Guest editorial

Citation

Townsend, K. and Dundon , T. (2015), "Guest editorial", Employee Relations, Vol. 37 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/ER-01-2015-0018

Guest editorial

Article Type: Guest editorial From: Employee Relations, Volume 37, Issue 4.

Understanding the role of line managers in employment relations in the modern organisation

The last 50 years or so has witnessed a reconfiguration of organisational structure and attendant processes underpinning people management, broadly defined. One particular development has been increased emphasis on the role and function of front-line managers (FLMs) in attending to forms of employee consent, control and engagement and performance. At times this has meant more supervisors and layers of line managers leading to bureaucratic controls. In other situations the development of outsourcing, off-shoring and various forms of flexibility and precarious employment has blurred the boundaries between worker and actual line manager (Marchington et al., 2011). Agency workers, part-time work patterns and other forms of atypical employment mean the relationship between the employer and worker is less clear than in previous decades. Workers can be employed by an external contractor yet despatched to a client site who is responsible for day-to-day management of contract workers. As such some FLMs – perhaps with the title team leader or cell leader – sit more closely as co-workers, while others – such as middle managers or functional heads – are much more detached from the shopfloor and aligned closely with managerial ranks.

Amidst these complexities and uneven structural configurations across different organisational types, systems of managerial governance typically follow a broadly similar pattern of control. There is usually an “executive” level group of management, followed by a lower cluster of “senior” and then “middle managers”. A cadre of various FLMs may then have responsibility for managing general staff: these might be team leaders, supervisors or functional and divisional heads. The configuration of this system of managerial control will be dependent on a range of context specific factors, such as size, industry, market-orientation, HR philosophies and so on. However, far too frequently academic analysis provides reference to “managers” as if they were a single, homogeneous group. Since the turn of the twenty-first century, research often referred to the line managers without offering an explicit definition of who the line manager might be, while other studies specify that the “middle manager” is the focus of their research (Conway and Monks, 2010; Fenton-O’Creevy, 2001; McCann et al., 2008). There is another body of research that explicitly states its focus on “front-line managers” (Hutchinson and Purcell, 2003; Jones and Saundry, 2012; Townsend et al., 2013). FLM is a term that can be analogous with first-line manager (Hales, 2005) or first-tier managers (Martins, 2009).

However, we need to be careful in ascertaining whether these roles are the same as, or different from, those of supervisors and team leaders (Down and Reveley, 2009; Mason, 2000; Townsend, 2004). While Floyd and Wooldridge’s (1994) definition of line managers refers those who work between the strategic apex and the operating core of the organisation, the size and structure of the organisation under investigation will determine how many layers and what sort of responsibilities the individual line managers will fulfil. Research on the changing configuration of organisational structure and increased flexibility, noted above, will have implications for the role, type, who and the hierarchical authority position of FLMs of various types and how they shape issues such as work schedules, minimum wages, conflict resolution along with the wider implementation of employment relations procedures (Teague and Roche, 2012; Grimshaw and Rubery, 2013).

Once most organisations reach a certain size there will be line managers though we could reasonably predict that there would differences (and similarities) across and between such groups and organisational settings. Management as a function typically operates as the agent of owners. As such there remains an inherent power dynamic concerning the legitimate authority and use of power that managers hold over employees. Some managers have access to resources and positions of power that confer a degree control over-and-above those of other managers. Indeed, depending on context and organisational specifics, some lower managers in one type of organisation (say small family-run business) may have more authority and power relative to what might appear to be a higher level line manager in another setting (say a public service organisation). Therefore managerial positions vary with attendant conceptual meanings affecting central issues of employment relations debates such as power, contestation, authority, legitimacy and control – among others. Furthermore, there can be a disconnect between scholarly use of the term line manager and practitioner use of the term. Legge (1995) suggests that line managers are engaged in “general management work” as distinct from those who are managers in functional specialist areas of the organisation, while more recently Brewster et al. (2013) support this view. Yet this is contrary to the manner in which the term is commonly used by practitioners. The divide between scholarly acceptance of terms and practitioner use of terms means that we can be talking past each other and not completely understanding roles, responsibilities and labels.

