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This study compares dispute resolution strategies of workers in hierarchical, conventional businesses with those of members of worker cooperatives – organizations in which all workers co-own and co-manage the business. Drawing on data from three industries (coal mining, taxicab driving, and food distribution), this study finds some support for predictions in the literature that assert that the cooperative's flattened structure and egalitarian ideology will affect workers’ grievance resolution. Although the data do not indicate a single pattern in dispute resolution strategies (i.e., with all members of the cooperatives resolving their disputes one way and all non-cooperative employees using a different strategy), the data do demonstrate that, when comparing matched cooperative and conventional businesses within each industry, the worker cooperative members possess more dispute resolution strategies than their conventionally employed counterparts.

There has been considerable research into different approaches to workplace dispute resolution in the United States (US), the United Kingdom (UK), and to a lesser extent other English-speaking countries. This chapter considers what guidance this research can provide into the practical implications of these different approaches.

One frame of reference for evaluating different approaches to workplace dispute resolution is provided by Budd’s three objectives of the employment relationship: equity, voice and efficiency.

While dispute resolution procedures can contribute to all three objectives, there can be negative consequences for employees who make use of formal workplace dispute resolution procedures. It is desirable that workplace disputes be resolved quickly and informally.

Such an approach places considerable weight on the skills of line managers. Unfortunately, there is evidence of a preference among line managers to replace pragmatic approaches to conflict resolution with a rigid adherence to process and procedure. This is partly due to a lack of skills, but is often compounded by inadequate support from senior management.

While it is important for organisations to have formal workplace dispute resolution procedures, the focus should be on line managers. The role of human resources staff and senior management should primarily be to monitor the dispute resolution system, ensure that it is operating effectively and deal with any emerging issues. They should ensure appropriate training is in place and provide appropriate support to line managers. Only when line managers have failed to resolve disputes should they become directly involved.

We investigate the effects of management-employee similarity on mistreated employees’ propensities to engage in legal and organizational claiming, to quit, and to not seek a remedy in ongoing employment relationships.

We test hypotheses generated by the similarity-attraction and similarity-betrayal paradigms using Tobit regression and data from vignette-based employee surveys.

Mistreated employees with same-sex supervisors are more likely to initiate legal claims and to quit than those with opposite-sex supervisors, but less likely to initiate legal claims and to quit when they have a same-race supervisor than when they have a different-race supervisor. The effects of management-employee similarity on mistreated employees’ remedy-seeking responses exhibit asymmetries by gender and by race. The presence of same-race supervisors or other managers appears to diminish the greater reluctance of nonwhite employees, compared to white employees, to use organizational claiming mechanisms.

We know of no prior published research that has investigated the determinants of employees’ propensities to engage in multiple forms of remedy seeking, as well as the propensity to not seek a remedy, in response to plausibly illegal mistreatment not involving dismissal.

It is over 25 years since the Hancock Report recommended that Australian enterprises implement workplace level procedures for the resolution of disputes and grievances. Legislation now requires that all enterprise agreements contain dispute settlement procedures (DSPs). While most large organisations have enterprise agreements – and therefore DSPs – there is very little empirical research into how and whether Australian organisations use these DSPs – let alone what broader role they may play in regulating the employer–employee relationship. This chapter seeks to provide answers to these questions.

This chapter presents the results of three case studies of large organisations: a bank, a retailer and a state government agency. These organisations have been chosen from a larger group of case studies to illustrate three approaches to the management of workplace disputes. The organisations share certain features such as: the effective use of workplace procedures to resolve the great majority of workplace disputes; and the adoption of a ‘dual system’ with internal grievance procedures playing a role alongside DSPs. However they vary considerably in their approach to dispute resolution. The Bank's ‘strategic’ approach involves a comprehensive conflict management system. The State government agency's ‘reactive’ approach to workplace conflict resolution gives a much greater role for third parties, while the Retailer's ‘pragmatic’ approach incorporates elements from both the other two approaches.

The chapter discusses the implications of this diversity of approach for human resource management, organisational justice and workplace relations.

This article argues that troubles – including how they are identified, how responsibilities for their creation and remedy are assigned, and the actions people pursue to resolve them – are a central sociological concern that runs across a wide array of sub-fields. This article illustrates this point by examining how troubles are discussed in literatures including the sociology of law (or, more broadly, law and society), social movement studies, social problems, and organizational quality and conflict. Furthermore, this article argues that more is being lost by parceling these questions into disconnected sub-fields chosen based on the resolution process (i.e., use a court to resolve the problem, use a social movement, use policy-making) than is being intellectually gained. To make this point, common findings, questions, and quandaries that emerge from a broader examination of a sociology of troubles are discussed. The article recommends that a broader sociology of troubles be developed, bringing the welter of sub-fields studying troubles into smoother conversation, and recommends analyses that consider multiple resolution alternatives (e.g., filing a lawsuit, versus protesting, versus “lumping it”).

