The New Human Resource Management Approach - Essay Example

Should the government introduce laws to control strikes in public sectors Introduction 1. Industrial relations management or human relations management? It is often said that the human resources are an organisation’s best resources. This argument implies that: It is possible to acquire non-human assets like capital, machinery and technology under varying conditions. Only the human resources, when properly motivated can put these resources to use and impart the organization with real and sustainable competitive advantage. (Storey et al. p.1) Some scholars believe, the new HRM approach, while paying lip service to the ‘best resources’ concept, has set its policies and practices on a course that is inconsistent with the traditional industrial relations and collective bargaining systems. For them the objective of the new HRM is to lull workers into a false sense of employment security by blotting out conflicts that exist in employment relations. According to Godard, one of the reasons for adopting “progressive HRM practices is to avoid or weaken unions.” (1994 cited Bratton 1999: 334). Other scholars advocate a more proactive approach from the unions in ushering changes necessary to give businesses their competitive thrust. The model they suggest is a partnership between labour and management that would result in a “high performance workplace with mutual gains for both the organisation and workers.” (Betcherman et al., 1994; Guest, 1995 and Verma, 1995 cited in Bratton et al. 1999: 334). Any changes that sweep society in the economic, social and political fields, not to speak of technological advancements will have inevitable consequences in the employer-employee relationship. Consequently, in Britain, mass unemployment of the 1980s and various legislations that curtailed union activities have had a marked effect on the bargaining power of labour because of the reduction in trade union membership and institutional protection. These developments corroborate Dunlop’s theory of industrial relations systems described below. However the trend is not unique to the United Kingdom and is attributable to increased competition at the local, regional and global levels and heightened consumer expectations. A trade union is defined as “a continuous association of wage earners for the purpose of maintaining and improving the conditions of their employment.” (Webb, Sydney & Webb, Beatrice cited in Trade Union). Does this mean that by definition, there is a conflict of interest between a trade union that represents its members and the organisation that employs those members as workers, more so if the organisation is in the public sector? The objective of this paper is to analyse the conundrum by taking recourse to theoretical bases and wherever possible their practical applications. 1.2. John Dunlop’s theory of industrial relations systems: In his 1958 classic, Industrial Relations Systems, John T. Dunlop, described the role of three principle actors in all industrial relations systems. They are, management organisations, workers (whether formally organised or not) and government agencies. Any specialised agencies that are created by the principle ‘actors’ also play a role in the system. The functioning of the actors depends on environmental contextual factors such as technology, labour and product markets and distribution of power. The environment - itself a function of the political climate of the society - shapes the contours of the industrial relations system in which the principle actors interact with each other, negotiate and use their political or economic power. The stability of the industrial relations system depends on contextual factors such as the ideology and understandings with which the actors or their hierarchies define their roles; their relationships and interactions that affect the rules of the workplace and the changes that develop or modify components of the system. The role of industrial relations management is to understand and explain how the contextual factors and their inter-relations impact the rules of the workplace and the industrial relations system in general. Even if the workers do not have a voice or organisation, the system still sets the rules of the workplace with the management and governmental agencies as the arbiters, because, equality among actors and rules is not a precondition for the system to become operative. (Roberts 1993). Dunlop described the various activities such as decision-making, collective bargaining and interactions between employers and employees as the ‘processes’ and new agreements, conflict, new policy/procedures, pay/conditions, way of working as the ‘outcomes’. The four factors, ‘actors’, ‘contexts’, ‘processes’ and ‘outcomes’ comprise the gamut of industrial/employee relations. 2. The Contexts, Actors, Processes and Outcomes. 2.1. Historical contexts of trade unions and ‘employee relations’: The eighteenth century industrial revolution in Europe led by Great Britain brought about profound changes in the nature of ‘work’ and ‘workforce’; shifting vast chunks of humanity from agriculture to industry and transforming large numbers of women, children, rural migrants and national immigrants as industrial workers. These socio-political and demographic shifts coupled with increased competition between industrialised nations impacted methods of work, its measurement and wage structures and dramatically altered traditional wage structures to the detriment of working class population. Alarmed by these changes both skilled and unskilled workers, in spontaneous but un-coordinated movements, started organising themselves into collective bargaining fora, initially in fits and starts. In the early years the unions were illegal but eventually governments