Manajemen | Fakultas Ekonomi Universitas Maritim Raja Ali Haji 2004 24
BOOK REVIEWS
WAGE DISPERSION: WHY
ARE
SIMILAR WORKERS PAID DIFFERENTLY?
By Dale T. Mortensen. MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2003, xiii + 143 pp.,
no price stated (hardback)
L
abour economics is a sub-discipline which focuses on the working of labour
markets, but whose more eclectic forms extend to institutional characteristics
affecting interaction between employers and employees. The subject matter
of labour economics complements that of industrial relations and in its more
institutional manifestations there may be a fair degree of overlap. This book,
significantly mathematical in content, is very much concerned with developing
a model of the labour market. As such, it is potentially complementary to the
sphere of industrial relations, but there is no significant overlap.
In labour economics, as traditionally mapped out, occupational wage differentials are explained on the basis of different levels of investment in skill. Interindustry wage differences in a competitive world are explained by differences
in ‘net advantages’. The invocation of a non-competitive world allows for the
admission of differences in industry structure and relative degrees of bargaining
advantage as causes of differences in inter-industry wage levels. Wage dispersion
has typically been considered in an inter-firm context with firms offering a
spectrum of wages around some equilibrium level, the spread of the spectrum
depending upon the difficulties of acquiring relevant information – that is,
the costs of search. This book sets out to formulate a general theory of wage
variation, which is not confined to the wage dispersion case as just depicted.
One of the book’s initial claims is that skill-based explanations of differences
in wages only tell part of the story (they can only account for 30 per cent of
variation in wages). The author’s focus is on differences in the pay policies of
firms, particularly as they are related to differences in firm size and differences
across industries. The basic parameters of the model are worker productivity
(which varies across firms), firms’ recruiting efforts, workers’ search, the amount
of friction in the labour market (linked to job destruction and job offers received)
and the bargaining stance adopted by the firm in formulating its pay policy.
A monoponistic case is considered, with pay varying between a reservation
wage and the firm’s value of extra output. A bilateral bargaining model based on
‘sharing of rents’ is also suggested and in fact this receives corroboration from
the Danish data referred to. This characterisation of firms and their pay policies
fits into the general model in a fairly abstract way. There is no reference
whatsoever to any organisation by workers to improve their position in bargaining.
In the model, firms which are more productive pay higher wages. Differences
in firms’ pay policies generate a distribution of wages paid, even if workers are
‘identical’. With non-identical workers (for example, differences in skill), we
THE JOURNAL OF INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS, VOL. 46, NO. 3, SEPTEMBER 2004, 366–382
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observe typical positively skewed wage distributions. An extension of the model
relates to flows of workers, who have incentives to seek out employers offering
higher pay. More productive employers will recruit more workers as well as offer
better pay. Another extension allows for initial employer wage offers to be
followed by others that match what workers can obtain elsewhere. This leads on
to a tenure-contingent wage, which trades off workers’ desires for a smooth
income stream against employers’ desires to reduce quits or turnover.
The model is linked to matched employer-employee data sets. Differences
in firms’ pay policies have a strong statistical connection to wage differentials
associated with firm size and inter-industry variation. For this reader, having
largely deciphered rather than read the book, it was difficult to feel a great deal
of satisfaction over this. The mathematisation of the argument gathers together
a number of elements in a way that might not be possible otherwise, but there
is not much ‘flesh and blood’ in the depiction.
For the industrial relations reader, bargaining is ostensibly present in the book,
but only in a very constrained format. Monopsony and bilateral bargaining are
involved, but we do not get any sense of firms and workers marshalling each other’s
capabilities, or gauging each other’s reactions. It is hard to see many industrial
relations practitioners placing this book high on their reading priorities. Also, it
is very microeconomic in its focus, with concentration of the argument centred
on wages and productivity at the level of the firm. There is a big, macroeconomic,
globally contested world out there, in which there are other forces or tendencies that have implications for wages.
UNIVERSITY OF NEW ENGLAND
THE MEANING
RELATIONS
OF
MILITANCY? POSTAL WORKERS
GREG SMITH
AND INDUSTRIAL
By Gregor Gall. Ashgate, Aldershot, 2003, xvi + 348 pp., £55.00 (hardback)
Writing this review has been exceptionally difficult. This is because while Gregor
Gall’s fascinating and important book documents the experiences of a major group
of British workers in the 1980s and 1990s and raises a range of key questions for
industrial relations (many of which are very close to my own heart and research
agenda), it does have some significant and probably avoidable flaws.
Through a highly detailed account of the postal workers’ growing and
sustained combativity since the 1970s, Gall sketches a real political economy
of the contemporary workplace. Using 79 interviews, 20 observations of
meetings and dozens of secondary accounts, he convincingly documents the UK
postal product and labour market contexts, the political environment and the
nature and role of workplace organisation. The employer’s changing agenda is
presented a little less well, more from how the workers and unions reacted to it
than from a living analysis of the pressures and contradictory directions taken
by highly fallible Royal Mail managers, many of whom had come up through
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the ranks. But this weakness is understandable given his main thrust, which is to
critically examine ‘worker militancy’.
In what is a sensitive and complex account, he accounts for what is a comparatively high official and unofficial strike rate largely in terms of the juxtaposition
of a decentralised structure of collective bargaining in quite large workplaces
with a quite tight national framework that sustains a strong union identity. The
average 768 striker-days per 1000 Royal Mail workers between 1990 and 2001
compared to the national average of 27 striker-days (page 60) shows just how
different postal workers’ open levels of conflict were during these years from the
majority. It would have been helpful to establish whether there was a continuity
or discontinuity in conflict levels in the Post Office between the 1960s/1970s
and the 1980s/1990s. Gall cites evidence of industrial action in 1962 and 1964
and mentions briefly the 1971 eight-week national strike, but does not present
any data to allow a clearer view to be formed.
Two chapters cover the 1988 and 1996 national strikes and allow some of
the originality of Gall’s book to appear. Unlike many accounts of national
disputes he is sensitive to the reality that national strikes are complex processes
involving a balance of power and mobilising capacity between the central union
leadership and local leaders, and between local leaders and their members.
Another chapter discusses ‘strike propensity and strike potency’. It considers
postal workers’ ‘industrial confidence’, their ‘union’, ‘workforce’ and ‘social
characteristics’, the distribution of strikes around the branch structure and
between delivery offices and processing centres, as well as the role of branch
leadership. This refreshing focus on the detailed processes involved in
mobilisation extends into a major chapter on ‘strike organisation and strike
characteristics’ where the tactical considerations weighed by strike organisers are
highlighted.
