1st Edition
Labour and Management Co-operation Workplace Partnership in UK Financial Services
Over the last decade, the notion of labour-management cooperation and partnership has been central to debates around the future of employee representation. In this insightful analysis of the partnership process in the dynamic UK financial services sector, Stewart Johnstone focuses on the meaning of partnership, the processes involved, the different contexts in which events are played out, and on how we should assess the outcomes. Using detailed case studies, conducted in three diverse banking organisations, to understand more about the process, and employing the analytical 'efficiency, equity, voice' framework from the US that has never before been employed in a study of UK employment relations, Dr Johnstone presents a new way of evaluating the outcomes of a variety of partnership approaches. Labour and Management Co-operation provides a level of understanding that transcends the stalemate of recent times in which the advocates and critics of different approaches seem to have been locked. It will appeal to those with an interest in the current debate about 'voice and representation' and 'mutual gains' taking place amongst those involved with HRM and employee relations in Europe, the United States, and elsewhere.
Biography
Stewart Johnstone is a Lecturer in Human Resource Management at Loughborough University Business School, UK. His research interests include employee participation and representation, and he has published several articles on these themes.
'This is an important contribution to the debate on partnership. It looks closely at the diversity of approaches and raises issues with regards to the precondition and sustainability of partnership. It is a systematic and novel engagement which is essential reading for all interested in the future of co-operation in the workplace'. Miguel Martinez Lucio, Manchester Business School, University of Manchester, UK 'Partnership has been a major theme of employment relations and human resource management over the past decade. As business seeks to restore employee trust in working for capitalism, it is likely to be a central theme of the post-credit crunch era. Stewart Johnstone's timely book combines an important critical analysis of the academic debate over partnership, with some valuable in-depth case-studies of partnership in practice. His findings are central to any discussion of contemporary employment relations'. Professor Peter Ackers, Business School, Loughborough University ’Without doubt, the methodology adopted by the author is absorbing, showing concern for detail, and with high incidence of reliability...Perhaps the most striking feature of the book is the extensively detailed data obtained by the author, which is certainly more reliable and holistic, which helps derive tenable conclusions about the outcomes of the labour management partnership...These conclusions will certainly compel unions in the short as well as long run to devise alternative structures of their working so to sustain the worker interest in the institution of trade union.’ - Debi S. Saini, Vision - The Journal of Business Perspective
