Workplace practices and other organisational rules have developed over time to serve the needs of both employees and managers. Unfortunately, we are finding that rules are double-edged; they restrict both the rule-maker and the potential rule-breaker. It is clear that many existing workplace rules do not serve the needs of anyone involved. Several reasons why rules are difficult to change are discussed, as well as ways to facilitate changes in workplace rules. In order for rules governing existing workplace practices to change, all the relevant stakeholders must expect to gain from their revision.
The
need for change
There is much evidence that existing workplace practices in industry must be
changed. Our firms can not compete in the new global economy and global markets with
workplace agreements which have become outdated, costly, and restrictive.
Unfortunately, many organisations are finding it extremely difficult to change existing
work practices, to breakdown lines of demarcation and work rules, and to implement
necessary human resource and work organisation innovations. Although both management
and labour historically have favoured some set of rules outlining the organisation of
work, there is a growing perception that the whole system of work rules in industry has
become increasingly rigid and may no longer serve the needs of either party. Rules
are invisible threads that bind the technical and the social components of an organisation
[1]. Rules come from past adjustment and seek to stabilise the present and
future. In the past, both management and labour benefited from having a set of
rules regulating the organisation of work.
The main purposes of this background info are (1) to explore some of the benefits and problems of work organisation rules from both the workers' and the managers' perspective, (2) to examine several of the properties and functions that make work organisation rules critical and resistant to change, and, based on these analyses, (3) to discuss ways to facilitate the needed changes in workplace practices.
The
importance of workplace rules for employees
Workplace rules perform a variety of functions
for employees. For example, earlier in
this century, many work rules were instituted that
were intended to organise work in order to make more
work, more jobs, and more money for labour and for
their unions. These rules are now referred to
as "make work" rules. The efforts of
unions to "make work" by various methods
have been primarily attributed to the insecurity of
employment in modern industry [2,3]. According
to Slichter [2] efforts to "make work" fall
into nine basic categories: (1) limiting daily or weekly
output; (2) indirectly limiting the speed of work;
(3) controlling the quality of work; (4) requiring
time-consuming methods of doing the work; (5) requiring
that unnecessary work be done or that work be done
more than once; (6) regulating the number of men in
a crew or on a machine or requiring the employment
of unnecessary men; (7) requiring that the work be
done by members of a given skilled craft or occupation;
(8) prohibiting employers or foremen from working at
the trade; (9) retarding or prohibiting the use of
machines and labour-saving devices. Rules such
as these are often seen as restrictive to firms and
damaging to the national economy.
Wage earners have historically banded together to gain some measure of control over their lives at work. They wished to protect and to strengthen their union organisation, to allocate limited work opportunities, to make more work, and to insulate themselves against the impact of changing technology [2]. Underlying these specific purposes, however, is a larger desire to regulate relations on the shop floor and within the organisation as a whole, in order to give employees some protection from arbitrary management decisions. In this way a method of "industrial jurisprudence" has been built up. Bargaining between labour unions and employers has introduced civil rights into industry. Management must be conducted by rule. The growth of unions and award negotiations has promoted the utilitarian, rational-legal type of contractual relationship between management and labour[4].
The importance of workplace rules for unions and their members does not derive solely from their capacity to control or limit the power of management. According to Piore and Sabel [5], if there is one undisputed finding of industrial sociology it is that "In every known society in which the division of labour is not fixed by custom, employees doing related tasks attempt to gain control over their workplace." They describe a "contest for power" articulated through both written and unwritten rules which "constitute a system of shop-floor control." Under the mass-production model of shop-floor control there are two main elements: (1) jobs - precisely defined aggregates of well specified tasks and (2) seniority - length of service criterion for the allocation of jobs. Employees' income, job security, quality of work life, and so forth, depend on the definition of jobs and seniority. The struggle for control on the shop-floor is over task classification and the allocation of jobs; a struggle which, in turn, reinforces these two central concepts as structuring elements of shop-floor life [5]. Thus, establishing a set of workplace rules gives unions and their members power in the form of day to day influence over working conditions. It gives them the ability to work-to-rule, job protection (i.e., protection against speed-up and job loss out of seniority order), worker safety, fair treatment, and work life quality (i.e., employees can choose a "type" of work they desire). Having identified the complexity of functions (e.g., direct empowerment, limiting managerial power, and protecting past gains) which make workplace rules important for employees, it is easier to see why employees will invariably resist proposed changes to these rules.
The importance
of workplace rules for managers
Managers in every organisation face the task
of somehow reducing the variability, instability and
unpredictability of individual human acts [6].