According to Watson (1994, p. 51), “a managerial appointment is a stage in a person’s hierarchical career rather than an entry into an immediately distinctive and clearly identifiable occupation activity”. Watson’s In Search of Management provides a vivid look at people working in managerial roles – including all manner of line managers. He demonstrates throughout his study that there remains a great deal of opportunism and limited planning in the ways in which individuals move from supervisor and line management roles into more senior positions, including “accidental” and “unprepared” transitions into higher level management (Townsend et al., 2012).

In this Special Issue seven papers bring together various aspects of line manager experiences associated with the management and regulation of employment. Importantly, and keeping with the attributes of the journal Employee Relations, the papers address key issues concerning the roles of line managers in making, mediating and influencing core element which have historically been referred to as employee relations and/or human resource management (HRM).

Purcell (2014, p. 233) recently described what many have known or suspected for some time, that “line managers are at the heart of most workplace conflict, whether causing it, experiencing it, dealing with it or coping with its consequences”. This places the line manager central to what has historically been referred to as the “contested terrain” of people management. Montgomery (1987, p. 92) has shown that virtually all strikes throughout late nineteenth century America dealt with either wages, or abusive foremen. Since the 1980s three inter-related phenomena have arguably impacted on the employee relations assumptions around the contested terrain. First, the well documented rise of a new era of “human resource management”. For example, claims of enhanced organisational performance through various people management processes and policies are often contextualised in relation to the devolution of HRM activities away from the HR or personnel function, and responsibility placed with line managers who deal more closely and directly with employees on a daily basis. Thus normative models of HRM view the importance of line managers as central to the way policies are “brought to life” and “implemented” that shape and affect employee behaviours and effort (Bowen and Ostroff, 2004; Purcell et al., 2009). Second, mid-level line managers have been subject to delayering in many industries (Balogun and Johnson, 2004). The implication is what and who constitute front- and mid-level managers is complex. The issue is further compounded by uneven organisational structure and layers, especially in relation to outsourcing and temporal work arrangements that make for uncertain direct managerial chains of command when many employees work for a client form and not their immediate employer (Marchington et al., 2011). Arguably, who the actual line manager is becomes blurred, with variable and different types of FLMs, even within the same organisational setting.

Combined with these developments is the persistence of informal dialogue as a central conduit in the management of employee relations (Townsend et al., 2013; Marchington and Suter, 2013). FLMs of various types have to manage a range of unpredictable tensions and antagonisms, many of which are often unseen by senior managers or business owners. For example, staff in customer service roles can require immediate resolution of issues that occur as customers seek service and resolution of matters that are important to them. Employees will often require immediate support from FLMs, sometimes organisational policies and customer pressures do not align, and yet these managers are often expected to determine a course of action to resolve the matter. These moments will occur daily in many customer service roles, and rarely make their way to senior management.

At the same time, FLMs may also be faced with tighter legislative requirements, austerity measures and more responsibility without a corresponding increase in influence and decision-making authority. These pressures are not without consequence. FLMs under such pressures will have a range of alterative actions but according to the AMO theory (abilities, motivation, opportunity) not all managers will respond the same way. Those with higher level skills, those who are more motivated, access to power and resources, and those with greater levels of opportunity to make decisions will have higher outcomes within their work group.

