Management: caught between competing views of the organisation

1. Keith Sisson Manchester Industrial Relations Society 17/2/11 Management: caught between competing views of the organisation

2. Starting points • in search of ‘high performance working’ etc • ‘permanent restructuring’ • acquisition and divestment • ‘centralisation’ and ‘decentralisation’ • ‘outsourcing’ and ‘insourcing’ • universal models of management • ‘systems actor’ • ‘strategic actor’ • ‘agent of capital’

3. The competing views

4. Why ‘nexus of contract’ thinking so dominant (1): the ‘variety of capitalism’ • privileged position for shareholders and an overwhelming emphasis on shareholder value as the key business driver • high concentration of institutional share ownership which encourages a focus on short-term profitability as the key index of business performance, rather than long-term market share or added value, • relative ease of take-over that reinforces pressure on short-term profitability to maintain share price and encourages expansion by M&A rather than by internal growth • a premium on 'financial engineering' as the core organisational competence, the domination of financial management over other functions and ‘numbers driven’ as opposed to ‘issue driven’ planning

5. Why ‘nexus of contract’ thinking so dominant (2): recent developments • deregulation of finance markets in the 1980s (‘big bang’) • ‘light touch regulation’ • growth of a global capital market • emergence of new investment vehicles (‘hedge funds, ‘private equity groups’, ‘sovereign investment funds’) • ‘financialisation’ (ie shift in basis of competition to financial results in the form of current and projected cash returns on investment regardless of product or service)

6. Widerimplications • focus on lost cost rather than high quality • ‘traditional’ work organisation • ‘hollowing-out’ of employment structure • traditional model of the employment relationship under threat • growing insecurity • growing inequality • growing poverty • assumptions about role of work organisations in human and social capital development in doubt • reliance on debt to ensure ‘confident consumers’ (‘house-price Keynesianism’)

7. Policy issues • banking reform • a (global) tax on financial transactions • role of hedge funds • corporate governance • ‘flexicurity’ • strategic approach to NMW • greater transparency • more employee ‘voice’ • ‘joined-up’ policymaking

8. Final thoughts • The employment relationship has enduring significance • Understanding of it cannot be extracted from consideration of the wider political economy – approaches that focus exclusively on the organisation and, narrower still, on the individual ‘psychological contract’ simply don’t cut the mustard. • None of the traditional disciplines is in a position to shed much light on unfolding developments and their considerable implications – partly because none of them is centrally concerned with the employment relationship and partly because they are essentially methods- rather than issue-based • A focus on the employment relationship, a distinctive multi-disciplinary approach grounded in critical social science and a mix of quantitative and qualitative research methods means that employment relations is uniquely qualified to do the job