legalised them and formulated laws that govern various aspects of employer-employee relations and codified collective bargaining rights of workers. Reviewing academic literature on the study of industrial relations (IR) in UK, McCarthy argues that it has passed through four phases and the fifth was overdue. The first phase concentrated on the functioning of institutions and explored issues like collective bargaining and the functioning of trade unions; the second commenced after the release of the Donovan Commission report in 1968 may be called the reformist phase as it focused on reducing strikes, boosting productivity and eliminating ‘wage drift’; the third expanded the scope of collective research and examined management practices and the fourth concerned ‘macro-surveys’. The need for IR research to focus on problems of managers using ‘old fashioned field work’ and eschewing jargon, calls for the fifth phase of research. (McCarthy 1995) The trade unions when they flourished, as well as the industrialists were wooed by politicians of all shades, wielded great political power and sought to influence government policy. At times the unions, which were founded with the altruistic motive of fighting for the rights of their members, intransigent in their pursuit of partisan goals were oblivious to the larger good of the society and organised prolonged strikes that crippled civil services and led to the collapse of industries in the coal, engineering, ports, ship-building and steel sectors. The discomfiture caused by trade union militancy evoked strong public anger (Harrison 2003) in Britain; led to the formulation of the conservative government policies and attempts to circumcise trade union power in the 1980s and 1990s. This thinking was reflected in a 1996 green paper (a preliminary report of government proposals that is published in order to stimulate discussion), which was widely criticised. The green paper intended to bring in drastic changes in industrial law aimed at preventing unions from wreaking what it called ‘disproportionate damage’ to the economy by making it harder for unions to strike. The green paper sought to define ‘disproportion or excessive effects’ of industrial action, attempted at enfeebling union power by annulling their right to company information, collective bargaining, increasing the period of warning that unions should give their employers before staging a strike, abolition of rights to take time off for union activities, withholding compensation to employees when industrial action is barred (‘no work, no pay’) and making it more difficult for unions to vote for action. There was even a far-reaching proposal that would bring in a new ‘actor’ - the public, as a victim of industrial action into the ambit of industrial law by offering to help members of the public for suing unions for damages. (Littlefield 1996) By the 1990s, however, new contextual factors have emerged to change the nature of employer-employee relations. Of these undoubtedly the most important has been information technology, which rendered large masses of industrial workers redundant, foreshortened physical distances by trans-locating them to a virtual plane and escalated business competition to a global level. Businesses and employees chastised by a cycle of collapse, recession, unemployment and a high of competition were more receptive to the range of legal, social and political issues that were thrown up. These contextual factors modified the idiom and semantics of ‘industrial relations’ in letter and spirit and the new phrase ‘employee relations’ came into vogue. The roles played by various political parties as representatives of the three principle actors - employers, employees and the government - in the 1997 general elections in Britain bear testimony to the influence of these contextual factors and their inter-relation with the social and political life of Britain. Though they all pursued their own industrial relations programmes - the Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives - all favoured a flexible labour market. While the Labour and Liberal Democrats wanted to enact policies on minimum wage and majority trade union recognition; the Liberal Democrats, employments rights and profit-sharing, training and consultation. The Tories understandably favoured more restrictions on labour unions, which surprisingly was not supported by the business community. (Overell 1997). Dunlop sums up the dynamics of contextual factors on the industrial relations systems in the 1980s: “The dynamic interactions among labor, management, and government in the environment of an industrial relations system, in particular the market and budgetary context, the technological settings, and the power context in the larger society, for me provide the tools to understanding what is happening to industrial relations outcomes. Changes in these features of the environment affect the three parties whose interaction, in turn, influences the environment and the outcomes. Like all theory, for me, this is a way of organizing my thinking about industrial relations analysis and forecasting.” (Dunlop 1988) The British government brought in a landmark legislation, the “Employment Regulations Act 1999” which became law on January 4, 2000. This law makes recognition of trade unions by managements compulsory, automatically if a union has more than 50% membership, or on majority franchise where there are more than one union and the chances of de-recognising such a union is limited. The compulsory recognition entails the union with legally binding bargaining powers, workers campaigning for trade unions protected and blacklisting of trade union members prohibited. Further, registered trade unions should be consulted on training. (Exten-Wright 2000) 2.2. The actors: The framework of employee relations in the UK is called tripartite and rests on three components: the government, employees their representatives and trade unions and employers their representatives and associations. 