The strength of the book is thus its direct treatment of what is too often
today a totally taboo subject — strikes. Gall shows why these postal workers
took strike action so often, how they mobilised for it, how their mobilisation
reflected different tensions between the central and local unions and how some
of these tensions were political (and although this is not stressed, often personal
as well).
The flaws in the book for me are twofold. The first lies in the weak quality of
its writing. There are two issues to this. On the one hand in several parts of the
book there is a serious over-academisation of the text, a tendency to ‘let rip’ with
academic citations as if to guarantee value or accuracy by multiple references.
Five references covering more than a line of text, for example, follow the
bland single sentence: ‘This (the 1971 strike) was regarded as a defeat, albeit of
varying degrees’ (page 33). The second issue is even more important. There
are too many grammatical errors or typos which, within a complex sentence
structure often repeating the same word two or three times, makes for tough
reading. A typical example is this sentence: ‘Being of both an activist bent
and activists (sic) within RM inclined the vast majority of these activists to be of
an ‘Old Labour’ or traditional social democratic perspective’ (page 215). It is
the poorly phrased sentences that are the biggest barrier. Here is an example
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369
chosen not because it is the most difficult but because it helps lead on to the
second group of flaws discussed below. Gall concludes on page 163 that ‘local
processes’ are very important in shaping strike propensity. ‘Where these local
processes lead to striking,’ he goes on, ‘approximates to one aspect of militancy:
creating and deploying available means in a combative manner, and represents
the fusion of capacity to be disrupted and capability to disrupt’. In this case Gall’s
meaning can eventually be discerned (in some it cannot). But it does slow down
the reader, making the book ultimately more of a chore than the pleasure it should
have been. My strong sense is that the whole book should have undergone one
further re-write by a skilled sub-editor.
The second group of flaws derive from Gall’s ambition to say something more
significant about strikes other than the fact that they take place, and that they
reflect grievances, opportunity and mobilising capacity. From the question mark
in the book’s title we expect to be enlightened. Is the use of the term ‘militancy’
helpful? What or who does it embrace? What is its significance today?
Unfortunately Gall’s book provides no clear answers to these questions. This
is in part because while his research instincts are probing in the right areas, his
industrial relations analysis remains weak. Instead of thinking more creatively
about the powerful evidence he has uncovered of resistance to workplace change
among generally very low-paid and relatively unskilled but organised workers,
he is too concerned to dispose of the ideological straw man that automatically
equates industrial action with heightened class and political consciousness. Thus
for Gall the need to shout out that ‘militancy’ has no ‘political clothes’ means
that he is less perceptive about the adaptive nature of worker resistance than he
might have been.
Gall thus makes little considered use of research I carried out on
Communication Workers Union activists’ attitudes, showing that there are
considerable differences between ‘political activists’ and ‘struggle activists’. The
former group are more likely to try and mobilise their members collectively
around such issues as equal pay and anti-racism; the latter group are more
likely not to vote for the Labour Party. This evidence adds another level of
understanding to the relationship between activism and political consciousness.
Where ‘struggle activists’ frame the grievances, we should not be surprised if the
eruption of a legitimate grievance into open resistance rarely goes further in terms
of raising political awareness generally. In contrast, where the framing is done
by ‘political activists’ (or imposed by governments) then the broader solidarities
involved may be what trigger the increases in politicisation experienced by some
of those whose working routines are interrupted by open resistance. The issue
of politicisation is not quite so black and white as Gall suggests.
Gall also pays less attention to the social construction of a legitimate grievance
than he could have done. In the sentence from page 163 quoted earlier for
example, he juxtaposes ‘capacity to be disrupted and capability to disrupt’.
But these are never fixed quantities. Their bite entirely depends upon the ideological frame through which workers see the issue: when a grievance is viewed
as collectively legitimate the balance of power is entirely different than when it
is not. Strike action may follow in those instances where the employer refuses
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to bow to the collective workers’ view; or management may make concessions
that dissipate the collective sense of grievance. Are the activists who mobilise to
frame a distinct employee perspective more ‘militant’ in the first scenario than
in the second? The term itself is perhaps not very helpful. Ultimately Gall’s easy
equation of ‘militant = regular striker’ undersells the trade union activist who
does not strike but who may be every bit as involved in resisting employer
arbitrariness and social injustice.
The book is worth looking at as an antidote to the benign volumes considering
the advent of team working and partnership in the UK over the last 15 years. It
also remains a major addition to the recent history of the British labour movement. What it is not is a serious discussion of the nature of trade union activism
and of the relationship between resistance to the employer and resistance to
capitalism.
LONDON METROPOLITAN UNIVERSITY
STEEL TOWN: THE MAKING
AND
STEVE JEFFERYS
BREAKING
OF
PORT KEMBLA
By Erik Eklund. Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 2002, xii + 236 pp., $40
(hardback)
Ever since I read early local histories by Weston Bate, Max Kelly, and Geoff
Blainey, I have, like many others, been fascinated by the interaction between local
communities and the broader context. Certainly, this book is written by one who
has a great passion for his topic and an historian’s eye for detail.
The book began in part from Eklund’s doctoral thesis and demonstrates his
capacity for primary research. However, sometimes in rewriting a thesis for a
general audience, scholars omit detailed ‘theorisation’. This can be problematic.
If theory is meant to illuminate reality, then the general reader, as much as
the academic reader, deserves to know the basis for the author’s claims. In the
admittedly difficult task of converting a thesis, Eklund sets out to ‘explore
the boundaries and meanings of Port Kembla’ (page 7). For Eklund, place or
locality is important, rather than the community.
There are evident difficulties with this approach, since as Eklund notes
early in discussion, the notion of what was Port Kembla was often contested
and redefined (page 5) and so the ‘locality’ of this story varies from section to
section. At some points he talks just of the town or community of Port Kembla,
while at other points ‘Port Kembla’ refers to the port itself or the industrial area
adjacent to or part of Port Kembla. The title of the book ‘Steel Town’ suggests
that the focus is indeed the Port Kembla town, but the coverage of the
industrial establishments is central enough to the story that Eklund’s ‘locality’
is never quite clear. This haziness perhaps reflects some omissions from the
original thesis from which the book is derived. More rigorous discussion of
how the human geography notion of ‘locality’ is articulated would have been very
useful, perhaps drawing on the work of human geographers such as Bob Fagan
who has indeed published research on aspects of Port Kembla.
