Beyond the management–employee dyad: supply chain initiatives in shipping

• Date: 01 May 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/irj.12210
• Published date: 01 May 2018

Beyond the management–employee dyad:

supply chain initiatives in shipping

Lijun Tang and Syamantak Bhattacharya

ABSTRACT

This article examines supply chain health and safety initiatives in the oil shipping in-

dustry. In particular, it explores the triangular relationships between ship cargo cli-

ents, shipping company management and seafarers and reveals the inherent

complexities and tensions involved. It shows that while managers capitalise on the

supply chain pressure to squeeze more effort out of seafarers, seafarers tend to adhere

to the corporate line colluding with managers to hide defects and falsify records. Nev-

ertheless, seafarers occasionally use the supply chain leverage to their advantage by

tactically exposing ship defects during ship inspections.

1 INTRODUCTION

While the management–employee dyad has been the traditional focus of sociology of

work, increasingly it is pointed out that this dyadic relationship can no longer capture

the full spectrum of working experience due to the changing world of work

(Korczynski, 2013; Wright and Kaine, 2015). First, the rise of service work brings

to the fore the role of the customer within the social relations involved in this type

of work (Korczynski, 2013). Second, as supply chains and global production

networks have become indispensable in the global economy, the relationship between

suppliers and their business clients is recognised to be an important factor that affects

employment practices (Wright and Kaine, 2015). Consequently, two types of

customers, one being individual customers of service work and the other business

clients in supply chains, have generated two bodies of literature that go beyond the

management–employee dyad.

This article examines the practices of supply chains in the oil shipping industry by

drawing on the insights from the literature on customer-oriented service work. It not

only recognises the worker–customer dyad as an additional dimension in work rela-

tions but also pays attention to the role played by customers in monitoring the perfor-

mance of workers (Fuller and Smith, 1991; Gamble, 2007; Korczynski et al., 2000).

Fuller and Smith (1991) argued that service companies increasingly solicited, collected

and utilised customer feedback to monitor the labour process and manage employees.

Therefore, employees are under both managerial control and customer control

(Bélanger and Edwards, 2013; Fuller and Smith, 1991). Gamble (2007) pushed the ar-

gument further by arguing that the presence of the customer, as a third party,

❒Lijun Tang, School of Business, Plymouth University, Plymouth, UK and Syamantak Bhattacharya,

Warsash School of Maritime Science and Engineering, Solent University, Southampton, UK.

Correspondence should be addressed to Lijun Tang, Postgraduate School of Management, Plymouth

University, UK. E-mail: lijun.tang@plymouth.ac.uk

Industrial Relations Journal 49:3, 196–210

ISSN 0019-8692

© 2018 Brian Towers (BRITOW) and John Wiley & Sons Ltd