paradigm,
• conflict management not required for the HR function to be strategic in character.
• No ‘business case’ for innovative workplace conflict management practices
• HR managers did want the language of conflict or conflict management to be used in the organisation
• common endeavour is to expunge conflict from the vocabulary of the organisation.
View from the Inside
• Do not recognise the inevitably of conflict or the need for formal, easily accessible, procedures to manage conflict management
• Conflict management procedures are not abandoned but are kept dormant in the HR cupboard only to be used in exceptional circumstances.
• HR managers are being highly innovative but not in the way suggested by the dominant themes in the literature
• A form of OCB that seeks to push conflict to the margins –conflict is dissident and deviant
Some views ….• “Dispute resolution is not part of our language”
• “I would not invest resources in it (conflict management) compared to recruitment, development or reward”
• “It does not merit a line in our HR strategy”.
• “The grievance procedure is for people that do not have a future in our organization.”
• “I would focus on creating a work environment in which people can feel free to raise any issues without fear or concern for their future”
Conclusions
• Subsidiaries of non-union multinationals based in Ireland do not use innovative workplace conflict management practices.
•
• No widespread diffusion of ADR-type practices to resolve problems and disputes at work.
• In an effort to promote organizational citizenship behaviour, HR managers sought to socialize conflict out of the organization