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The section covering the decades before 1947 is the stronger section. It covers
most of the first 150 pages, with the second half of the twentieth century dealt
with in less than 50 pages. This imbalance is perhaps a weakness given the wealth
of industrial development and community changes, in a rapidly changing
wider context. In chapter 1, ‘Port Kembla: The Global and The Local’, Eklund
begins by discussing the broader context, emphasising the importance of the international context, although it would have been useful to consider fundamentals
such as product markets and social ideas. This is followed by a highly readable
example of the historical imagination with three fictional tours of Port Kembla
at three points: 1900, 1920 and 1940.
Then the formal economy from 1900 until World War II is examined, taking
as a theme, industrialisation as the engine of transformation of the locality.
In this respect I was disappointed that there was no reference to either local
industrial historian Don Reynolds or to the important and comprehensive
thesis of Glenn Mitchell, ‘Company, community and governmental attitudes
and their consequences to pollution at Port Kembla, with special reference to
the Electrolytic Refining and Smelting Company 1900-1970’. The latter offers
important findings in terms of the decisions to develop the area in the vicinity
of Port Kembla as an industrial region and the later effects of pollution on the
area. Nevertheless, this is a sweeping and ambitious chapter which seeks to explore
the evolving locality in terms of gender and class.
The following chapter on the informal economy provides interesting vignettes
on its nature and the ways in which families supplemented the family wage, or
even, in the case of small farmers, acted as self-producing economic units.
Drawing particularly on some of his 20 oral history sources, Eklund describes
with verve the different informal economy activities of men, women and children
in the early years of the twentieth century.
The next two chapters deal with the structures of locality and the competing
tensions of class and locality in local politics. This is perhaps the strongest
section of the book, where Eklund teases out some of the notions of locality
in looking at the different cross-sections of the Port Kembla community. He
draws a longbow perhaps in his claim that the ultimate failure of syndicalism was
localism not labourism, but in the main it is this section that Eklund’s attempts
to integrate the ideology, the broad context and local community are strongest.
The chapter on ‘Kooris and Port Kembla to the 1970s’ is an interesting and
sensitive overview of the marginalisation and resistance of local Kooris as they
met the incursions of nineteenth and twentieth century morés and regulations
and their progressive removal from the land. Mindful of his non-aboriginality,
Eklund offers the suggestion that what is needed is ‘an indigenous writer armed
with the Koori community to take Koori stories of Port Kembla into the public
sphere . . . [if] . . . the local indigenous community wants such stories to have a wider
currency’ (page 130).
As with the chapter on the Kooris of Port Kembla, the chapter, ‘Challenges
to Locality 1890 to 1947’ acts as an interface between the earlier history of Port
Kembla and the post-war era when industrialisation dominates much of the story.
In a wide-ranging survey, the chapter covers some of what has been discussed in
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the earlier chapters, but with the difference that it takes a long-term perspective,
focusing on some of the continuities. Thus the chapter highlights the ways in
which changes to local transport services, administrative boundaries, economic
developments, the Great Depression and even management strategies all
appeared to challenge the town’s political and social identity. The section on
competing local organisations begins a fascinating tale but more on the
interaction of local organisations would have been useful as an identifier for
locality.
As noted earlier, the second part of the book, covering the latter half of the
twentieth century, is somewhat thin and the notion of ‘locality’ is still more
ephemeral. This is especially disappointing in light of the subtitle of the book.
The 1960s are almost invisible while on page 176 there is a leap from the 1980s
to 2001 in one paragraph. Indeed the 30 years from 1970 are covered in only
15 pages. The town of Port Kembla receives quite uneven attention.
More problematically, parts of these chapters take on an anachronistic character
where the predominant cultural norms and hopes of the 1950s and 1960s are
dismissed as almost unworthy. This bias is evident for example in the photograph
facing page 116 of the hot strip mill from a 1955 company publication where
‘The workers in this photo are tellingly unnamed’. Yet the same is true in the
photo of the staff at Fairley’s in 1937 opposite page 84, that of the Wentworth
street road layers in 1937 following page 116, and that of the workers in the
government quarry following page 148. All are unnamed. This kind of
Ruskinesque bias diminishes the argument. These are all good and useful photographs, but consistency and rigour is needed in drawing on such sources.
There are also errors of fact. For example, on page 175 Eklund asserts that
nearly 12 000 jobs were lost from the steelworks in 1982-3. If that were the case
the workforce by 1985 would have been about 9000 — from the high of around
20 000 in 1982. Yet records indicate that there were nearly 13 000 employees at
Port Kembla steelworks in November 1984 and employment numbers remained
at this level for some years. Similarly, Eklund lists J.C. McNeil as the managing
director of the Steel Division. This position was held by Brian Loton, not McNeil
who was director of BHP. There are other errors in the book which should have
been avoided by an experienced historian such as Eklund. For example, the
photograph facing page 117 is of the foundations of Number 1 Open Hearth.
Yet the caption states that it is of a blast furnace, even despite the fact that the
handwritten annotation on the photo states that it is of a steel furnace.
In his conclusion Eklund highlights the importance of the oral histories on
which some of his analysis was based. These, he asserts, serve ‘as a reminder
that social life is constituted within places, however defined, and that the spatial
component of any history is crucial’ (page 195). Most people would appreciate
the potential richness of oral history and few would disagree with his assertion
about the spatial dimension. What has been difficult though is that the notion
of ‘locality’ on which the spatial dimension depended in this book has been
ephemeral and has perhaps not illuminated the realities of Port Kembla life as
much as the author had hoped. In part this may reflect his choice of sources for
oral histories which seem to be quite a narrow group of people. Eklund draws
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on their memories in creative and interesting ways, but it is not clear why and
how they were chosen. Availability of appropriate (however defined) sources
for oral history is an occupational hazard and that may have been an issue for
Eklund. The difficulty is that a wider array of oral sources may have enabled more
effective use of the notion of locality.
This is a bold and ambitious book which covers big and small issues over
100 years. It seeks to present the making and breaking of a steel town, taking
account of the broad context and local lives. It deals with important issues which
deserve thorough and scholarly analysis. The first two-thirds of the book
highlight elements of such attributes, but it then fades. I hope we can see more
of Eklund’s material of the early years of Port Kembla.