The importance of conformity to organisational rules
is greater in complex, interdependent organisations
than in simpler ones. If, for example, one of
one-hundred people independently working fails to produce,
production is cut by one percent. If one of one-hundred
people working on an interdependent assembly line fails
to produce, production does not suffer by one percent,
production is reduced to zero.
Gouldner [7] examined rules at work in the context of bureaucratic rules and the issue of close supervision. He identified and discussed several generic functions of rules at work. Rules serve an explication function. They comprise a functional equivalent for direct, personally given orders. In this light, rules are a form of communication to those who are seen as desirous of evading responsibilities, of avoiding commitments, and of withholding proper and full performance of obligations. Rules serve a screening function as they provide a substitute for the personal repetition of orders by a supervisor. They also allow supervisors to claim authority without personal superiority (i.e., "I'm only following the rules"). Rules serve a remote control function allowing upper management to "control from a distance" its lower levels of management. Bureaucratic rules will flourish, other things being equal, when upper management has a degree of distrust and suspicion regarding the role performance of those to whom they have delegated a measure of command. Rules serve to legitimate the use of punishment. The rule constitutes a statement in advance of expectations or a warning. Rules have a "leeway" function and are enforced in a curiously rhythmic pattern. In different contexts, rules may be enforced or relaxed. Finally, rules serve as a specification of a minimum level of acceptable performance.
Problems
with workplace rules
Gouldner [7] made three assertions concerning bureaucratic rules at work. He
suggested that bureaucratic rules proliferate when a social organisation is driven by the
following tensions: (1) pervasive managerial distrust and suspicion which is directed, not
only toward employees, but also toward members of the managerial in-group; (2)
disturbances in the informal system which result in the withholding of consent from the
formally constituted authorities (i.e., the informal group is either unwilling or unable
to allocate work responsibilities and give no support to management's production
expectations); and (3) the appearance of status distinctions of dubious legitimacy, in an
egalitarian culture context, which strain the formal authority relationships.
Although workplace rules may have benefited labour and management in the past, highly developed, precise systems of workplace rules are beneficial only under certain conditions. They suit particular styles of hierarchical management; for example, Scientific Management's concern for saving time and increasing output. They are functional only to the extent that they fit with the mode of production such as the stereo-typical assembly line with its emphasis on job simplification, rationalisation, and fractionalisation. Changes in production can render existing rules redundant or may demand a radically new structure or order to the shop floor. In this way rule systems become problematic.
Employers would like to have the freedom to pick the best available worker for a job. The most frequent complaint of employers concerning union shop rules and policies is that they limit the efficiency of labour and reduce the output of industry. Union rules may restrict production in several ways: (1) they may interfere with management's freedom to pick the best employees available and to stimulate efficiency through rewards and punishments; (2) they may restrict the introduction of more productive methods and machines; (3) they may deliberately "make work"; or (4) they may have become obsolete. Changes in technology and markets as well as competition constantly make some shop rules and policies out of date. The greatest problem with rules is that most bad rules were once good, designed for a situation that no longer exists [1].
From a management perspective, the current organisation of work is excessively rigid and wasteful, thus impeding the implementation of advanced manufacturing and information technologies and leading to unreasonably high labour costs [8,9,10]. Today, changes in technology require employees to perform a wider range of tasks [11,12]. New team-based approaches require some employees to move more frequently between various jobs and functions [12]. The lack of flexibility in worker deployment, that can result from strictly and narrowly defined work rules, is perceived by management as a serious problem [10,13,14]. For example, journeymen seeking to regulate the dividing line between their work and that of helpers and labourers, as well as from encroachment by other crafts, has led to over-staffing and a situation where one skilled worker has to wait for another to perform some simple activity before continuing with the job at hand.
Organisations and their environments change faster than rules. Originally, rules mainly applied to the discipline of the work force. Later, they become protective as well as restrictive. They protect not only the nature and organisation of work but also protect and entrench power relations within the organisation around a set of objective codes and standards. In this way they apply to management as well as to the worker. A rule is double-edged; it limits both the rule-maker and the potential rule-breaker.
Why Workplace
Rules are Difficult to Change
When a legal system changes it can be seen as a cyclic process alternating between
"disruption" of an established order and the "planning" that
institutes a new legal order. Industrial law behaves similarly to societal law in
the open systems framework. A simple, clear-cut rule develops. The rule
becomes riddled with exceptions. It is challenged based on changing circumstances
affecting values and attitudes of society. Finally, a new rule or legal system is
developed basically made up of new simple, clear-cut rules thus propagating the
cycle. The process of changing the tough, invisible threads of the system loosens
all kinds of bargains, agreements, and pay-offs which must be brought back together.