This paper develops and tests a new integrative theoretical framework for the study of workplace conflict that links the literatures of such disciplines as organization behavior, industrial relations, management, psychology, sociology, and social movement. It provides testable hypotheses where conflict is structurally blocked by laws, organizational rules, or social norms. It is hypothesized that a blockage of one expression will cause conflict to take on more covert forms of that same expression and to shift to other permitted forms.

In a test of the theory in municipal collective bargaining, the paper found that conflict that was structurally blocked in the form of strikes was redirected to both covert collective actions (sick-outs, slowdowns, etc.), other permitted collective actions (e.g., unfair labor practices) and such individual expressions as grievances.

There would appear to be a promising agenda for future research into the other cases described in the framework. For example, from the nonunion employer where collective actions are prohibited but individual grievances allowed it is hypothesized that such covert conflict as absenteeism, theft, or sabotage will be reduced. On the other hand, these same nonunion firms are predicted to have higher levels of individual conflict than unionized firms where both strikes and grievances are permitted.

Future research that evaluates workplace conflict resolution ought to take into account the complex relationships between conflict expressions suggested in the new framework. The temptation of researchers to study one expression at a time should be resisted.

At the end of this chapter, learners should be able to:

• Understand the meaning of grievance and disciplinary.

• Understand the procedure for grievance and disciplinary.

• Appreciate the critical role of the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service.

• Understand the step by step guide for the analysis involved in basic award computation

Understand the meaning of grievance and disciplinary.

Understand the procedure for grievance and disciplinary.

Appreciate the critical role of the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service.

Understand the step by step guide for the analysis involved in basic award computation

This chapter focuses on the Maoist insurgency in the 75 districts of Nepal and tries to analyze the insurgency in a comparative perspective. We compare the 75 districts with the aim to address the following questions: Why does an insurgency emerge in certain areas? How is it linked to economic, social, or political factors? Why does an insurgency show a robust presence in some districts but fail to do likewise in others? We attempt to answer these questions by conducting multivariate regressions using longitudinal data to test our primary hypothesis that the onset of an insurgency and the continuation are functions of the same factors. We examine insurgency within one country, Nepal, and test our model in Nepal's 75 districts, in a single country context, using available data on the 10-year-long insurgency. We break down the Nepalese insurgency into two parts: the onset and the continuation. Our findings indicate that regions predominantly polarized by caste are more prone to the onset of insurgency than any other factor. Higher literacy rate, a proxy for government efficacy, renders insurgency less feasible, and difficult terrain has no impact whatsoever. However, after the onset, many of the explanatory variables are no longer significant for the continuation of the insurgency and grievances alone tend to be meaningless.

This chapter discusses the adoption by Brazilian companies of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) methods for individual workplace conflicts. Brazil is an interesting case to study ADR due to its high level of institutionalized individual workplace conflicts and its extensive workplace statutory regulation. Investigating the case of three Brazilian private companies of different sectors and sizes, I found that Brazilian companies are developing their own ADR practices, focusing on ombudsman offices (OOs), instead of using the mediation and arbitration methods that are predominant in the United States. I argue that the adoption of the ombudsman can be explained by institutional and workplace level factors, which include the characteristics of Brazilian industrial relations system, each company’s human resources (HRs) strategy, and the relationship between companies and unions. Furthermore, I discuss how the usage rate of the OOs might vary according to the OO’s internal structure and its functioning rules. The cases provide important insights for scholars interested in ADR in general and in Brazilian industrial relations system, as well as union leaders, HR managers, and other practitioners dealing with workplace conflicts globally.

In his review of theoretical and empirical research on grievance procedures, Lewin (1999) states that the “grievance procedure is widely regarded by scholars and practitioners as the centerpiece of union-management relations.” It is somewhat strange, then, that a trawl through British industrial relations publications for the 1980s and 1990s reveals very few dealing with the process for resolving employment disputes in unionised workplaces (usually articles about industrial tribunals, now called employment tribunals). Given this paucity of studies in unionised workplaces, it is less surprising that almost no research has been published recently on how employees and management in non-union firms go about dealing with individual conflict in the workplace today.