UNIVERSITY OF WOLLONGONG
NEW FRONTIERS
OF
DEMOCRATIC PARTICIPATION
DIANA KELLY
AT
WORK
Edited by Michael Gold. Ashgate, Aldershot, 2003, xvii + 326 pp., £50 (hardback)
This edited collection of conference papers on democratic participation at work
seeks to combine a ‘new frontiers’ perspective with a still new-ish millennium
opportunity for stocktaking, reflection and renewal. It succeeds, despite rather
than because of, its adoption of a quasi-scientific model of explanation. It
succeeds in providing information, illustrations and insight into relatively
recent European experience with the struggle (or is it now the social partnership?)
for democratic participation at work. The book describes some of the conditions
that have sustained or hindered democratic participation and sheds some light
on possible future developments in Europe. It is, however, perhaps less about
‘new frontiers’ and more about ‘familiar territory’. It is less about the frontier
of control and more about the frontier of cooperation. It will fail to convince
either friend or foe of the scientific basis of democratic participation at work.
Nevertheless, the scientific approach adopted provides structure, illustration and
theme and thus some coherence to the perennial challenges posed by an edited
collection.
The chapters in the book were originally presented as papers at a seminar of
the Scenario 21 Network in December 2000 at the European Trade Union
Institute (ETUI). This Network is a group of academics and researchers from
across Europe who share an interest in promoting the ideals of democracy
and participation and are supported by the Brussels-based ETUI. The authors,
individually and collectively, draw on considerable experience and knowledge of
European developments in democratic participation at work. The information
and insights presented have a certain timeless quality. Nevertheless, the threeyear delay till publication is both frustrating and unhelpful in reviewing the book,
particularly given the dynamic yet still vulnerable nature of the case studies that
underpin the book’s argument and conclusions.
The collection seeks to validate, or at least illustrate the validity of, the four
key propositions or hypotheses about employee participation that emerged in
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1996 out of earlier research undertaken by the Scenario 21 Network. The
four propositions are: (i) that different forms of employee participation can be
cumulative and may mutually reinforce each other; (ii) that major shifts in employment relations require innovative approaches to employee participation, including
the need to link shop-floor and enterprise changes to local, sectoral, national
and international labour issues; (iii) that appropriate conditions (including the
provision of information, research, training, media and legal support) are required
for the spread of participation; and (iv) that trade unions remain a crucial
foundation for the promotion of participation.
These four propositions all echo key premises of the Dunstan state government’s initiatives to develop industrial democracy in South Australia over 25 years
ago. The most controversial perhaps, being the debate on the complementary
nature, or otherwise, of direct and indirect forms of worker participation. So much
for ‘new frontiers’.
The four propositions are explored in 12 chapters organised into three parts,
comprising European Union and national dimensions, sectoral and company
case studies and thematic aspects primarily focusing on worker participation,
working time, trade union strategy and training. The book considers an eclectic
range of European experiences with chapters on European works councils, the
role of the Social and Economic Councils, the Dutch information and communications industry, French and Italian hospitals, the Norwegian offshore petroleum
industry, new management systems in Sweden, working time issues in France
and Italy, self-organisation at work in Germany, worker participation in Central
and Eastern Europe, and trade union education and democratic participation in
Malta.
The introductory chapter provides the expected background, summary and
overview of key themes and findings in regard to the four propositions previously
outlined. The new frontiers of participation are reviewed as comprising initiatives
toward more concerted democratic participation in the workplace, initiatives
toward more inclusive democratic participation and initiatives toward greater
investment in the development of participation. The introduction includes a
reappraisal of Scenario 21, particularly with a view to analysing the extent to
which the data now available confirm, qualify or reject the four propositions
articulated in 1996.
It is concluded, first, that the four key propositions or hypotheses of the
Scenario 21 Network have been illustrated, if not affirmed, by the book’s findings;
and second, that the new model of democratic participation is best understood
as being dynamic, evolutionary and primarily about partnership and win–win
possibilities. It is here that the clearest statement is made to suggest that a new
philosophy of social partnership may be emerging in Europe based on cooperation and a win–win game that forces employers and managers, workers and
unions, to reconsider the ‘rules of the game’ and their respective roles. The new
frontier alluded to in the book’s title appears to be regarded as a product of a
retreat by workers and unions from Utopian concepts such as self-management,
converging with the advance of so-called new management ideas such as the
learning organisation, empowerment and the high performance organisation.
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The editor argues in the introductory chapter that the opportunity to
. . . broker grass roots experiences and expectations at all levels of decision making by taking
into account broader issues of social and economic justice and solidarity . . . may well be the
most important mission for the trade union movement in the twenty-first century. Failure could
lead to further social disintegration; success to a new partnership with benefits for all.
This is a strikingly similar sentiment to that expressed by the Guild Socialists
and others 100 years ago about the workers’ rights case for industrial democracy.
Despite this, the book has much to offer to trade unionists, managers and
researchers and it should be part of any library on employee participation. For
trade unionists the book provides cause for optimism and for caution: optimism
that a broadly-based agenda for democratic participation at work remains on the
agenda and that a foundation of representative structures and processes has been
established in Europe; caution that the focus on partnership and co-operation
intensifies the risks of co-option by management and the state. For managers the
book provides cause for optimism and realism: optimism that high performance
workplaces can be built by taking the perceived risks involved in extending
democratic participation at work; realism in better understanding the scope of
the broadly-based changes and the investment in time and resources required
for transformative change. For researchers the book provides, as always, more
questions than answers.
Finally, it needs to be recognised that the new frontiers for democratic participation at work are now in China, India and Brazil. It is in these countries and
the like that millions of people are grappling anew with issues of safety, control,
co-operation, equity and democracy at work.
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA
PROMISE UNFULFILLED: UNIONS, IMMIGRATION,
WORKERS
STEWART SWEENEY
AND THE
FARM
By Philip L. Martin. Cornell University Press, Ithaca and London, 2003, vii + 232 pp.,
US$22 (paperback)
This book examines why the efforts of Californian reformers in the 1970s and
beyond have failed to improve farm worker wages and alleviate poverty in this
industry. It examines the history and operation of the Californian Agricultural
Labour Relations Act (ALRA), the key unions, the employers and the changes
in immigration policy over the past quarter-century and arrives at a clear and
definite analysis of the important factors.
Martin is an agricultural economist who has published several books on
immigration and poverty. He writes in a clear, concise and engaging manner.
At the same time, his prose is dense, making this volume an invaluable resource
of facts and figures on the agricultural workforce and industrial relations.