Therefore, rules are difficult to change [1,2].
Changing existing work practices has been especially difficult in Australia. For example, Macken [15] has suggested that since the Australian Trade union movement is so large and strong, that as industrial relations and workplace structural changes are made leading to the amalgamation of unions, very little substantial change will be achieved in the short run due to resistance from those adversely affected by the changes. Curtain [16] has suggested that the relatively high levels of employee turnover in Australia has lead to low levels of commitment in the employed labour force adversely affecting many firms' ability to change work practices. Curtain [16] also noted the legacy of "structural irresponsibility" in workplace industrial relations, a low level of adoption of world-class best practice techniques, and the problem of expectations being raised unrealistically quickly have all contributed to the difficulties of Australian work-place change.
Work rules do not only address the basic economic interests of employees such as earnings or job security. As we can see from our previous analyses, many existing work practices and rules fulfil social ideals or values such as equal opportunity or establish a code of fairness. As a result, rules are not simple conventions which can be "legislated" away or mere economic commodities which can be "bought out." Once it is recognised that all work customs and practices serve a social as well as an economic purpose, we are on the threshold of being able to alter the arrangements by dealing with their underlying causes [17].
How To
Facilitate Changes in Work Rules
The first step toward successfully changing work rules, shop-floor practices, and award
agreements is to identify the specific social and economic purposes that they serve in the
organisation from both the perspectives of labour and management. We know that rules
have served important functions for both management and labour in the past. Once
these are identified, it becomes possible to explore ways of fulfilling those needs in
other ways, thus facilitating the process of change by reducing resistance.
A second step toward successfully changing work rules, shop-floor practices, and award agreements is to consider the perceptions of the stakeholders regarding management's reasons and motivations for the changes. Workplace rule systems can be difficult to change because the motivation for the changes is not made clear. Employees may believe management to have a hidden agenda in introducing new practices particularly those deriving from technological innovation. Thus many modern labour officials and employees feel threatened, as were earlier industrial workers, by their perceptions of management's' use of the machinery as a means of, and a camouflage for, the attack on labour [18]. Management can be perceived as trying to use new information and manufacturing technologies to centralise control, weaken unions, lower wages, and intensify the work pace. Alternatively, they may be seen as attempting to decentralise control and empower employees and their unions. Regardless of the "real" intentions or motivation, perceptions are reality in terms of driving peoples' behaviours.
One of the organisations studied by Turniansky [19] provides a case-in-point. When a firm introduced CNC equipment within a Flexible Machining Cell the managers proposed several changes in work organisation. Management suggested protecting employees in the manufacturing cell from bumping as well as having employees do machine programming, deal with vendors and customers, work on interchangeable jobs, rotate shifts, and change work schedules. The proposed work reorganisation was rejected by the union on the grounds that management was at the same time laying off 1500 employees. The union leadership said that they could not trust management to protect employees from displacement due to technology or productivity increases and they did not accept the work redesign proposal. It is clear in this case that the relationship between the union, management, and the employees, which depended on how people perceived current actions in light of past actions and the levels of trust among those involved, affected the ability of the system to implement and to adapt to changes in work organisation and new technology. Employees and unions have historically not resisted technological innovation. However, they have reacted bitterly against what they perceive as exploitation, degradation, and unhealthy or unsafe working conditions [20].
Another example of the importance of management reasons and motives for workplace change can be seen in the case of the implementation of advanced manufacturing technology. The motivation behind technological innovation affects the nature and extent of the corresponding organisational changes required and consequently the employees' response. The successful use of new technology often depends on good planning, effective work organisation, and appropriate job design. The introduction of new technology frequently requires changes in organisation structure and task allocation. MacDuffie and Kochan [21] provided evidence in support of the hypothesis that it is the integration of technology strategy with human resource strategy, production strategy, and overall business strategy that contributes most effectively to high economic performance. In short, recent research has clearly illustrated that the introduction of new technology frequently requires changes in organisation structure, job design, and organisational strategy in order to produce real benefits.
