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Two general viewpoints on workplace “partnership” as a union strategy are identified: it is seen as either a potentially effective strategy for restoring union influence, or as fatally flawed. Discusses the determinants of robust union‐management partnership relations in order to assist the evaluation of “partnership unionism” as a union strategy. Outlines a definition of workplace partnership based on practice. Although common elements with earlier attempts to promote or implement union‐management cooperation can be discerned, it is argued that contemporary workplace partnership has distinctive characteristics arising from its specific context. Two cases are used to illustrate the internal dynamics of workplace partnership and the nature of interaction with environmental factors. The necessary components of robust partnership relations are thereby isolated. Partnership is found to be not only compatible with, but dependent upon, stronger workplace organisation. Such an understanding is found to be a possible alternative to accounts that stress union incorporation and demobilisation.

The article explains why some Chilean companies have implemented a partnership strategy with trade unions, in a national context broadly described as unfavorable to such approach. Moreover, it discusses the shape and limits of this strategy.

The argument draws on a case study conducted between 2016 and 2018 in three large companies. Human resources managers, line managers and union officers were interviewed in each of these companies, and internal and administrative documentation were analyzed.

The article demonstrates that the management’s partnership strategy in the studied companies has emerged to contain the union revitalization. Additionally, it suggests this strategy has not favored trust-based relationships that guarantee long-term mutual gains for employees and companies. The article identifies some factors that explain this situation: the regulation, the economic uncertainty and the absence of a pluralist management perspective.

The article has the value of providing empirical evidence on union–management partnership, a topic that has gained strategic importance for large Chilean companies but remains unexplored in the mainstream the human resources management literature. The article also contributes to underscore the theoretical relevance of political and cultural variables in explaining management strategies and their results.

El artículo explica por qué surge una política de colaboración empresa-sindicato en un contexto como el chileno, ampliamente descrito como desfavorable a este tipo de enfoque. Asimismo, discute la forma en que se instala esta política y los obstáculos para su desarrollo.

El argumento se basa en un estudio de casos conducido entre el 2016 years el 2018 en tres grandes empresas. En cada una de ellas, se entrevistó a representantes de la dirección y dirigentes sindicales; se revisó documentación interna y administrativa.

El artículo demuestra que la política de colaboración implementada por la dirección en las empresas estudiadas surge para contener la revitalización sindical. Asimismo, sugiere que esta política no ha favorecido en todos los casos relaciones de confianza que garanticen ganancias mutuas para los trabajadores y las empresas a largo plazo. Identifica algunos factores que explican esta situación: la regulación, la incertidumbre económica y la ausencia de un compromiso gerencial con una perspectiva pluralista.

El artículo tiene el valor de proveer evidencia empírica respecto de la colaboración empresa-sindicato, un tema que ha ganado importancia estratégica para las grandes empresas chilenas y que, sin embargo, sigue siendo desatendido por la literatura de GRH. El artículo también contribuye a subrayar la relevancia teórica de las variables políticas y culturales en la explicación de las estrategias gerenciales y sus resultados.

Over the past decade the policy debate over improving U.S. public education has focused on market solutions (charter schools, privatization, and vouchers) and teacher evaluation through high stakes standardized testing of students. In this debate, teachers and their unions are often characterized as the problem. Our research offers an alternate path in the debate, a perspective that looks at schools as systems – the way schools are organized and the way decisions are made. We focus on examples of collaboration through the creation of long-term labor-management partnerships among teachers’ unions and school administrators that improve and restructure public schools from the inside to enhance planning, decision-making, problem solving, and the ways teachers interact and schools are organized. We analyzed how these efforts were created and sustained in six public school districts over the past two decades, and what they can teach us about the impact of significant involvement of faculty and their local union leadership, working closely with district administration. We argue that collaboration between teachers, their unions, and administrators is both possible and necessary for any meaningful and lasting public school reform.

The purpose of this paper is to report on a qualitative study of the views of a cross-section of managers and union officials engaged in joint learning projects on the impact more generally on the employee relations climate in those organisations.

Findings are based on an analysis of interview data incorporating the views and experiences of 32 union representatives and managers engaged in promoting learning in a number of case study projects in North West England.

Findings suggest that union-led learning and development has a clear impact on pre-empting potential performance issues for individuals in terms of better equipping them with the skills to achieve expected performance levels, assisting individuals with managing work-related stress and also to prevent discrimination against workers. Collectively, the managing of downsizing in particular through union-led learning support to retrain in order to redeploy effected staff or better prepare them for new employment opportunities was also a significant finding.