2.2.1. Government as legislator/arbiter: The government dons two roles in the industrial relations system, on of them as legislator in which capacity it legislates, monitors, arbiters and enforces the implementation of industrial relations laws between employers and employees. Governments set the standards for industrial relations practices, establish codes of conduct for workplace relationships such as the rights and limits of trade union activities, the rights of individuals, the rights of organisations, the rights of managers, the right to strike, equality of opportunity and work etc. In addition governments exercise indirect control in establishing compliance to industrial relations practices by insisting on governments tendering supplies to adhere to specific standards of practice. Governments may also use the armed forces to maintain public amenities in the event of a strike by employees working in them. 2.2.2. Government as employer (the public sector): The government is the largest employer. Its employees include the civil services (including various levels of government, healthcare and education) and their auxiliaries, the armed forces and their auxiliary units, public utilities and government run enterprises, all collectively known as the public sector. Employment in public sector has certain special characters. The employees (except in the case of government run enterprises) are not profit oriented. The government can legislate tools for bargaining, for e.g. it can legislate banning strikes in public interest and order employees back to work. If the government adopts a ‘no work no pay’ policy, strikes in the public sector may even save money from the public exchequer. However governments, as employers are guided by political considerations. The other differences of public sector employment include demographics (for e.g. the proportion of male blue collar workers), restricted scope of bargaining including the right to strike, wages determined by legislation. The case against public sector workers to strike work is that it causes much inconvenience to public unlike in the case of a strike in the private sector when consumers can easily find substitutes, for e. g. fire services, sanitation or police. However it can be argued that this is overstated in a majority of cases: for e.g. many of the services are not really essential in the short run; managers can find ways to continue providing service and more importantly denying employees the right to strike deprives them a powerful bargaining tool. What alternatives can workers have for redressing their grievances, if they are denied the right to strike? The following possibilities may be considered depending on the nature and seriousness of debate: Compulsory arbitration: if the ‘warring’ parties are not able to arrive at a solution, the matter may be referred to an arbitrator, whose decision is binding on both the parties. Studies suggest that workers usually get ‘lower’ settlements in the process. Designating services where partial or full services are permitted to protect public. Again categorizing a majority of workers as essential weakens their bargaining position. Emergency legislation to end strike and provision for reaching a settlement through subsequent arbitration or legislation. (Gunderson, Hyatt, and Ponak cited in Townsend 2005) The following are the arguments that favour higher wages for employees in public enterprises: Though restricted by political considerations, they are run with a service rather than a profit motive and unionisation is more prevalent in private sector. Government should be a ‘model’ employer and should base wage increases on the trends in high paying private enterprises. Public sector can moderate the burden of heavier wage bills by deferring the costs to future taxpayers. (Gunderson, Hyatt, and Ponak cited in Townsend 2005) On the other hand it is argued that the private sector pays a premium in higher wages for the low job security while employment in public sector is more secure. Government interventions by way of wage restrictions and regulating strikes (and as a consequence the bargaining power of employees) affects the public sector more. In fact governments have to balance the bargaining power of employees with the political power of the general public. This is because employees (apart from their weak or strong union power) also comprise a powerful voting block and the general public may not take kindly to increased taxes, which may be necessitated if the wages of public sector employees are increased. 2.2.3. Employees: The interests of employees are protected by trade unions, staff associations, professional bodies and the individuals. There are various types of unions for technical, blue collar and white-collar workers. Information technology tools and automation have not only reduced the numbers of employees in certain sectors but also erased the distinctions occupations. The current trend is to train people take up multiple skills and flexible work roles. In burgeoning sectors like the business process outsourcing (BPOs) and retailing there is no unionisation. These new trends made unions to redefine some their traditional roles: thus they are now entering into ‘co-operative’ agreements with employers for training, increased productivity and no-strike arrangements. Dunlop observes that trade union leaders face severe constraints in their functioning due to “political processes set by democratic values, union constitutions, laws, courts, and regulatory agencies.” (Dunlop cited in Roberts 1992). Dunlop lists six common functions that trade