However, there may be a variety of reasons for introducing new technologies. A study by Davies [22], carried out in the U.K., suggested three broad categories of reasons for the introduction of technology: people reasons (e.g., reduce work load or improve working conditions); production reasons (e.g., replace worn out equipment or expand production); and finance reasons (e.g., reduce labour or meet competition). Davies reported that people reasons were rated by managers as being the least important of the three categories. Production reasons were the most frequently reported, while finance reasons were second. The two most popular specific reasons given for the implementation of computerised equipment were to reduce labour costs (a finance reason) and to improve quality (a production reason). Crucially, however, the managers interviewed by Davies placed a great deal of emphasis on the increase in control they were afforded by the new technology. This suggests a fourth category, political reasons, where the objective might be to bring about a shift in the balance of power between management and employees and not simply to change the nature or organisation of work. It should be clear that if stakeholders perceive that political reasons are the major drivers for management's initiation of changes, this will result in lower levels of acceptance and success of the work organisation and the new technology. If people, production, or external financial reasons are perceived as being the major drivers, however, this may result in less resistance to change.
A third step toward successfully changing work rules, shop-floor practices, and award agreements is to consider the effect of management's change strategy. When making changes to the design of work, the method of change may be more critical than the changes themselves. Walton [23] suggested that leaders seeking change can adopt a power strategy that required one person or group to (a) increase their relative power by increasing the other parties dependence on them, (b) decrease their dependence on the other party, and (c) overstate their needs and preferences, in terms of achievement of stated objectives, to bias the rival group's perceptions. Alternatively, Walton proposed managers could adopt an attitude change strategy which is done by increasing the level of attraction and trust between persons or groups involved. Walton cautioned that there may be dilemmas in attempting to pursue both strategies at the same time due to contradictory tactics and demands on the leaders. In addition, a genuine attempt to adopt a strategy based on attitude change is ideologically opposed to one based on coercion.
Similarly Cappelli and McKersie [24] suggested two general sets of corporate management strategies that impact strategy and decisions throughout the firm: asset management strategies and productivity enhancement management (or value added) strategies. Asset management strategies shift a firm's capital away from high cost employees and work systems. This may be done by closing union facilities, by subcontracting components of work (outsourcing) or by investing in new technology used to reduce labour (and labour costs). By contrast, value added strategies reform existing systems usually by altering the organisation of work through changes in work rules and the design of jobs. Curtain and Mathews [25] have identified two specific, idealised models of award restructuring in Australia, that mirror the more generalised strategies identified by Cappelli and McKersie. A cost minimisation approach, according to Curtain and Mathews, is a narrower approach based on horizontal job loading, no additional formal training, the use of technology to intensify work, surveillance and control while using more subcontractors and part-time/casual employees to reduce costs via numerical flexibility. Their productivity enhancement approach is more broadly based on work reorganisation, workforce skills acquisition and formal training, delegation of responsibility and decision-making, and employment security guarantees as a basis for achieving more flexible use of employee skills.
Cappelli and McKersie [24] suggested that management's success in achieving these changes varies in large part with their ability to address the following issues: (1) labours' job security and the organisation's plans for expansion (either increases in production or the re-call of outsourced work); (2) the level of trust and general relations between labour and management; (3) the need for an internal model of innovative work organisation; (4) the need to use ''greenfield sites" or to couple work reorganisation with major re-tooling and facilities or equipment alterations; and (5) the need to consider the entire system and how changes in work organisation interact (e.g., changes in production standards or expanding work horizontally or vertically, will necessitate alterations in compensation if the work changes are to be accepted by employees).
Although managers have decision latitude they remain constrained by their internal and external environments [26,27]. Therefore, not all managers may equally be able to choose between these two idealised strategies proposed by Cappelli and McKersie [24] and Curtain and Mathews [25]. For example, managers in highly unionised firms are less likely to adopt a union avoidance strategy than are managers in less unionised firms [28]. Three critical decisions managers must make concerning their workplace change strategy are (1) how much to involve employees in decisions made prior to and during the change process, (2) how quickly to institute the proposed changes, and (3) how much advanced notice to give the workforce regarding proposed changes.
According to Turniansky [19], although managers, engineers, and supervisors involved in technology driven organisational change stated that employee and union involvement in the change process is necessary, the level of actual involvement that occurred was quite low. Participation in decision-making is not a management panacea, but perhaps the key requirement for participation to be useful is that the subordinate has expertise to bring to the decision-making process [29]. Locke et al. [29] suggested it makes little rational sense to involve someone in a decision process concerning a topic they know nothing about, solely on the basis of some moral or ethical imperative. Employees know a great deal about the physical aspects of their work and work environment; for example, participative ergonomics programs have frequently been successful [30,31]. Similarly, employees can add a great deal to decisions regarding the reorganisation of work. Baitsch and Frei [32] argue that participation in the change process is important for the success of both the redesign of the work organisation and the introduction of new technology. There are many examples of how long-standing problems in production have been overcome through cooperative problem-solving between managers and employees [33].