The book is organised into three major sections: part 1 examines the characteristics and history of farm labour and its unions, especially the United Farm
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Workers Union; part 2 examines in detail the provisions of the ALRA and a
multitude of cases relating to union elections, unfair labour practices, strikes and
remedies; part 3 examines non-traditional farm worker unions, as well as the role
of immigration in agriculture.
Martin’s historical analysis charts the influence of political change, union
strategies, immigration policy and employer policy on the final outcomes. He
concludes that the continued immigration of large numbers of poorly educated
men from Mexico and the Caribbean is the major factor undermining attempts
to upgrade farm labour wages and living standards. An associated factor was the
switch by employers from the 1980s onward from direct hiring to the use of
contractors. In this, there are parallels with sectors in Australia which make
extensive use of sub-contracting to employ very low-paid immigrant workers,
such as non-unionised areas of clothing and building construction. Attempts
to unionise and regulate these employment arrangements have proved largely
unsuccessful in both countries.
Since immigration has been shown consistently by economists to provide small
but measurable economic benefits for the national economy, it is unlikely
this policy will change. Moreover, Martin documents well the preference by
agricultural employers for cheap imported labour and the reasons for it. Cheap
labour translates into high land prices, which benefits the large businesses
operating most agricultural concerns in the US. In contrast, given the low
annual expenditure by most US households on fresh fruit and vegetables, Martin
shows that even major wage increases for farm workers would have a negligible
impact on household budgets. As such, producer claims that higher wages would
hurt consumers are shown to be groundless. All this is clearly and engagingly
explained by Martin in a way that makes the economics very transparent and easy
to understand.
For those whose interest focuses on the industrial relations side of the issue,
there is plenty of detailed analysis of Agricultural Labour Relations Board cases,
with colourful descriptions of characters and circumstances. Of particular importance to analysts of union strategy is the discussion of the four main industrial
tactics available to farm worker unions — the strike, consumer boycott, union
control of labour supply and political action. There is also an excellent discussion
of how and why the United Farm Workers Union failed to keep close to its
membership and run its affairs efficiently, although this factor alone does not
explain the continuance of wages that are about one-quarter the average wages
of non-farm workers. Martin examines why most union strategies proved
ineffective in the long-run, despite some high profile union-run consumer
boycotts which gained mass support from the late 1960s onwards and a temporary
rise in wages and benefits in the 1960s-70s. Paradoxically, strike action in this
industry actually helps growers get richer, since the inelastic demand for products
like lettuces and strawberries ensures that higher sales can be generated with lower
volumes of product.
However, unions have been successful from time to time in publicising the
plight of poor Latino and indigenous workers and mobilising community,
academic and trade union support behind them. The strategy of using boycotts
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and mass negative publicity is reminiscent of the ‘Fair Wear’ campaign in
Australia by the Textile, Clothing and Footwear Union, though on a much larger
scale. Farm worker industrial relations, it seems, is the stuff of popular media
coverage in the United States.
Nevertheless, this book argues that the ‘farm labour problem’ is unlikely
to disappear until curbs on immigration and abandonment of ‘agricultural
exceptionalism’ (the notion that agriculture is different from other industries),
as promoted by employers, finally occurs. It paints a credible scenario of what
would happen if this alternative policy course were taken — fewer farm workers,
but higher wages, more mechanisation and little impact on consumer food costs.
In contrast, the book ends with the spectre of continuing poverty and social
exclusion of a large section of US workers if the current policy continues. One
wonders, however, whether Martin’s analysis is too rooted in a deregulated labour
market framework to consider alternatives to curbs on immigration. Minimum
wage legislation for farm workers seems an obvious alternative. Given that he
indicates that higher wages would not have a large effect on product demand, it
is reasonable to question whether such legislation would affect labour demand
significantly and assist in raising living standards.
Promise Unfulfilled is recommended to anybody interested in the role of
immigrant workers in a Western capitalist economy, industrial relations and its
history in the US and the economics of immigration and industrial relations.
VICTORIA UNIVERSITY
SANTINA BERTONE
GOING PUBLIC: THE ROLE OF LABOR-MANAGEMENT RELATIONS
DELIVERING QUALITY GOVERNMENT SERVICES
IN
Edited by Jonathan Brock and David B. Lipsky. Cornell University Press, Ithaca and
London, 2003, vi + 320 pp., US$30 (paperback)
This book is the ninth in a series on public sector employment relations
published under the auspices of the Industrial Relations Research Association.
Like the preceding monographs, Going Public focuses on the changing workplace
and the ensuing pressures on workplace actors. The specific setting for this book
is the US public sector, which employs around 40 per cent of the country’s union
members. Pressures for reform in the US, as elsewhere, have been intense, and
many of them have directly affected union–management relations. With its focus
on the ‘growing and promising practice of cooperative relationships’ (page 3)
between labour and management, the book comprises a series of essays by a
number of authors divided into three broad sections. These sections explore,
first, the critical issues in public sector collective bargaining; second, the balance
between equitable employment practices and efficient service delivery; and third,
the effect of the structure of labour–management relations on the quality of
service.
In the first section, Bordogna considers the universal trends of downsizing,
the shift to part-time work, decreasing unionisation and decentralisation of
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bargaining in the public sectors of the US, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and
Canada through privatisation and contracting out. The breadth of the chapter
makes it a necessarily limited, if otherwise useful contribution. Thomson and
Burton take up the issue of declining US unionisation rates in chapter 2, arguing
that while the overall rates for federal and state governments have remained
relatively stable over the past few decades (thus providing unions with an
ongoing representational presence in the workplace), this has not led to greater
cooperative labour–management relations. Indeed, at the federal level, unions
have been under threat from current privatisation policy (which, if implemented,
will affect the jobs of half the civilian workforce) and the limitations on collective
bargaining rights.
The second section opens with a case study describing successful union–
management co-operation during the relocation of city fire stations in
Indianapolis. From this particular management-driven initiative, chapter 4 moves
to a knowledge-worker environment and considers the role and responsibility
of union leaders spearheading the delivery of quality services. Tobias, in a
polemic piece, argues that ‘if unions can enhance knowledge-worker satisfaction
by creating opportunities for meaningful participation, worker productivity
will be enhanced, thereby satisfying management needs’ (page 126). The
final essay in this section, by Ospina and Yaroni, continues the cooperative
labour–management theme by arguing that such relations should be the norm
rather than the exception in the public sector. From their empirical study of
three cases of successful labour–management co-operation they provide a
taxonomy of behaviours (competencies) identified as conducive to co-operative
relations.