union leaders share in the decision making process with executives in business, government and academic: Analyzing and projecting the environment in which the organization operates. Setting goals and priorities. Selecting and developing people for the organization’s purposes. Shaping the structure of the organization Internal and external negotiation and consensus building. Generation and introducing innovation and change (Dunlop cited in Roberts 1992) The Royal Commission on Trade Unions and Employers’ Associations (known as the Donovan Commission 1965-7) defined the roles of trade unions. A summary of the findings of the commission is given below: Bargain for best possible wages, terms and conditions for members. Lobby for improved share in national wealth for members. Influence government policy and the legal framework on behalf of members. Lobby for security for all. Lobby for full employment, job security, wage levels and cheap housing for the poor. Bargain nationally, regionally, locally and industrially, for organizations and individuals. Represent members at disputes and grievances and for any other reason for members according to need. (Donovan Report 1967 cited in Pettinger 1999 p. 9) 2.2.4. Employers: The third arm of the tripartite industrial relations structure is ‘the employers’ represented by trade associations, employers associations, individual companies and organizations. The employers set the standards for staff and management attitudes, behaviour, performance, scales of pay and the terms and conditions of employment. It is the duty of employers to maintain fair standards of engagement, wages, equality of opportunities and conflict resolution. It is in this context that recent developments in human resources development and management should be viewed. Employee relations defined from the employers’ perspective are defined as: Organisation culture, attitudes and values. Standards of performance that are required. Standards of ethics, behaviour and attitude. Parameters of employee relations activity and where those parameters begin and end. Organizational and managerial approaches to the management of disputes, grievances, discipline and dismissal. Procedures for the management of disputes, grievances, discipline and dismissal. Consultation, participation and communication structures. The precise forms of workforce representation, including the recognition of trade unions. The desired aura of climate of workplace staff relations. (Pettinger 1999 p.4) 2.2.5. Processes: The inter-relations between the ‘actors’ within the ‘contexts’ discussed earlier go through various ‘processes’ such as ‘collective bargaining’ and ‘management decisions’. Collective bargaining: The objective of the collective bargaining process is for managements and trade unions to negotiate and arrive at decisions applicable to all with regards to service conditions such as worker conduct and output, pay, bonus and other monetary benefits, leave rules etc. The decisions may be applicable at the unit, plant, division, organisation or even the industry level. The key for bargaining is negotiation. Bratton et al. (1999 p. 354) define collective bargaining as: “An institutional system of negotiation in which the making, interpretation and administration of rules, and the application of statutory controls affecting the employment relationship, are decided within the union-management negotiating committees.” The process has two aspects. The first is the substance or what is demanded or offered the context in which it is demanded or offered and any limiting factors, for e.g. increased productivity as a quid pro quo for increased pay. The second relates to the behaviour of the two parties in arriving at agreements and co-operating in their implementation. The process is often conducted in an atmosphere of scepticism on both sides, fuelled by facts, beliefs and perceptions. The employer often believes that the employees and their representatives/unions are asking for the moon whereas the employees feel that the employer is trying to do them out of their fair share of the pie. Both sides may be making strategic posturing to gain the most of the process. Both sides will of course enter the ‘arena’ with their own high expectations, the baseline below which they will not go, and making room in between for a mutually acceptable quid pro quo. The first demand or offer is generally made with the certainty that the other side will reject it. Then the sparring starts with each party making claims and counter-claims till they reach the middle ground. The substance of what is mutually acceptable is broadly agreed to and reduced to writing couched in positive terms so as to avoid that either side has lost or conceded. Collective bargaining needs skills in the art of diplomacy, communication and the ability to scan the ‘opponent’ and the grace - if one has to - ‘yield’ with equanimity. In case either party is no mood to arrive at a middle ground or misreads the strength or weakness of the other party, serous disputes occur. Collective bargaining should be according to Dunlop, a “conceptual blend of industrial relations and economics.” It is necessary to appreciate that wage rates are only one of the many parameters of the workplace that should be considered for policy prescriptions to be acceptable to the employees. Similarly there cannot be a quid pro quo between money and all working conditions. The rules of the workplace are influenced by the contexts of technology, labour and product markets and the dynamics of the political society. Although there may be compelling reasons for economists not permitting unrestrained application of competitive theory for wage determination, equally inapplicable is the view that unemployment and wage differentials in the same market should drive