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As the forms of work and employment relationships continue to change and develop, important questions arise not only about what we mean by good-quality work, but also what are the dimensions shaping work and employment relationships. There is an argument that the balance of power has been shifting towards employers and away from workers, posing imp...
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Context 1
... with Figure 6, Figures 7-9 capture more realistic and uneven entropy of dimension relationships, showing different scenarios depicting marginalised, disconnected and evasive forms of fragmented power distributions. Furthermore, while these are illustrative, they are evidenced across multiple sources reviewed in this report to varying degrees. In Figure 7, it can be observed how 'unions' and 'external agencies' may combine to shape employee influence, yet at the same time are somewhat fragmented from other sources of influence (for example depicted in the left top quadrant of Figure 7). Such scenarios have been evidenced when unions and community campaign groups supporting worker interests have found synergies with newer actors and external agencies, as in the examples of Living Wage debates and community ...
Context 2
... section is an analytical discussion of the dimensions reviewed above. It charts a fragmented and disconnected set of influences, while acknowledging that such influencing factors change over both time and space. It starts with Figure 6, which depicts a 'static' set of relationships between the power dimensions reviewed in this report. The graphic presents an 'idealised' interpretation of the distributions of power, where some or all such dimensions may be of relevance -a sort of theoretical equilibrium- seeking model promoting a balance of regulation, voice, governance and performance as a preferred ...
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Citations
... Various scholars note that defining power is challenging (Anderson & Brion, 2014). The varied interpretations of power depend on factors such as level, context, and resource distribution (Dundon et al., 2017). However, power is traditionally characterized as an unequal influence over desired outcomes and resources (Joshi & Fast, 2013). ...
... De Wit et al. (2017) observe that power operates in several ways, including upward control (subordinates' influence over superiors), lateral control (peer influence), and downward control (supervisory influence). Power can be communicated individually or collectively, protecting or advancing specific interests and influencing decisions directly and indirectly (Dundon et al., 2017). ...
The work landscape is evolving with the advent of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), potentially rendering current jobs obsolete and necessitating new skills or retraining of existing occupations for future employment. This revolution is disrupting nearly every sector, including education, highlighting the need for education to address issues like unemployment, poverty, and inequality. However, to adequately prepare learners, this can only be achieved with sufficient material and human resources. Understanding these dynamics is crucial in determining whether school leaders and teachers possess the power or autonomy to develop the necessary knowledge, skills, and competencies to empower learners for the 4IR. Power, the ability to achieve organizational objectives, is essential for school leaders and teachers responsible for information and communication technologies in schools to acquire the resources and competencies needed for the 4IR. Drawing on critical theory, this qualitative study explores how school leaders and teachers experience powerlessness due to the challenges they encounter in preparing learners for the 4IR. Semi-structured interviews facilitated participants’ reflections and meaning-making of their experiences in this regard. The critical analysis of data yielded themes that underscore the complexities of preparing learners for the 4IR in underserved contexts ill-equipped for such endeavours: time constraints; teacher uncertainty; insufficient infrastructure, incapacitating influence of powerful top management; and detrimental control of district circuits. Participants felt constrained within their job descriptions, lacked the freedom to exert authority over their work, and faced obstacles in making independent decisions and implementing necessary changes.
... For example, it is likely that individuals may be more cautious about intervening if the colleague was their boss rather than an equal or someone under their own supervision. In particular, the relationship between a worker and their boss is characterized by a power imbalance (Dundon et al., 2017), whereby a boss has the ability to bring about additional consequences for the bystander if the intervention is misinterpreted, such as firing the employee. As the vignette did not describe the type of working relationship, it is possible that the participants perceptions of the concerns about intervening varied depending on the type of work relationship that they envisioned. ...
With rates of coercive control (CC) increasing, there is a need to ensure that intervention programs are underpinned by evidence-based research. Current interventions are scarce, with their efficacy rarely established. Most current interventions appear to rely on victims seeking support from formal sources/agencies, despite suggestions that victims are more likely to confide in people they know, such as their friends. Researchers suggest that a victim’s friends may provide an effective source of support and intervention. The aim of this study was to fill the gap in the literature exploring whether the closeness of the relationship to the victim, bystander gender, and bystander concerns influenced attitudes toward intervening in CC situations. The study used an experimental design, whereby participants were randomly allocated to read a vignette depicting a CC scenario involving a friend, colleague, or stranger, and quantitative methods were used to examine bystanders’ willingness and concerns about intervening. The sample was 340 Australian participants (229 female, 111 male), recruited from social media, namely community Facebook groups. The results indicated that friends were significantly more willing to intervene than colleagues or strangers, while strangers reported the highest concerns about intervening. Females reported significantly higher willingness to intervene than men despite also reporting higher concerns. Exploratory analysis of concerns about intervening revealed that the participants were most concerned about risk of harm and their beliefs in their ability to successfully intervene. These findings have implications for bystander intervention programs and campaigns, including offering a range of potential directions to enhance intervention program content.