The third (and most substantial) section of the book opens with a piece by
Masters and Albright, which sets out the political dimensions of the US debate
in labour–management relations. As public sector reform has proceeded along
the ‘conservative-to-liberal ideological spectrum’ (page 173), chapter 6 puts
into context some of the references made to the Bush administration in earlier
chapters. Keefe, in chapter 7, canvasses the research on employee and union
participation in the transformation of work, but then rather disappointingly,
follows much of the same terrain as Tobias (chapter 4) in asking whether unions
can be transformational agents in public sector workplace design. Next, Kerchner
argues that ‘producing quality has become union work’ in his essay on the US
public school system, suggesting that traditional guild structures can contribute
to the delivery of quality services. Chapter 9 considers the role of public sector
labour law in assisting labour–management co-operation. Malin argues that
current US labour law is not conducive to co-operation as it provides too many
incentives for litigation: ‘consequently, to the extent that labour–management
co-operation exists, it does so in spite of, rather than because of, the law’
(page 268). Relegated to the end of the book (but perhaps better situated
in another book altogether), is Eaton and Voos’ contribution on supervisory
unionism. The chapter, apart from its discontinuity with the main themes of
the book, concludes that supervisory unionism has no bearing on labourmanagement relations.
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The expectations of union–management co-operation in the US public
sector by the contributors to Going Public, particularly those advocating a more
proactive role by union leaders, belie the ideology of the current Bush administration, which is actively seeking to avoid (and even eliminate) unions and a labour
law regime which does not consider alternatives to litigation or collective
bargaining. The empirical work presented demonstrates that the many
employers, employees and unionists support a more cooperative work environment. So, while not offering solutions to these dilemmas, the contribution of
Going Public is in its identification of the source of tensions between the rhetoric
and (limited) practice of labour–-management co-operation in the US and the
reality of its political and legal barriers.
VICTORIA UNIVERSITY
LEADERSHIP
IN
BERNADINE VAN GRAMBERG
ORGANIZATIONS: CURRENT ISSUES
AND
KEY TRENDS
Edited by John Storey. Routledge, London and New York, 2004, xiii + 349 pp., £23
(paperback)
On the very first page of this overdue but nevertheless most welcome assessment
of leadership, John Storey reveals some quite telling statistics. A literature search
of the word ‘leadership’ on the Amazon.com website netted an astounding 11 686
results. In terms of the focus of current scholarship, a much more sobering
encounter may be experienced if the search term is restricted to ‘leadership and
development’. This netted Storey a mere 4.8% of the total results.
If the Amazon.com experiment isn’t enough to convince the reader that
we are up to our armpits in publications about leadership, then consider this
measured deconstruction of the Ebsco database. Ebsco, which indexes and
abstracts publications on business and management, listed a mere 136 published
articles on leadership from 1970–1971. Fast-forward to 1980–1981 and the
number doubles to 258. By 1990–1991 the total inflates to over 1100 articles but
within another decade (2001–2002), the total is an overwhelming 10 000 or so
publications. Add to this the myriad of workshops and development courses
and you get some impression of the magnitude of the leadership ‘business’; a
business which attracts an annual corporate expenditure of over $40 billion in
the US alone each year.
The trouble seems to be that, despite all this intellectual and financial
investment in the leadership business, the value of leadership is simply asserted
and its nature assumed in most major reports on the subject. In the main, what
we find is ‘an unambiguous declaration of belief’ in leadership as the panacea for
organisational disorders. In an effort to introduce a sense of reality to the notion
of leadership, this collection of essays seeks to address two interrelated questions:
first, what organisations are looking for and seeking to achieve when they give
leadership a high priority on the corporate agenda; and second, why there is
currently so much attention to the topic.
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The answer is the regurgitation of a familiar thesis which remains deficient,
inadequately tested and debated, and ineffectively scrutinised. This thesis posits
that the environment has forced organisations to respond to increasing uncertainty, instability and unregulated competition. Thus, there is a perceived need
to change organisational shape, size, scope and methods of operation. With scarce
resources, flatter structures and employees in need of motivation and direction,
change-management has thus dominated organisational agendas for more than
two decades. Leadership has offered a most attractive response to the challenges
presented.
In considering both these questions, this book starts with the observation that
there are changing interpretations about what constitutes leadership. Various
essays then go on to suggest that interpretations of desired models of leadership
are culturally shaped and that there are signs of a further shift which in turn raises
questions about the viability and sustainability of the charismatic-transformational
model. In parts 5 and 6, leadership development issues in both the private
and public sectors loom as an additional concern. Many of the essays here are
critical of the conventional methods of leadership development and consider some
alternative approaches.
Several of these essays consider the processes involved in leadership training
and development. The success or otherwise of this depends, of course, on whether
it is possible to ‘learn’ leadership or whether, indeed, leadership can be taught.
These questions are old chestnuts in the arena of leadership scholarship but
current trends in leadership research point to a negative answer to both
questions. Antonacopoulou and Bento suggest in their essay that these questions
are redundant as leadership in their view is learning. They explore the notion
of ‘learning leadership’ as one which focuses on the ‘learner’ discovering and
experiencing leadership from within. This is seen as manifesting itself as a
continuous process rather than something which can be conferred by others.
Alternatively, Graham Mole argues that any attempt to teach people the
‘universals’ or the fundamental ‘truths’ of leadership is virtually doomed to
failure. Mole contends that leadership is a job and should be perceived as such.
Jobs can be analysed and Mole’s view is that analysing leadership as a job can
enlighten us as to what is effective performance and what is not. Armed with
this knowledge, says Mole, we are provided with the basis for modelling it
(in behavioural terms) as a means by which to learn.
The book’s prognosis for the future of leadership is shaped around the
contention that the obsession with promoting the ideal as the charismatictransformational leader seems to be over. In its place, we are starting to see at
least a flirtation with collective or distributive forms of leadership. This seems
due, at least in part, to disenchantment with the individual hero-leader but also
because such an alternative seems to be consistent with the preferred cultures
and structures of organisations which embrace the concept of empowered teams
and applaud the value of knowledge work. What all this means, the book
concludes, is that preferred models of leadership cannot be understood outside
wider tendencies, theories and patterns of social organisation. Leadership must
be seen as merely one part of the wider organisational landscape.
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Leadership in Organizations is a particularly thought-provoking book which
leaves the reader contentedly mugged by a welcome reality. But it does not
do it all for us
WAGE DISPERSION: WHY
ARE
SIMILAR WORKERS PAID DIFFERENTLY?
