A mutual gains perspective on workplace partnership: Employee outcomes and the mediating role of the employment relations climate

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1748-8583.12113
• Author: Chris Forde,Danat Valizade,Olga Tregaskis,Chidiebere Ogbonnaya
• Date: 01 July 2016
• Published date: 01 July 2016

A mutual gains perspective on workplace

partnership: Employee outcomes and the

mediating role of the employment relations climate

Danat Valizade,Leeds University Business School, University of Leeds

Chidiebere Ogbonnaya, EasternAcademic Research Consortium for Quantitative

Social Science, University of East Anglia

Olga Tregaskis,Norwich Business School, University of East Anglia

Chris Forde, Leeds UniversityBusiness School, Universityof Leeds

Human Resource Management Journal, Vol26, no 3, 2016, pages 351–368

Recent years have witnessed increased research on the role of workplace partnership in promoting positive

employment relations. However, there has been little quantitative analysis of the partnership experiences of

employees. This article examines how the kinds of attributions employees make regarding indirect (union-

based) and direct (non-union-based) employee participation in workplace partnership might influence the

process of mutual gains. It uses employee outcomes to reflect partnership gains for all stakeholders involved

(i.e. employees, employers and trade unions). The article contributes to existing knowledge of workplace

partnership by examining the potential role of the employment relations climate as an enabling mechanism

for the process of mutual gains. The findings suggest mutual gains for all stakeholders are varied and

mediated through the employment relations climate.

Contact: Danat Valizade, LeedsUniversity BusinessSchool, Maurice KeyworthBuilding, University

of Leeds, Leeds LS29JT, UK. Email: d.valizade@leeds.ac.uk

Keywords: employees’attributions for workplace partnership; employee outcomes; employment

relations climate

INTRODUCTION

Anumber of studies have identified workplace partnership as an innovative means of

promoting better employment relations (Guest and Peccei, 2001; Geary, 2008).

However,the evidence base on who benefits fromworkplace partnership or whether

partnership arrangements actually deliver mutual gains for all stakeholders involved (i.e.

employees, employers and trade unions) is equivocal (Dobbins and Gunnigle, 2009; Butler

et al., 2011; Geary and Trif,2011). This lack of consensus may be attributed to misconceptions

that arise in the modelling of workplacepartnership. For example, some scholarstend to make

aprioriassumptions that genuine partnership can only exist in terms of union–management

collaborationbut not in circumstanceswhere employees are directlyinvolved in dialogues with

management (Roche, 2009; Benson and Brown, 2010). As a consequence, many partnership

studies have focused on union–management relationships without careful consideration that

partnerships might also occur through direct employee participation. Moreover, much of the

literature has focused on management and trade union reports about the incidence of

workplace partnership arrangements. Relatively little attention is paid to the kinds of

attributionsemployees make regarding workplace partnership,or the conditions under which

mutual gains mightbe delivered through employee outcomes (Roche, 2009; Butleret al., 201 1).

The present study extends our knowledge of the mutual gains perspective on workplace

partnership, using employee outcomes to assess partnership gains for all stakeholders

HUMAN RESOURCEMANAGEMENT JOURNAL, VOL26, NO 3, 2016 351

©2016 John Wiley& Sons Ltd

Pleasecite this articlein press as: Valizade,D., Ogbonnaya,C., Tregaskis,O. and Forde, C. (2016)‘A mutual gains perspectiveon workplacepartnership:

Employeeoutcomes andthe mediating role ofthe employment relationsclimate’.HumanResource ManagementJournal 26:3,351–368

doi: 10.1111/1748-8583.12113

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involved. Our approach differs from classic research on the mutual gains perspective (e.g.

Kochan and Osterman, 1994) in three ways. First, we operationalise workplace partnership

to include both ‘indirect employee participation’, occurring through trade union

representation, and ‘direct employee participation’, occurring through direct employee

involvement in decision-making (Upchurch et al., 2006; Cullinane et al.,2014).Second,rather

than narrow our scope to the mere ‘presence’of workplace partnership, we introduce the

concept of employees’attributions for workplace partnership to underscore employees’own

perceptions about intended partnership outcomes (Nishii et al.,2008;VanDeVoordeand

Beijer, 2015).Third, to engage criticallywith the mutual gains perspective,we examine the role

of a positiveemployment relations climateas a mediating variable thatenables mutual gains of

workplace partnership (Redman and Snape, 2006; Cafferkey and Dundon, 2015).

We use data fromthe 2009 National Centre forPartnership and Performance(NCPP) survey

of Irish employees to give insights into a distinctive quasi-corporatist partnership model, the

Irish national socialpartnership regime (Roche and Teague,2014). The Irish social partnership

model is credited by some for the remarkable economic growth and relatively low levels of

unemployment during the growth yearsof the economy (Teague and Roche, 2014).However,

others are much more critical of this model, highlighting the precarious nature of the

partnership settlement over the 1990s and 2000s, which was founded on voluntarism, weak

employment rights and the promotion of liberalisation (McDonough and Dundon, 2010).

Within this system, workplace partnership never took hold significantly, because of a weak

institutional regime that failed to tie employers to workplace partnership, and which did not

cultivate commitment and trust between workers and managers (Teague and Donaghey,

2009; Roche and Teague, 2014). These contradictions were suppressed during the years of

economic growth but surfaced rapidly in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, leading to

the collapse of the quasi-corporatist structure and the closure of the NCPP. Analysis of the

NCPP survey, immediately prior to the collapse ofthe system, does offer a unique insightinto

the nature of partnership in Ireland, providing a means to examine the conditions associated

with workplace partnership and the contextual factors that enable or constrain the process of

achieving mutual gains forall stakeholders (Marchington, 2015).

In the following sections, we describe the idea of workplace partnership with a particular

emphasis on the Irish context, elaborate on the mutual gains perspective and formulate a

number of testable hypotheses. Thereafter, we present the data and analytical procedures for

testing our hypotheses. We outline our key findings and discuss their implications for theory

and practice.

MODELLING OF WORKPLACE PARTNERSHIP

Although definitions may vary, workplace partnership is regarded as a set of collaborative

initiatives that seekto foster reconciliation of employer and employee interests through social

dialogues and consultative systems (Bélanger and Edwards, 2007). Some of these features are

fundamental to the social partnership model of the Republic of Ireland. Established in 1987,

the Irish model of social partnership that operated until 2009 was a national tripartite

framework involving employers, trade unions and public (e.g. local and state government)

authorities (Teague and Hann, 2010).This regime sought to createan orderly process for wage

regulation, to allow government to prioritise macroeconomic objectives of liberalisation and

globalisation (McDonough and Dundon, 2010; Roche and Teague, 2014). The model sought

to adopt a participative approachto social and economic developmentin which all parties were

involved in making decisions (Marchington, 2015). However, with the onset of the financial

A mutual gainsperspective on workplacepartnership

352 HUMANRESOURCE MANAGEMENT JOURNAL,VOL 26, NO 3, 2016

©2016 John Wiley& Sons Ltd.