So line managers do play a critical role in the management of employment relations across diverse organisational types. However, not all line managers hold the same span of control, or have the same responsibilities. Not all line managers perform their roles the same way, nor do employees require the same type of management. Storey (1992, p. 26) suggests that the people management decisions that are made within organisations must not be treated as “incidental operational matters”, or to be left to the HR department. Rather, line managers must understand their role as the link between the strategic direction of the organisation and the management of staff members. More than a decade ago Delery and Shaw (2001, p. 36) suggested that it is “curious” that there is not a great deal of research that considers the role of line managers in the HRM or people management function of a firm given the inter-personal relations in organisations are seen as essential for the success of many practices within firms. A review of the literature throughout the last decade demonstrates that there has been a significant increase in research on the intersection between FLMs and a broad range of management responsibilities; for example, increasing HR functional activities at the point of production/service delivery (Hutchinson and Purcell, 2010); control and conflict roles (Townsend, 2013); recruitment and coaching (Harney and Jordan, 2008); disciplinary handling (Jones and Saundry, 2012), mediation and dispute resolution (Teague and Roche, 2014) to name just a handful.

It is within a context of an increasing focus on the roles of line managers that the call for papers was distributed for this Special Issue. The papers included in this Special Issue reinforce and illuminate both the practice and theory about the highly variable and different line management roles functions, type and issues concerned specifically with understanding FLMs and their impact on employment relations outcomes and processes. Taken together, the collection of papers expands new theoretical ideas and proposals as well as contributing to knowledge about practices and influence. The first paper by Kilroy and Dundon (2015) offers new insights about how to conceptualise different FLM styles. It is often assumed in extant research that line mangers such as supervisors are a single or homogeneous group, which can be misleading and inaccurate. Kilroy and Dundon (2015) present a conceptualisation of three FLM typologies: the “organisational leader”, the “policy enactor” and the “employee coach”. The data from their mixed method study confirms these different “faces” of FLMs have a degree of validity and therefore raises implications concerning different styles and how these affect employee relations processes and outcomes. They find, in their sample, the “organisational leader” type as the most dominant, which may be explained by the particular organisational setting from which the sample is drawn (e.g. a large multi-national employer with advanced and sophisticated employment polices). Importantly, the use of different typologies offers a platform for further testing and examination across other settings in search for greater specificity into how FLMs affect employee behaviours and outcomes.

Differentiating and specifying FLM types is an important contribution that provides a lens through which we can view the remaining papers within this Special Issue. The next three papers examine the retail industry, with each paper focusing on a different role that line managers play within that context. With 12 case studies, Wibberley et al. (2015) investigate the challenge that line managers have with conflict management. The authors find that line managers avoid informal management as they lack confidence and expertise in conflict management and as a result, are more likely to rigidly adhere to policy and procedure. These findings demonstrate the complexity within the FLM role, particularly when this paper is read in conjunction with recent work that shows FLMs tend to prefer informality in relation to employee voice and participation (see e.g. Townsend et al., 2013; Marchington and Suter, 2013; Wilkinson et al., 2013).

Hadjisolomou (2015) presents research aimed at exploring the role of FLMs in managing employee attendance in the retail environment. While lean manufacturing was a practice and a research focus in decades past, the notion of operating lean has transferred to the service economy. Based on qualitative data from two of the UK’s largest retailers, the author claims that policies and practice in this sector are primarily driven by costs with high turnover and low margins. Absenteeism creates a significant drain on organisational resources, and there is insufficient attention to the nature of the labour process driving the absence. Important insights are advanced on “how” FLMs have to deal with and manage the absenteeism. The data are used to point to a three-stage process to address absence management by line managers. As a consequence, pressures encountered by line managers is passed on to the employees in the workplace, with a high degree of inconsistency in policy implementation is found.

The third paper focusing on the retail sector takes a broader investigation of HRM and ER policy implementation. Evans (2015) presents a qualitative study with two cases, one in the food retail and one in the home improvement sector. The FLMs in this study were promoted from the shopfloor, did not hold university degrees, and were found to be limited in career progression opportunities as university graduates were preferred for senior managerial positions. This reflects the work from Child and Partridge (1982) that found the 1970s supervisory positions were somewhat of a career trap for non-university graduates. The authors point to the complexity of the FLM role, with this level of managers finding sophisticated methods to circumvent organisational policy when they are faced with contradictory demands in their role, such as budget targets and performance indicators et by corporate headquarters and other senior managers.

