As noted earlier in the chapter, Morley and colleagues (1988: 120–121) argue that negotiation is a process by which social order is constructed. Negotiation begins, they say, when people recognize and respond to issues about relations between and within groups. These issues concern change, or the possibility of change, in the social order. Such changes are ambiguous. To cope with the ambiguity, negotiators link change or its potential with ‘paradigm cases which illustrate threats (to the group and its values) and opportunities (to pursue the values of groups), and how they might be handled’ (Morley et al., 1988: 121). Paradigm cases are then said to help define the identity of negotiators as representatives of groups. The paradigm cases or ‘scripts’ used in the framing of identities are not imposed but sponsored. Which script to use may itself be a source of conflict, from within the group.
Negotiation itself is described as a form of ‘story telling’ (Morley et al., 1988: 124), whereby ‘negotiators’ (and arbitrators) have to work out what has happened in a particular case and why. They do so by creating order by reconstructing a story from reports (which incidentally are partisan and incomplete). This ‘story’ then provides the basis for making judgement and also action. The art of the negotiator is to find ways of articulating conflict in concrete and manageable terms, amenable to arbitration. In this way, disputes procedures institutionalize conflict, not resolving it but regulating it by defining conflict as a finite ‘technical’ problem. In turn, this contributes to what Morley et al. (1988: 131) term the ‘writing of organizational history’.
Questions which remain to be answered include, ‘to what extent are their limits to the way history is written?’, and also ‘what are the actors’ views of the problems and challenges they face (and how are these learned)?’ In addressing these questions, Morley et al. (1988) see a need to integrate the literature on negotiation with that on leadership.
Individuals in conflict with the organization
Classic examples of individual activity indicative of ‘conflict’ with the organization include:
· railway workers delaying shunting operations for a few hours by blocking lines with trucks;
· factory workers hiding key materials somewhere unexpected and hard to find;
· lorries ‘accidentally’ being backed into ditches;
· conveyor belts being jammed with sticks;
· weak fuses being put into electrical goods, slowing up processes at quality assurance stage;
· textile workers ‘knifing’ through carpets;
· farm workers choking agricultural machinery with tree branches;
· petty pilfering;
· viruses being unleashed into vulnerable computer systems and critical files being deleted by disgruntled employees;
· office workers spending hours playing computer games;
· having to throw away half a mile of Blackpool rock because a disgruntled dismissed worker at a sweet factory had replaced the customary motif running through the rock with a terse injunction.
The word ‘sabotage’ is derived from sabot, the French word for clog. During the industrial revolution, dissenting French workers inserted one of their clogs into the new machinery, therefore disabling it. There are many forms of industrial sabotage, all of which are said to be an index of underlying conflict within the organization. Mars (1982) studied pilfering and cheating at work, arguing that workplace crimes are not the exception that is assumed of a minority of employees. Fiddling (using company goods for personal gain, as an example) was found to be widespread and an integral part of all organizations. Mars (1982) cited the example of dustmen who became strike prone after their opportunity to make extra money through scavenging through the rubbish was eliminated by new collection technology. Strikes, he argued, are the most visible but least common manifestation of organizational conflict.
Most industrial relations activity is pursued at the collective level, through representatives of stake-holding groups. Consequently, the analysis of ‘individual’ functioning seems less appropriate than an analysis at the group and inter-group level. For instance, industrial relations disputes may be set in train by goal incompatibility between employees and employer. This has inter-group consequences not readily described or explained in terms of individuals.
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