By Dale T. Mortensen. MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2003, xiii + 143 pp.,
no price stated (hardback)
L
abour economics is a sub-discipline which focuses on the working of labour
markets, but whose more eclectic forms extend to institutional characteristics
affecting interaction between employers and employees. The subject matter
of labour economics complements that of industrial relations and in its more
institutional manifestations there may be a fair degree of overlap. This book,
significantly mathematical in content, is very much concerned with developing
a model of the labour market. As such, it is potentially complementary to the
sphere of industrial relations, but there is no significant overlap.
In labour economics, as traditionally mapped out, occupational wage differentials are explained on the basis of different levels of investment in skill. Interindustry wage differences in a competitive world are explained by differences
in ‘net advantages’. The invocation of a non-competitive world allows for the
admission of differences in industry structure and relative degrees of bargaining
advantage as causes of differences in inter-industry wage levels. Wage dispersion
has typically been considered in an inter-firm context with firms offering a
spectrum of wages around some equilibrium level, the spread of the spectrum
depending upon the difficulties of acquiring relevant information – that is,
the costs of search. This book sets out to formulate a general theory of wage
variation, which is not confined to the wage dispersion case as just depicted.
One of the book’s initial claims is that skill-based explanations of differences
in wages only tell part of the story (they can only account for 30 per cent of
variation in wages). The author’s focus is on differences in the pay policies of
firms, particularly as they are related to differences in firm size and differences
across industries. The basic parameters of the model are worker productivity
(which varies across firms), firms’ recruiting efforts, workers’ search, the amount
of friction in the labour market (linked to job destruction and job offers received)
and the bargaining stance adopted by the firm in formulating its pay policy.
A monoponistic case is considered, with pay varying between a reservation
wage and the firm’s value of extra output. A bilateral bargaining model based on
‘sharing of rents’ is also suggested and in fact this receives corroboration from
the Danish data referred to. This characterisation of firms and their pay policies
fits into the general model in a fairly abstract way. There is no reference
whatsoever to any organisation by workers to improve their position in bargaining.
In the model, firms which are more productive pay higher wages. Differences
in firms’ pay policies generate a distribution of wages paid, even if workers are
‘identical’. With non-identical workers (for example, differences in skill), we
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observe typical positively skewed wage distributions. An extension of the model
relates to flows of workers, who have incentives to seek out employers offering
higher pay. More productive employers will recruit more workers as well as offer
better pay. Another extension allows for initial employer wage offers to be
followed by others that match what workers can obtain elsewhere. This leads on
to a tenure-contingent wage, which trades off workers’ desires for a smooth
income stream against employers’ desires to reduce quits or turnover.
The model is linked to matched employer-employee data sets. Differences
in firms’ pay policies have a strong statistical connection to wage differentials
associated with firm size and inter-industry variation. For this reader, having
largely deciphered rather than read the book, it was difficult to feel a great deal
of satisfaction over this. The mathematisation of the argument gathers together
a number of elements in a way that might not be possible otherwise, but there
is not much ‘flesh and blood’ in the depiction.
For the industrial relations reader, bargaining is ostensibly present in the book,
but only in a very constrained format. Monopsony and bilateral bargaining are
involved, but we do not get any sense of firms and workers marshalling each other’s
capabilities, or gauging each other’s reactions. It is hard to see many industrial
relations practitioners placing this book high on their reading priorities. Also, it
is very microeconomic in its focus, with concentration of the argument centred
on wages and productivity at the level of the firm. There is a big, macroeconomic,
globally contested world out there, in which there are other forces or tendencies that have implications for wages.
UNIVERSITY OF NEW ENGLAND
THE MEANING
RELATIONS
OF
MILITANCY? POSTAL WORKERS
GREG SMITH
AND INDUSTRIAL
By Gregor Gall. Ashgate, Aldershot, 2003, xvi + 348 pp., £55.00 (hardback)
Writing this review has been exceptionally difficult. This is because while Gregor
Gall’s fascinating and important book documents the experiences of a major group
of British workers in the 1980s and 1990s and raises a range of key questions for
industrial relations (many of which are very close to my own heart and research
agenda), it does have some significant and probably avoidable flaws.
Through a highly detailed account of the postal workers’ growing and
sustained combativity since the 1970s, Gall sketches a real political economy
of the contemporary workplace. Using 79 interviews, 20 observations of
meetings and dozens of secondary accounts, he convincingly documents the UK
postal product and labour market contexts, the political environment and the
nature and role of workplace organisation. The employer’s changing agenda is
presented a little less well, more from how the workers and unions reacted to it
than from a living analysis of the pressures and contradictory directions taken
by highly fallible Royal Mail managers, many of whom had come up through
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the ranks. But this weakness is understandable given his main thrust, which is to
critically examine ‘worker militancy’.
In what is a sensitive and complex account, he accounts for what is a comparatively high official and unofficial strike rate largely in terms of the juxtaposition
of a decentralised structure of collective bargaining in quite large workplaces
with a quite tight national framework that sustains a strong union identity. The
average 768 striker-days per 1000 Royal Mail workers between 1990 and 2001
compared to the national average of 27 striker-days (page 60) shows just how
different postal workers’ open levels of conflict were during these years from the
majority. It would have been helpful to establish whether there was a continuity
or discontinuity in conflict levels in the Post Office between the 1960s/1970s
and the 1980s/1990s. Gall cites evidence of industrial action in 1962 and 1964
and mentions briefly the 1971 eight-week national strike, but does not present
any data to allow a clearer view to be formed.
Two chapters cover the 1988 and 1996 national strikes and allow some of
the originality of Gall’s book to appear. Unlike many accounts of national
disputes he is sensitive to the reality that national strikes are complex processes
involving a balance of power and mobilising capacity between the central union
leadership and local leaders, and between local leaders and their members.
Another chapter discusses ‘strike propensity and strike potency’. It considers
postal workers’ ‘industrial confidence’, their ‘union’, ‘workforce’ and ‘social
characteristics’, the distribution of strikes around the branch structure and
between delivery offices and processing centres, as well as the role of branch
leadership. This refreshing focus on the detailed processes involved in
mobilisation extends into a major chapter on ‘strike organisation and strike
characteristics’ where the tactical considerations weighed by strike organisers are
highlighted.
The strength of the book is thus its direct treatment of what is too often
today a totally taboo subject — strikes. Gall shows why these postal workers
took strike action so often, how they mobilised for it, how their mobilisation
reflected different tensions between the central and local unions and how some
of these tensions were political (and although this is not stressed, often personal
as well).