compensation in general. (Dunlop 1985) Collective bargaining and legal framework: Employment relations in the UK are governed by a number of legislations, which aim to offer employers and employees a ‘level playing’ field. They include the Equal Pay Act 1970, the Employment Protection (Consolidation) Act 1978, the Employment Rights Act 1996, Race Relations Act 1976, the Sex Discrimination Act 1975, the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 1981, the Employment Acts of 1980 and 1988, the Wages Act 1986, the Disability Discrimination Act 1995, the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974, the Trade Union Reform and Employment Rights Act 1993 and the Employment Regulations Act 1999. The government constituted the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (ACAS) an independent statutory body to offer advice, expertise, guidance and information on employee relations and staff management, with the objective of promoting workplace harmony, understanding and well-being. Management decisions: Managements often have to take decisions that affect the work, work processes and lives of employees. The decision making process involves three major phases. The first involves arriving at a decision - to take or not to take a particular course of action. This phase includes problem definition, process determination, fixing a time frame for a specified course of action and weighing alternatives. The second involves communication and the third implementation. If management decisions have far reaching consequences, the communication process should be replaced by participation and consultation. For e.g. if an organisation proposes staff redundancy, such a decision requires participation and consultation to determine the process of declaring redundancy and the quantum of severance pay rather than a decision taken by the management and simply communicated. The objectives of participation and consultation are to gain the commitment of the staff. This can be achieved only if the decision and decision-making process and the consequences of not taking such a decision are explained to the staff in a transparent manner. If a decision about staff redundancy is not taken at an appropriate time the organisation may lose its competitiveness in the market and its survival may be threatened. The remaining staff may also have concerns about relocation, redeployment, retraining, changes in operational procedures and organisational expectations. The staff may also have similar concerns when a merger or acquisition takes place. The concerns of the staff should be allayed through constant communication, full briefings and meetings where thorough participation and consultations are held. 2.2.6. Outcomes: ‘Processes’ such as ‘collective bargaining’ and ‘management decisions’ result broadly, in new ‘agreements’ or ‘conflicts’. Conflicts may be due to new policies, procedures, pay, conditions and way of working. Conflicts occur when there is a differing ideology; different parties involved have differing objectives or different perspectives about objectives or territory when one of the parties is perceived to be operating outside his/her jurisdiction and against the interests of the other party. Conflicts in public sector organisations: The following are some of the reasons for conflicting situations, especially in public sector organisations, because of the culture in which they are steeped. However some of these are equally applicable to the private sector inasmuch as culture is the determinant: The management is unable to provide direction or the approach, functioning and style of managers are inappropriate to the situation. This happens because managers expect subordinates to follow operational policies and procedures, as they are either ‘well known’ or ‘written down’ without making the least effort to explain their applicability or rationale to particular situations. The management is unable to resolve inter-departmental conflicts with regard to accountability, jurisdiction and responsibility. Managers encourage this with the mistaken notion that it would develop their subordinates or even in the mistaken belief that it will divide and rule and help them hold sway. Another consequence of inter-departmental wars is the perceived importance of high profile departments over others, employees’ excessive affiliation to their colleagues and departmental rules rather than customer service and larger organisational objectives. Managers trying to be ‘Machiavellian’ by wielding the proverbial ‘carrot and stick’, as a ‘divide and rule’ policy, without realising that known or perceived favouritism and victimisation are major sources of conflict. The reasons for burnout of assembly-line employees like boredom, noise, physical and mental exhaustion and repetitiveness of chores are seen all over again with modern information technology applications and is a major cause for vitiating the atmosphere. The most important reason for conflict is the inability of management to imbue employees with loyalty, a sense of identity with the organisation, respect and trust. This makes employees suspect hidden agendas behind every directive and make them un-cooperative and resentful. Angered by the perceived questioning of their authority, managers tend to tighten their grip tuning the system into a vicious cycle until it goes out of control and results in extreme action by one or the parties - extreme methods by the management or strike by employees. When employees perceive that their counterparts in the head office are better paid and have better working conditions than those in remote divisions. When employees perceive that the organisation’s ruling philosophy is ‘the crying baby gets the milk’. In the short term this policy may douse fires but in the end, it affects