Industrial Relation and Workplace Change

Question: Discuss about theIndustrial Relation and Workplace Change. Answer: Introduction: The multidisciplinary field that studies the relationship between the employment and employee relation is termed as industrial relation. As opined by Blyton et al. (2008), human resource management is synonymous with employee relationship with the industries where they are working. However, employment relationship include conflicts and finding out measures to overcome the conflicts and issues. There is existence of a number orientation, which directly or indirectly influences the effectiveness of the industrial culture. This particular study is based on four major industrial orientations namely, Pluralism, Marxism, Feminism and Neo-liberalism. A detailed analysis on these factors will be conducted with example of the application of one of these industrial orientations on a particular organization. For the distinct purpose, the paper has chosen Bakers Delight. Pluralism: The pluralist industrial relations paradigm analyzes the relationship and interest between the employees and the employers. As commented by Ackers (2014), this relationship is mainly based on the bargaining problems between the shareholders and the employers. Individual employees, manager and owners as well are considered as human agents rather than pure rational or economic agents. The pluralistic approach was made focusing on increasing imbalances of income between the employee and employers. In addition to this, the excessive corporate domination has created an imbalance in the workforce. Keeping these perspectives into consideration, focus was made on improving the excessive corporate power that created a substandard wage and the working condition that created burden on the workers. If the major reason behind the change of the industrial relations is considered, Pluralism is largely affected due to the impact of globalization and open market economy. In addition to this, the inclusion of the cross-cultural employees in the organization is also an evident factor that has influenced the major organizations to undertake certain policies that would require the involvement of the employees in the operational factors (Bray et al. 2014). However, as pointed out by Poole, (2013), the importance of understanding the ability of a particular individual to involve in the major decision-making depends on the mangers and other higher authorities of the organization. Whatever the situation might be the effectiveness of the new formulation of the structure and culture in the organization has helped to improve the working situation and has created a positive industrial relationship with the employees and the employers. If the recent situation is considered, it has to be said that the human resource of an organization are given better opportunities and certain rights to involve in the managerial decision. For instance, companies like Volkswagen, TESCO, Woolworths and many other companies have been found to involve the human resource of their organization in the major operational and business activities (Kaufman 2014). The issues like working hours, low wages, the working conditions and other factors that created major drawbacks in the activities of the employees were resolved to large extent. Marxism: As stated by Rainnie (2016), as a result of several socio-economic issues as well as political factors, various lines of thoughts have been expressed towards the complex situation of the industrial relationship. If the human resource approach is considered, it has to be said that there are certain psychological approaches as well that needs to be addressed when it comes to relationship between the employee and the employers. The radical Marxism concentrates on the nature of the society where a particular organization operation. The perspective of Marxism is that the complete system is based on the capitalist approach where the organizations are owned privately by the influential owners and that the workers and the employees are just the human resource who should contribute their part of activity (Ackers 2014). The Marxism has focused on the orderly relationship between the employees and the employers and the self evidently desires as well. Marxism has always focused on the struggle a nd the self-activities which is much alien to the most common and disseminated industrial relationship. The radical Marxist theory has evolved largely and has ascended the socialism over the capitalism. Focus has been made on minimizing the cost of expenditure that the industrial owners have to spend on the employees. The change in the radical and the orthodox perspective of the Marxist theory has resulted in great changes. There is no more hierarchical approach made on passing out the ownership to the other owners (Rainnie 2016). Marxism has always highlighted the weaknesses and the contradiction of the employees rather than the employers. The main social and economic conflict that arises is a result of the inequality of the income and other economic resources among the employees and the employers. It is because of the difference of the income or the economic status, the competition among the various industrial power increases and has resulted in a situation where the labors are not given the authority to provide their opinion on the functional activities of the organization. This per spective has been largely recognized by major industries. The change in the approach is a result of the leadership approach in the organizational structure and culture. As commented by Ackers (2014), the leadership is no longer an autocratic approach but it has turned out to be more transactional and transformational approach. Capable workers and employees are given the responsibility of taking care of the overall business. For example, if the situation of the Tata Motors is considered, the ownership was passed over to the employee rather than settling for a particular person who shall be given the leadership or the ownership. The change in this approach has resulted in the situation where the employees can also participate in the decision-making that shall directly put impact on the overall operational and business activities of the particular company. Feminism It is necessary to review the evolution of the theoretical perspective of feminism in the premise of change management in business. The predominant purposes of feminist movements are to increase womens right in every field of the society and to earn fair and equal wages as well as to own property and to have the equal opportunities for education. The initial effect of the feminist movement has been first observed in the premise of literature, later it started to take an edge over the field of industry evolution (Jayawardena 2016). It has been identified that in the current scenario, women are found to provide equal contribution on industry revolution and the subsequent development of business. The concept of female entrepreneurship in terms of workplace change has not emerged until the 1970, when the society all over the world encountered the sub-domain of women entrepreneurship. The aspect of women entrepreneurship began to strongly manipulate the industrial development from the ear ly twenty-first century (Kampwirth 2014). It is interesting to denote