Rediscovering Process Values in Employee Grievance Procedures

• Author: William M. Haraway
• Published date: 01 November 2002
• Date: 01 November 2002
• DOI: 10.1177/009539902237273
• Subject Matter: Articles

ADMINISTRATION & SOCIETY / November 2002Haraway / EMPLOYEE GRIEVANCE PROCEDURES

This case study extends legalizationresearch to the public administration field by exploring

how the legal environmentof complex public organizations transforms social processes for

resolving employee disputes. Data analysis revealedthat the legal environment constituted

by the Commonwealth of VirginiaEmployee Grievance Program tends to result in the cir-

cumvention of immediate supervisors, therebyobviating their positional authority to resolve

employee grievances in a nonadversarial way. Findingssuggest that grievance procedures

designed to mimic judicially legitimateprocess and procedure alter the way flexibility,trust,

and shared meanings govern the essence of organizationalrelations and result in economic

and systemic costs.

REDISCOVERING PROCESS VALUES IN

EMPLOYEE GRIEVANCE PROCEDURES

WILLIAM M. HARAWAY III

University of West Florida

Recent efforts to reform governmentare challenging many of the basic

theoretical and managerial assumptions and values of governancein com-

plex public organizations. Under the political rubric of reinventing gov-

ernment, these efforts portray governmentas a failed enterprise and advo-

cate radical organizational changes in structure, policy, and procedure

designed to reduce the size of government by flattening organizationsand

encouraging the use of private sector practices and services (Goodsell,

1994).1This period of political, administrative, and institutional change

and instability confounds the internal and external legal environments of

public organizations at the national and subnational levels. Indeed, it

results in a dilemma as public administrators attempt to reconcile tradi-

tions of constitutional governanceand legal accountability with the search

for flexibility, innovation, and productivity in addressing managerial and

programmatic issues (Carroll, 1995). Founded in the U. S. Constitution

and public law,the legal environment of complex public organizationsand

the legitimacy of public administration are being challenged.2

499

ADMINISTRATION& SOCIETY, Vol.34 No. 5, November 2002 499-521

DOI: 10.1177/009539902237273

© 2002 Sage Publications

Intimately related to the issue of delegitimation is the consequential

conflict that manifests itself at the organizational level.Broadly speaking,

implementation of government reinvention initiatives such as downsiz-

ing, flattening management, and adherence to private sector practices and

techniques directly affects the fragile interplay between management pre-

rogatives and employee rights in the public work environment.As a con-

sequence, when internal disputes surface between management and

employees, their resolution is of major importance to perceptions of work-

place justice, and, ultimately, organizational and institutional legitimacy.

The following examples vividly illuminate the complexity of the tension

between managements’right to downsize, restructure, and reassign work-

ers and public employees’ rights to procedural due process.

Former Virginiagovernor George Allen’s 1995 reorganization of state

agencies and departments expands the number of employees who can be

dismissed without the protections of Virginia’s 52-year-old civil service

system (Goode, 1995). On one hand, Allen argues that his formal author-

ity to reorganize the state workforce is a valid, codified management pre-

rogative. On the other hand, however, his actions resulted in the reclassifi-

cation and subsequent termination of a number of high-level employees

whose positions became exempt under the commonwealth’s formal

employee grievance program. Sponsored by the Virginia Governmental

Employees Association, the adversely affected employees initiated legal

action against the commonwealth, asserting that their rights to procedural

due process under law were violated.3

A local government example further illustrates the tension. During the

late 1980s, the city of Hampton, Virginia’s parks director exercised his

management prerogative to terminate the employment of the city’s golf

course superintendent for cause. In response, the superintendent exercised

his employee right to have the dismissal reviewed through the city’s for-

mal employee grievanceprogram. The initial three stages of the grievance

process were management review steps in which subsequently higher lev-

els of management sustained the director’s action. But the finalstep was a

formal administrative grievance hearing conducted by a standing griev-

ance panel appointed by the Hampton city council. The panel ruled in

favorof the superintendent and ordered he be reinstated to his former posi-

tion. In defiance of the ruling the director reinstated the superintendent for

1 work day before exercising his management prerogativeto reassign him

to a different position in the department at the same pay grade butwith less

status and responsibility. As a result, the superintendent pursued enforce-

500 ADMINISTRATION & SOCIETY / November 2002