organisational discipline and efficiency. Change in any form creates ‘insecurity’ because of a ‘fear of the unknown’. Therefore employees should be taken into confidence, with regular briefings and communications, when organisations plan major changes. These include up gradation of technology, mergers and acquisitions or any other major overhaul. When any or all of these reasons for conflict are not addressed in time, they are likely to blow into extreme direct action by one or the other of the parties including lockouts, strikes or work stoppages. Failure of negotiations to resolve issues concerning demands for increased productivity, improved competitiveness, changes in working conditions or for wage increases result in extreme conflict situations. The legal framework and political climate of the society influences prevailing conflict situations culminating in extreme action by either of the parties. Resolution of conflicts: Any discussion on resolution of conflicts should be based on the premise that it is not possible to totally eliminate conflict. As we have seen, conflicts occur because of differing perceptions about duties, responsibilities and objectives, real or perceived injustices, threat perceptions and demands over wages, other monetary benefits and working conditions. Sometimes these conflicts lead to extreme actions such as strikes and lockouts. Ury, Brett, and Goldberg developed a unique system of ‘Dispute Systems Design’ or DSD for resolving irreconcilable conflicts in business and other organisations. Their method is based on the analysis of conflicts and designing new pathways for resolving them. There are three principles or heuristics (‘heuristic’ means ‘learning by discovery’), underlying their design. Therefore the principle actors learn by discovery. The system has three hierarchical options: negotiating the dispute, adjudicating rights and pursuing power options such as strikes and lockouts. It is desirable to resolve disputes at the lowest level, i.e. through negotiation. Ury et al. argue that the actors should focus on their interests rather than what can they do because of rights or power. As interest-based issues are more negotiable they are less irreconcilable. When this approach does not work then the second option is ‘right-based’ such as a legal suit and when both fail the last resort, ‘power-based’, viz. strike or lockout. The justification for this approach is: it is less expensive and less time consuming to resolve issues through negotiation than resorting to legal action or strikes. More importantly, negotiations result in mutually satisfactory solutions whereas in the other two options one of the parties loses which is not easily forgotten. The system can be fine tuned by building ‘loop-backs’ during the process of negotiation for preventing breakdowns. Throughout the process of negotiation, it is necessary to provide for feedback and consultation to keep it on course. The alternative courses of action agreed upon during negotiations should be followed up with regular feedback and training of the personnel concerned. As we have seen, one of the reasons for conflict is, people resist change for the ‘fear of the unknown’. Therefore their fears should be first allayed and confidence instilled by imparting them with the skills commensurate with changing demands of work. The whole process of conflict/dispute resolution may be summed up into four steps: diagnosing the issue; designing a solution by evaluating alternative courses of action; implementing the solution and evaluating implementation and the results. (Ury, Brett, and Goldberg 1988 cited in Brahm and Ouellet 2003) Ury et al.’s arguments have been corroborated by another study conducted by Hebdon et al. (2003). The authors studied the dispute resolution patterns of all bargaining units in the Canadian province of Ontario over a ten-year period. One of the most important findings of the study is that negotiated settlements were the most enduring, not least because “…parties themselves (labour and management) are positioned to fashion the mutually acceptable solutions so necessary for enduring changes not only in the conditions of employment, but perhaps more importantly, to the relationship itself.” Secondly the researchers found that compulsory arbitration has both “chilling effects and dependence effects on the bargaining process.” (Hebdon et al. 2003) Conclusion: The best form of dispute resolution in the public sector is through the structured negotiation mechanism suggested by Ury et al. and corroborated by the Hebdon et al. study. The government has legislated enough to regulate employment relations whether they are in the public sector or private sector. There does not seem to be any necessity to bring in another legislation for banning strikes in public sector undertakings. Such legislation can only be counterproductive for ‘one can take the horse to the water but one can not make him drink it!’ In case of short run emergencies, the government can look at maintenance of services through alternative mechanisms like deploying the armed forces etc. The long-term solution to increase productivity would be motivation rather than coercion. Bibliographic References: Brahm, Eric and Julian Ouellet. (2003)."Designing New Dispute Resolution Systems." Beyond Intractability. Eds. Guy Burgess and Heidi Burgess. Conflict Research Consortium, University of Colorado, Boulder. Posted: September 2003 . Bratton, John (1999). Human Resources Management and Industrial Relations. Eds. Bratton, John & Gold, Jeffrey. Human Resource Management - Theory and Practice. (Second Edition). London. Macmillan Business. p. 333-365. Dunlop, John T. "Needed: an interdisciplinary approach to labor markets and wage determination. 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