Subtitle

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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