The research suggests that successful union-management learning partnerships can also have a positive impact on managing conflict in those organisations. However, further research is needed to test these assertions in other union organised sectors.

There are implications for management in recognising the “added value” that partnership working with their unions on learning can bring in terms of also both pre-empting and resolving individual and collective disputes in the workplace.

The research is one of few studies that focuses on the link between promoting learning through union-management partnerships and managing conflict in organisations and offers a clear insight into how this can be achieved in practice.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the roles and influence of shop stewards under workplace partnership regimes in five case study firms in the Republic of Ireland. It aims to assess the dynamics and potential longevity of partnership relationships.

A framework is utilised which analyses the scope, breadth and depth of union influence in terms of the structure of partnership processes and the capacity of agency to affect relations among shop stewards, union members and plant management.

The findings show that while union representatives view partnership in a positive light, there remain problems as to the longevity of partnership owing to management control and a disconnection between national (government) and local (workplace) support mechanisms for partnership. The paper concludes that social partnership is a process that remains anchored in a relationship of both antagonism and accommodation between capital and labour.

Much of the extant literature tends to focus on the outcomes of partnership in terms of the gains or losses to either management and/or unions. In this paper, the focus is on the way the “processes” of social partnership shape the behaviour and roles of workplace union representatives. A number of theoretical and policy implications are discussed.

This article explores the industrial relations factors associated with the adoption of teamworking and allied new working practices. A survey of trade union representatives in the UK steel industry reveals evidence that managers are less likely to introduce teamworking when they have to negotiate with trade unions. However, contrary to expectations derived from the existing literature linking teamworking with co‐operation, more conflict with unions was reported in workplaces where managers had introduced teamworking. In particular, when teamworking involved abandoning the distinction between process and maintenance work, conflict developed over health and safety and training issues. Union representatives were also more critical where managers sought teamworking for narrowly defined economic reasons, although union attitudes towards teamworking overall did not appear an important obstacle. However, formal agreements protecting workers, involving job security and redundancy provisions, did encourage cross‐functional working and teams adopting more responsibilities.

The authors link High-Involvement Work Systems (HIWS) with social network research both theoretically and methodologically by conceiving of these work systems as networks and by using network methods to better understand and evaluate these arrangements. Their approach is to integrate the institutional perspective of industrial relations with the analytical methodology of social network analysis. They use a longitudinal data set collected before and after the introduction of an HIWS in a pharmaceutical company to measure the impact on patterns of employee communication as well as communication between the union and management. Improvements were found in customer satisfaction, and positive effects were seen in the pattern and structure of organizational communication with an increase in the density of lateral and vertical interdepartmental communication, and a decrease in hierarchy. These results were confirmed using survey data on employee perceptions of particular types of communication and interviews with employees at various levels of authority.

Since the 1980s the U.S. has experienced a variety of partnership arrangements between labor and management focused on improving industrial relations and organizational performance (Ichniowski et al., 1996; Kochan et al., 1986; McKersie, 2002; Rubinstein & Kochan, 2001). Yet there is an absence of research comparing these partnerships across industries and evaluating the factors that: (a) contribute to their success; (b) seem to be barriers to achieving their stated goals; or (c) predict which ones will stand the test of time. (For exceptions see Preuss & Frost, forthcoming 2003; Rubinstein, 2001b). This paper summarizes recent U.S. experience with partnerships; identifies factors that seem to influence the formation and sustainability of partnerships, including the development of network ties across traditional boundaries; and suggests theoretical and empirical implications of this experience in building and sustaining partnerships at work. We draw on a variety of types of evidence from the authors’ cumulated experience and research with more than 50 such partnerships in the U.S., spanning multiple industries and multiple decades.

“Cooperative strategies—pooling, allying, and linking—pose the greatest new opportunities and challenges for the 90s.”

Contributes to the social partnership debate by exploring ways in which inter and intra‐union relations influence the development of partnership within a National Health Service Trust, by using observation techniques, focus groups and semi‐structured interviews involving ancillary workgroup members, shop stewards and managers (conducted in 1998). Argues, on an empirical basis, that union relationships may both facilitate and constrain management decision making and, ultimately, the implementation of policy. Views, conceptually, the parties’ understanding of partnership as changing over time, within a context that is contradictory; with management, trade union representatives and employees developing competing perspectives on “social partnership”, in part as a response to, and in turn recreating, a pluralistic workplace environment.