There has been a long history of research recognising the role that managers play in the success or failure of employee voice systems. Combining two distinct bodies of work – that of FLMs and employee voice – Townsend and Loudoun (2015) present findings from what they refer to as an exceptional case of a highly unionised, quasi-military, public sector organisation. The authors found that informal employee voice often began with an interaction between employees and their FLMs. However, in this highly unionised organisation, things are different. If employees do not get the outcome they wanted when they approached their FLM they were likely to pursue other pathways to articulate their voice. Through studying the role of FLMs, the authors present a theoretical development in the area of employee voice – that of employee voice pathways. Townsend and Loudoun track the way that employee voice travels through pathways between the union and non-union channels within the employee voice system.

The final paper in this Special Issue focuses on knowledge workers and the factors that underpin worker performance. According to Edgar et al. (2015), the role and position of FLMs appears to be a key factor shaping and affecting knowledge worker outcomes and job performance. The key contribution from the Edgar et al. (2015) analysis is the importance and need for strong relational ties that support employees. This stands in contrast to prior arguments about line manager and knowledge worker roles as self-regulating agents (cf. Renwick and MacNeil, 2002). The evidence here suggests the opposite and in fact pastoral care and support by FLMs is a more effective supervision that is central to knowledge worker performance.

So within this issue we have a range of papers that again reinforce the importance of various levels of line managers in the broad areas of employment regulation and employee relations dynamics. The mix of confirmatory studies and theoretical developments provides contribute to a range of debates about possible future directions that line manager research can take in years to come. We noted earlier that line managers are not a homogenous group. If we take an international chain of hotels as an example, we can see the importance of differentiating line manager levels and responsibilities. The Hilton Hotel in Brisbane, Australia may have the same structure as the Hilton Hotel in Dublin, London or New York. Each will have similar departments, housekeeping, front office, food and beverage, marketing and so on. Within each of those departments there might be a number of FLMs who manage the staff for the shifts that they are working each day. The marketing department is not likely to be a 24-hour a day, seven days a week operation like the other departments. Hence, responsibilities of the FLM are different between departments within the same organisation. This first level of supervisory employees may or may not have the term “manager” in their title, but they will all report to department heads – another form of line manager. These department heads will report to a site level general manager who reports to a regional or divisional manager, and so on. All of these managers have different responsibilities, but all of these managers are line managers of one sort or another. Some might be considered executive level managers at a site level with corresponding responsibilities, but do not hold executive level positions within the larger organisational context. We cannot presume that the FLMs and other levels of LMs are the same across sectors, so context becomes an important part of study. Broad-based quantitative studies are important in developing theory in the area, but equally, qualitative studies that allow an understanding of contextual factors build theory to explain and point to future prediction. For example, a shift or production supervisor in one firm may have a high degree of control over employee performance and effort; yet a similar line manager in a similar type of firm elsewhere may adopt a different style and as a result affect outcome sin different ways, say by nurturing and coaching talent rather than coercing compliance. In an altogether different setting, a team leader or other line manager may have little discretion themselves, and therefore have to revert to their superiors to seek approval. The point is apparently similar line management roles can have very different meanings and outcomes.

The studies in this Special Issue continue the tradition of line managers, and FLMs in particular, as the answer to a problem or gap in knowledge and understanding about how and why employee relations is contested, complex and uneven. If line managers are as important as implied, then future research needs to capture and assess line managers as central, active and influential agents that are part of a research focus and not an afterthought or footnote resulting from a research finding. This is particularly so for FLMs. While there has been an increasing amount of research published on FLMs, advances to theory and FLM variability and typology is even more important to generate stronger and better testable propositions about employee relations processes and attendant outcomes.

Dr Keith Townsend

Department of Employment Relations and Human Resources, Griffith University, Nathan, Australia

Professor Tony Dundon

School of Business and Economics, National University of Ireland, Galway, Ireland

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