... It has been argued that the balance of power has been shifting toward employers in recent years. [22] Further research is needed to verify whether there is indeed an issue of power dynamics affecting EHOs. Organizations that employ EHOs need to recognize the benefit of high-quality relationships between leaders and their staff to ensure optimal performance and worker satisfaction. ...
To identify the occupational health and safety (OHS) risks among environmental health officers (EHOs) in Australia and New Zealand. The objectives were to profile and compare OHS experiences from different countries and regions to gain a regional perspective on OHS hazards that impact EHOs.
An online hazard exposure survey was conducted among 339 EHOs (Australia: n = 301, 88.8%; New Zealand: n = 38, 11.2%). The Mann–Whitney U test was used to compare 2 ordinal data groups, the Kruskal–Wallis H test was used for more than 2 ordinal groups, and the independent samples t test was used to compare the means of 2 independent groups where the dependent variables were normally distributed. Multiple regression techniques were used to analyze workplace incidents and age groups. A high degree of similarity in the types of workplace exposures and risk perceptions as well as concerns with organizational OHS management commitment were observed among EHOs from the 2 countries. Workplace violence and physical and psychosocial demands were the most commonly reported OHS hazards. Employer type, sex, and age group were significantly related to workplace exposure and OHS experience among EHOs in both countries. This study provides a profile of workplace exposure in the environmental health profession in the 2 countries and offers recommendations for the implementation of preventive action.
... Critical/pluralist scholars note the importance of robust collective employee voice and influence as an essential pre-requisite for successful employee engagement in practice (Dundon et al. 2017Guest 2015;Purcell 2014;Rees et al. 2013;Valentin 2014). Voice provides opportunities for employees to have meaningful input into workplace decisions, as 'true partners' (Kahn, cited in Burjek 2015), both individually and collectively. ...
... The review reveals much literature adopts an unrealistic unitarist or psychologised position (Godard 2020;Boxall 2021) largely ignoring contextual complexity, where the plurality of stakeholder interests generates tensions and contradictions associated with conflict, power, and employee voice (Dundon et al. 2017Guest 2015). This creates different (and competing) reasons to engage, which HRD needs to understand. ...
Since Kahn's (1990) pioneering work, the concept of engagement has attracted considerable interest globally. With expansion is a desire for conceptual convergence. Yet different disciplines (work psychology, HRM/D, industrial/employee relations), theoretical approaches (unitarism and pluralism) and research methods (positivist/quantitative and interpretivist/qualitative) create divergence. I consider the life-cycle of engagement, as an ‘umbrella’ construct, to make sense of convergence and divergence in HRD. Kahn advocated multi-level, case study research to better understand engagement yet this has been overshadowed by a dominant narrow, unitarist and quantitative perspective. To explore tensions between diverse conceptualisations, I conducted a narrative review. This identified theoretical, methodological and practical implications of unitarist and pluralist perspectives. I argue engagement needs to be conceptualised from a critical HR, pluralist perspective, and present a multi-level analytical framework to assist this endeavour. I propose a new direction for engagement research. This more situationally-sensitive, employee-centred approach recognises discretionary behaviours flow from the competency of HR(D) practitioners and line managers in balancing efficiency, equity and voice within the contested work context. Such a critical HR/pluralist approach might address some of the criticisms charged at HRD professionals of being removed from work-place realities.
... An urgent need for digital tools to support older workers to remain active and healthy in their working environments is triggered by the demographic change in Europe and worldwide [1,2]. ...
Pervasive technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Virtual Reality and the Internet of Things, despite their great potential for improved workability and well-being of older workers, entail wide ethical concerns. Aligned with these considerations we emphasize the need to present from the viewpoint of ethics the risks of personalized ICT solutions that aim to remedy health and support the well-being of the ageing population at workplaces. The ethical boundaries of digital technologies are opaque. The main motivation is to cope with the uncertainties of workplaces’ digitization and develop an ethics framework, termed SmartFrameWorK, for personalized health support through ICT tools at workplace environments. SmartFrameWorK is built upon a five-dimensional approach of ethics norms: autonomy, privacy, transparency, trustworthiness and accountability to incite trust in digital workplace technologies. A typology underpins these principles and guides the ethical decision-making process with regard to older worker particular needs, context, data type-related risks and digital tools’ use throughout their lifecycle. Risk analysis of pervasive technology use and multimodal data collection, highlighted the imperative for ethically aware practices for older workers' activity and behaviour monitoring. The SmartFrameWorK methodology has been applied in a case study to provide evidence that personalized digital services could elicit trust in users through a well-defined framework. Ethics compliance is a dynamic process from participants’ engagement to data management. Defining ethical determinants is pivotal towards building trust and reinforcing better workability and well-being in older workers.
... While these codes are not in themselves hard laws, they can support, nudge or promote objectives for fair voice with social justice outcomes through encouragement rather than mandatory law. Alternatively, the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) in the UK has actively promoted voice for many decades, both individual and collective voice, and even commissioned research on the topic (Alfes et al. 2010;Dundon et al. 2017;Marchington et al. 2001). Given these forces differ between countries and jurisdictions, it is likely that they will affect the voice pathways in different ways. ...
