Employee Involvement and Voice

This chapter discusses that it can be too simplistic either to celebrate involvement and voice as a panacea for organisational ills, or equally to dismiss it because it has failed to transform the employment relationship. To celebrate involvement as empowerment or engagement is to ignore the major operational and human obstacles to its implementation. Likewise, to dismiss involvement and voice because it does not fundamentally challenge existing relations between capital and labour is to overstate its potential contribution. Management initiatives are probably more limited than the enthusiasts claim, but more constructive than the critics admit. So much depends on the context in which schemes are introduced - the competitive situation, management style, employee expectations, and other human resource practices - as well as on the types of schemes themselves. A fundamental paradox of management is that whilst they require employee commitment and high trust, at the same time, they can erode any basis for such relations to develop and be sustained.