that the emergence of the movement of modern feminism started at the same time when the phenomenon of French revolution began. The traditional approach to women entrepreneurship has been the engagement of women labor in the United States started at the initial time of 19th century. Women in both rural and urban places had been engaged as paid labor in the newly emerging industrial hubs. In the 19th century, instead of industrial occupation, women have been highly engaged in agricultural labor. The modern phenomenon indicates that female employees share same work burden and equally works hard to accomplish organizational goals (Mohd Yunus and Hasan 2016). The scale of women contribution at work is increasing rapidly, which has led to make equal disbursement of working hours across the whole world. The effectiveness of applying the fundamental concepts of feminism in industries is required highly for the improvement of the society. On the other hand, it has been also identified that equal participation of female workers in business has proved more fruitful than the engagement of the male ones. However, the tra ditional approaches of feminism in work have been oriented with the agricultural fields and factories, which have been gradually transformed with the engagement of women in leadership, management and dictatorship (Kampwirth 2014). For example, the organizations Mrs. Macs Pies and Bakers Delight are the successful examples of the orientation of feminism in the business development. Presently, Lesley Gillespie is the co-founder of Bakers Delight, who has made a major contribution in the organization along with her husband. However, it is unfortunate to denote that instead of having made potential inroads in the field of middle management, still the senior level of business enterprises are most of the time remain exclusively with male dominance. For example, only 4.5% of the fortune 500 dictatorships are found to be held by women and women hold only 5.6% of the 500 fortune service dictatorships (Mohd Yunus and Hasan 2016). Neo-Liberalism In the context of industrial relation and workplace change, the orientation of neo-liberalism is significant to elaborate. Fundamentally, neo-liberalism holds major contribution on the international economic evolution as neo-liberalism is considered as a policy model that is responsible for transferring the control of the economic factors from public sector to the private sector (Featherstone 2015). In this respect, it is required to be mentioned that the predominant principles of neo-classical economies have contributed potentially upon the evolution of the industrial sector and workplace change by suggesting that every government should limit the subsidies and reform the tax laws for expanding the tax base and limiting the protectionism. However, the orientation of neo-liberalism has started to affect the industrial field from the early 90s. Neo-liberalism has potentially played major role in the financial meltdown of 2008. However, the traditional approach of neo-liberalism has been used in the ideology of market competition as well as the free trade. The traditional approach has been responsible for justifying the fundamental aspects of capitalism in the premise of colonialism. Today, neo-liberalism is found to be applied for having sustainable development in the workplace (Dalal 2016). It is because, the basic policies of neo-liberalism chiefly focus on the economic development, which is essential for any organization to behold sustainable growth. Neo-liberalism is promoted as an effective mechanism to fought poverty. The fruitful application of neo-liberalism is found in the activities of the World Trade Organization as they have identified to adopt the fundamental policies of neo-liberalism. By adopting the key principles of neo-liberalism, WTO has been effectively understood the economic policies of British, European and American government and has successfully employed the key findings in their a ctivities (Streeck and Jackson 2015). However, it has been found out that in the international level, neo-liberalism has been confronted with the fundamental application of authoritarian perspective. The need to have economic growth by a liberal perspective in organizations is becoming difficult to meet due to the dominance of authoritarian viewpoint. Example of an Organization: If the contribution of industrial orientation of feminism could be prioritized in this context, then the example of one of the leading Australian Bakery organization Bakers Delight should be considered. The organizations co-founder Lesley Gillespie and her major contribution on the organization is the evident of the fact that, the cultivation of feminism in the industrial zone in form of work place change is mounting on the hills of accomplishment. Lesley Gillespies belief in the women entrepreneurship and her initiatives has led her to become one of the leading female entrepreneurs for their business innovations. With her feministic entrepreneurial approach, she has built a successful franchise of Bakers Delight, which is earning the same recognition as the parental one. With Lesley Gillespies initiative, Bakers Delights now offers bright opportunities for the women employees (afr.com 2017). According to Gillespies Bakers Delight is accomplishing the trend of women entrepreneurship within the workplace. The organization does not ignore to provide equal pay scale to the women employees and maintains special employee retention programs for the female employees. It is interesting to denote at the same time that the organization has fruitfully followed the theoretical principles of Marxism and pluralism. It is because of the fact that the with Lesley Gillespies direction, the organization provides fair opportunities and motivations to each of the employees in the organization to take part in the decision making process (afr.com 2017). However, it is unfortunate that the orientation of neo-liberalism have not been appropriately adopted by the organization, as the organization does not possess any significant contribution in making economic evolution. Conclusion From the above discourse, it can be deduced that application of each of the theoretical orientation Marxism, feminism, neo-liberalism and pluralism have been proved effective in the escalating the gradual industrial growth. The discussion points out that the adoption of Marxism principle has helped to identify and mitigate labor exploitation, whereas the pluralism principles have supported to minimize the economic imbalance in the society. However, from the discussion on feminism, it has been understood that the feminist activities have taken a strong edge over the industrial revolution and in the contemporary world, women entrepreneurship has been escalated to the level of leadership from holding the position of a mere labor. Nevertheless, the discussion has indicated that neo-liberalism, which is responsible potentially for the worldwide economic growth is facing the major constraint of the authoritarian principles. References: Ackers, P. 2014. Rethinking the employment relationship: a neo-pluralist critique of British industrial relations orthodoxy.The International Journal of Human Resource Management,25(18), 2608-2625. Ackers, P. 2014. 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