Different disciplines have studied employee voice as a key component of workplaces. However, they have not tended to look at voice as a journey en route to enhanced (or diminished) employee voice with a start, diversion, delay and combining twists and turns during processes leading to outcomes. In this article, we build on existing theory and phenomena to develop the concept of ‘employee voice pathways’. We use this concept to provide a framework for analysing the processes underpinning employee voice as a potential desirable form of employee voice as well as outlining areas for a future research agenda.
... Neoclassical economists have historically (and mistakenly) treated unions as a constraint disrupting a smooth and natural labour market (Minford, 1985). Of course such a perspective ignores the dynamics of power operating between the buyers and sellers of labour services, not to mention the role that collective voice structures play in redressing labour market inequalities, particularly trade unions but also other institutions such as civil society organizations and campaigning groups beyond the workplace setting (Piore and Safford, 2006;Heery et al., 2012;Reinecke and Donaghey, 2015;Dundon et al., 2017). Legal scholars too often reduce worker voice debates to problems of statutory mandates or infringements on presupposed property rights enshrined in contract law. ...
... However, CSOs are also highly diverse which reflects variations in how they support different employee concerns from beyond the workplace setting. Some are advocate bodies offering support and information, such as Citizens Advice agencies, while other CSO seek to persuade corporations on areas of so-called 'good practice' (for example, Stonewall regarding equality and diversity policy), and a further category are seen as campaigning and social movement networks (for example, living wage campaign groups) (Williams et al., 2011;Dundon et al., 2017). Yet despite the advocacy and voice provided, these organizations face both representation and legitimacy issues. ...
... There is a possibility of employer capture of initiatives, which may compromise the independence of representation for workers (Heery et al., 2012). Finally, there are issues that CSOs may crowd-out the space they seek to occupy when supporting employee voices, depending on the popularity of certain issues at a moment in time (Dundon et al., 2017). ...
... Neoclassical economists have historically (and mistakenly) treated unions as a constraint disrupting a smooth and natural labour market (Minford, 1985). Of course such a perspective ignores the dynamics of power operating between the buyers and sellers of labour services, not to mention the role that collective voice structures play in redressing labour market inequalities, particularly trade unions but also other institutions such as civil society organizations and campaigning groups beyond the workplace setting (Piore and Safford, 2006;Heery et al., 2012;Reinecke and Donaghey, 2015;Dundon et al., 2017). Legal scholars too often reduce worker voice debates to problems of statutory mandates or infringements on presupposed property rights enshrined in contract law. ...
... However, CSOs are also highly diverse which reflects variations in how they support different employee concerns from beyond the workplace setting. Some are advocate bodies offering support and information, such as Citizens Advice agencies, while other CSO seek to persuade corporations on areas of so-called 'good practice' (for example, Stonewall regarding equality and diversity policy), and a further category are seen as campaigning and social movement networks (for example, living wage campaign groups) (Williams et al., 2011;Dundon et al., 2017). Yet despite the advocacy and voice provided, these organizations face both representation and legitimacy issues. ...
... There is a possibility of employer capture of initiatives, which may compromise the independence of representation for workers (Heery et al., 2012). Finally, there are issues that CSOs may crowd-out the space they seek to occupy when supporting employee voices, depending on the popularity of certain issues at a moment in time (Dundon et al., 2017). ...
... These changes seriously hamper the trade union preconditions for protest. literature shows that the experience of work may be more isolated, given the dependency on technology, and the electronic ballot may be one of the stable voice mechanisms used for overcoming isolation (Dundon et al. 2017). This has been put into practice by the Dutch trade union Alternatief voor Vakbond (AvV), founded in 2005. ...
Can digital devices enhance participation? Can the electronic ballot help trade unions in involving different categories of members in their decision-making processes and extend their representativeness? Trade union crisis is largely a legitimacy problem, as unions are representing mostly older and permanent workers. Simultaneously, the enthusiasm towards the internet as a mean to union revitalization seems to have waned somewhat. It was against this backdrop that we decided to conduct a survey of schoolteachers in Portugal and focus on the potential impact of a digital device to engage workers in union life. The survey sought to examines how the electronic ballot could be used as a tool to help decision-making, being aware of the different interests in play, and contributing to the increase of participation within trade unions. Our findings show negligible differences between teachers according to contractual status although non-unionized and precarious workers prove to be less receptive to the use of the electronic ballot.
... However, power is not necessarily a zero-sum game (Dundon et al., 2018). First, managers may choose to share some decision-making authority with non-union representatives: this is the notion of 'power to' leverage positive change, for example through joint problem-solving forums. ...
In this paper we show how trust and justice influence the efficacy of employee information and consultation (I&C) bodies. Evidence is drawn from a 2‐year qualitative study of I&C participants in two organizations in the UK. The research builds on Dietz and Fortin's conceptual five‐stage model of the I&C process to provide a more nuanced understanding of I&C trust and justice outcomes. In particular, we point to crucial stages in the process, and how these influence the effectiveness of I&C mechanisms. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.