In Australia, Curtain [34] has identified five main deficiencies in the process of implementing workplace changes in the Public Sector. Based on his research of the five Australian rail systems' efforts to institute change based on the Structural Efficiency Principle, he suggested that confusion about implementation methodology, change being driven from the top only, attempted reforms under award restructuring being isolated from other organisational changes, the wrong sort of consultation, and a lack of agreement on underlying principles to guide the change process have all had negative impacts on outcomes. For example, he suggested that across-the-board job redesign followed by the development of a new job classification structure (i.e., a conceptually bottom-up approach) is less effective than when firms developed a new classification system based on first principles, and then tested it with new job designs in selected sights (i.e., a conceptually top-down approach). Although the content may basically be the same, the process is critical to the success of the changes.
Another related to these strategic consideration in implementing organisational change is the issue of pace of change. Management can decide to implement changes "all at once" or incrementally. Very little work has been done concerning the optimum pace when implementing new work organisation or technology. Roitman, Liker, and Roskies [35], however, described the negative consequences of using an "all at once" approach to the implementation of innovative technology and social system features. They suggested that attempting to implement these changes too quickly will not allow sufficient planning and resources to be devoted to preparing the social system to match the new technological system. However, a U. S. National Academy of Sciences panel reported that contrary to popular belief, the rapid adoption of new technology actually creates higher wages and less unemployment than gradual innovation [36]. More recent work by Dunphy and Stace [37] in Australia may reconcile these two seemingly contradictory findings by introducing a contingency framework of analysis. They provided compelling evidence that when an organisation is greatly out of fit with its environment, more radical, transformational corporate change strategies work better than incremental strategies. When an organisation needs only minor adjustments and is not very far out of fit with its environment, however, more incremental change strategies lead to better performance.
Management also needs to decide how much, if any, advanced notice to give their work force regarding changes. The issue of advanced notice of technology change is being dealt with at the local and National union levels of bargaining in the U.S. [38]. The National Academy of Science panel does recommend that the U.S. government either require, or encourage through tax incentives, that firms supply advanced notices of plant closings and mass lay-offs [36]. In Australia in 1984, some unions were granted the legal right to be informed and consulted about decisions to implement new technology by the Australian Conciliation and Arbitration Commission. This ruling applies to all employees covered by Federal (i.e., National) awards [39].
The
bottom line
Over the last few years, negotiations in many industries have resulted in modifications in
work rules that have tended to reduce their rigidity and their "make work"
nature. These changes have included the broadening of job classifications, making
work schedules more flexible, and accepting team based work [8,10,40,41]. It is
worth noting, however, that to a great extent union acquiescence to these changes, at
least in the U.S., has resulted more from threats of plant closures than from positive
agreements about the effects of work rules [9,10,42,43,44,45]. In Australia, it
seems as though negotiations over award restructuring and its implementation have been
sluggish and have needed to be pushed along by government wage incentives [41].
According to McKersie and Hunter [17], the abandonment of restrictive rules is likely to mean some displacement of labour. They suggested that the more obsolete the rule and the greater, therefore, the number of jobs temporarily created by it (i.e., the more burdensome the rule from management's point of view), the greater is the opposition within the union to its abandonment. However, no restrictive rule, no matter how burdensome to employers and even injurious in the long run to union members, is purely an arbitrary obstruction; it is some political device for protecting someone from some perceived danger. Consequently, the willingness of the union to abandon the workplace rule may depend upon the willingness of employers to offer the union an alternative form of protection from the danger against which the rule was originally directed. If the union waits too long before giving up burdensome restrictions so that drastic action is necessary to keep the union employers in business, it not only may receive nothing in return for dropping the restriction but may be compelled to accept severe wage cuts as well. When the union recognises that it must help to reduce costs to be competitive and/or viable, one of the most obvious steps is to get rid of rules and practices which are wasteful and burdensome to employers, and beneficial only to small groups of employees. McKersie and Hunter [17] argued that unions should take the positions that the special privileges for a few of its members must be sacrificed to help the many. These arguments are persuasive. If we assume that work rules exist to serve real needs in the employment relationship, then in order for them to change under conditions of equal power and influence, both management and labour must expect to gain from their revisions.
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Please Note: A version of this background info has been published in the International Journal of Operations and Production Management, 1993, vol. 13, pg. 57 - 65.
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