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Theme 6: Employee Voice and Change Management

Theme research members: Dr Peter Butler

Project: Managers and trade unions: How close can we dance?

The topic of change management has become a burgeoning field of study in both British and overseas business schools. This popularity is evidenced in a growing refinement in the theoretical modelling of the precursors to effective change.  However, the role of trade unions and ‘collective voice’ in the process – be it as change agents, facilitators and enablers or reactionary defenders of the status quo – has been largely overlooked. The complexities of managing a significant change agenda in a unionised setting – one in which the presence of competing interests is formally acknowledged – remain significantly under researched.

This research project seeks to address this oversight. The research is based upon a study undertaken in a highly unionised heavy engineering MNC. The project commenced in 2006 and involved Dr. Peter Butler. Prof. Olga Tregaskis (University of East Anglia) and Dr. Linda Glover. The trade union relationship was reconfigured in the study organization as part of an organisational change initiative. The project has been assessing experiences at all levels of the management-trade union hierarchy and offers detailed insights into the role that trade unions can play in successful change management. As such, it explores the genesis and operationalisation of a major change initiative in a highly unionised company.  The findings demonstrate how a collaborative workplace partnership between management and trade unions was configured to enhance organizational capacity for change in the context of significant employee cynicism. The project employs a multi-method, longitudinal design combining objective performance metrics with observational data, longitudinal survey data and around 200 interviews.

Key findings include:

  • Successful change management is closely intertwined with employee involvement.   On the one hand partnership may act as an antecedent for the utilization of employee involvement and wider organizational change (forward synergies). Conversely, our findings also point to reverse synergies – the situation where involvement is used by management to initiate and subsequently bolster workplace cooperation and consensus.
  • The implementation of partnership allied to high performance work systems can be associated with subsequent and sustained increases in productivity and safety performance. However, other intermediary variables associated with the implementation process may be critical in mitigating potentially detrimental worker welfare effects arising from work intensification.
  • Partnership working as a tool for effective change management can come under pressure in periods of economic difficulty. However, some formats are more durable than others. The twin influences of trust and a ‘value added’ competitive strategy will shape the resilience of such pacts as will managerial skill and political sensitivity.
  • Managerial-trade union collaboration can, under certain circumstances, serve to overcome employee cynicism towards organizational change and joint managerial-trade union (distributed leadership) may be crucial in enhancing capacity for change. 
  • The findings indicate that workplace cynicism can be a fairly resilient and stable employee emotion. The creation of a positive industrial relations climate can off-set cynicism to a degree. Distributed leadership may be particularly pertinent in creating such a climate, especially so given that employees are more sensitive to injustices than positives during times of change. However, it may take considerable time for cynicism to fall – particularly where workforce tenure is high.


Selected outputs

Butler, P. and Tregaskis O (2018) Distributed leadership and employee cynicism: Trade unions as joint change agents. Human Resource Management Journal, [On Line First] 

Butler, P. and Tregaskis, 0. (2015)  Workplace partnership and legitimacy: a multi-layered analysis of the shop steward experience. Work Employment & Society December 2015 vol. 29 no. 6 895-911 

Glover, L. Tregaskis, O. and Butler, P. (2014) Mutual gains? The workers’ verdict: A longitudinal case study, International Journal of Human Resource Management, 25, 895-914. 

Butler, P. Tregaskis, O. and Glover, L. (2013) ‘Workplace partnership and employee involvement –contradictions and synergies: Evidence from a heavy engineering case study, Economic and Industrial Democracy, 34.1.5-24.

Tregaskis, O. Daniels, K. Glover, L. Butler, P. and Meyer, M. (2013) High performance work practices and firm performance: A longitudinal case study, British Journal of Management, 5. 225-244.

Butler, P. Glover, L. and Tregaskis, O. (2011) ‘When the going gets tough…: recession and the resilience of workplace partnership’, British Journal of Industrial Relations, 49, 4, 666-