The flaws in the book for me are twofold. The first lies in the weak quality of
its writing. There are two issues to this. On the one hand in several parts of the
book there is a serious over-academisation of the text, a tendency to ‘let rip’ with
academic citations as if to guarantee value or accuracy by multiple references.
Five references covering more than a line of text, for example, follow the
bland single sentence: ‘This (the 1971 strike) was regarded as a defeat, albeit of
varying degrees’ (page 33). The second issue is even more important. There
are too many grammatical errors or typos which, within a complex sentence
structure often repeating the same word two or three times, makes for tough
reading. A typical example is this sentence: ‘Being of both an activist bent
and activists (sic) within RM inclined the vast majority of these activists to be of
an ‘Old Labour’ or traditional social democratic perspective’ (page 215). It is
the poorly phrased sentences that are the biggest barrier. Here is an example
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chosen not because it is the most difficult but because it helps lead on to the
second group of flaws discussed below. Gall concludes on page 163 that ‘local
processes’ are very important in shaping strike propensity. ‘Where these local
processes lead to striking,’ he goes on, ‘approximates to one aspect of militancy:
creating and deploying available means in a combative manner, and represents
the fusion of capacity to be disrupted and capability to disrupt’. In this case Gall’s
meaning can eventually be discerned (in some it cannot). But it does slow down
the reader, making the book ultimately more of a chore than the pleasure it should
have been. My strong sense is that the whole book should have undergone one
further re-write by a skilled sub-editor.
The second group of flaws derive from Gall’s ambition to say something more
significant about strikes other than the fact that they take place, and that they
reflect grievances, opportunity and mobilising capacity. From the question mark
in the book’s title we expect to be enlightened. Is the use of the term ‘militancy’
helpful? What or who does it embrace? What is its significance today?
Unfortunately Gall’s book provides no clear answers to these questions. This
is in part because while his research instincts are probing in the right areas, his
industrial relations analysis remains weak. Instead of thinking more creatively
about the powerful evidence he has uncovered of resistance to workplace change
among generally very low-paid and relatively unskilled but organised workers,
he is too concerned to dispose of the ideological straw man that automatically
equates industrial action with heightened class and political consciousness. Thus
for Gall the need to shout out that ‘militancy’ has no ‘political clothes’ means
that he is less perceptive about the adaptive nature of worker resistance than he
might have been.
Gall thus makes little considered use of research I carried out on
Communication Workers Union activists’ attitudes, showing that there are
considerable differences between ‘political activists’ and ‘struggle activists’. The
former group are more likely to try and mobilise their members collectively
around such issues as equal pay and anti-racism; the latter group are more
likely not to vote for the Labour Party. This evidence adds another level of
understanding to the relationship between activism and political consciousness.
Where ‘struggle activists’ frame the grievances, we should not be surprised if the
eruption of a legitimate grievance into open resistance rarely goes further in terms
of raising political awareness generally. In contrast, where the framing is done
by ‘political activists’ (or imposed by governments) then the broader solidarities
involved may be what trigger the increases in politicisation experienced by some
of those whose working routines are interrupted by open resistance. The issue
of politicisation is not quite so black and white as Gall suggests.
Gall also pays less attention to the social construction of a legitimate grievance
than he could have done. In the sentence from page 163 quoted earlier for
example, he juxtaposes ‘capacity to be disrupted and capability to disrupt’.
But these are never fixed quantities. Their bite entirely depends upon the ideological frame through which workers see the issue: when a grievance is viewed
as collectively legitimate the balance of power is entirely different than when it
is not. Strike action may follow in those instances where the employer refuses
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to bow to the collective workers’ view; or management may make concessions
that dissipate the collective sense of grievance. Are the activists who mobilise to
frame a distinct employee perspective more ‘militant’ in the first scenario than
in the second? The term itself is perhaps not very helpful. Ultimately Gall’s easy
equation of ‘militant = regular striker’ undersells the trade union activist who
does not strike but who may be every bit as involved in resisting employer
arbitrariness and social injustice.
The book is worth looking at as an antidote to the benign volumes considering
the advent of team working and partnership in the UK over the last 15 years. It
also remains a major addition to the recent history of the British labour movement. What it is not is a serious discussion of the nature of trade union activism
and of the relationship between resistance to the employer and resistance to
capitalism.
LONDON METROPOLITAN UNIVERSITY
STEEL TOWN: THE MAKING
AND
STEVE JEFFERYS
BREAKING
OF
PORT KEMBLA
By Erik Eklund. Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 2002, xii + 236 pp., $40
(hardback)
Ever since I read early local histories by Weston Bate, Max Kelly, and Geoff
Blainey, I have, like many others, been fascinated by the interaction between local
communities and the broader context. Certainly, this book is written by one who
has a great passion for his topic and an historian’s eye for detail.
The book began in part from Eklund’s doctoral thesis and demonstrates his
capacity for primary research. However, sometimes in rewriting a thesis for a
general audience, scholars omit detailed ‘theorisation’. This can be problematic.
If theory is meant to illuminate reality, then the general reader, as much as
the academic reader, deserves to know the basis for the author’s claims. In the
admittedly difficult task of converting a thesis, Eklund sets out to ‘explore
the boundaries and meanings of Port Kembla’ (page 7). For Eklund, place or
locality is important, rather than the community.
There are evident difficulties with this approach, since as Eklund notes
early in discussion, the notion of what was Port Kembla was often contested
and redefined (page 5) and so the ‘locality’ of this story varies from section to
section. At some points he talks just of the town or community of Port Kembla,
while at other points ‘Port Kembla’ refers to the port itself or the industrial area
adjacent to or part of Port Kembla. The title of the book ‘Steel Town’ suggests
that the focus is indeed the Port Kembla town, but the coverage of the
industrial establishments is central enough to the story that Eklund’s ‘locality’
is never quite clear. This haziness perhaps reflects some omissions from the
original thesis from which the book is derived. More rigorous discussion of
how the human geography notion of ‘locality’ is articulated would have been very
useful, perhaps drawing on the work of human geographers such as Bob Fagan
who has indeed published research on aspects of Port Kembla.
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The section covering the decades before 1947 is the stronger section. It covers
most of the first 150 pages, with the second half of the twentieth century dealt
with in less than 50 pages. This imbalance is perhaps a weakness given the wealth
of industrial development and community changes, in a rapidly changing
wider context. In chapter 1, ‘Port Kembla: The Global and The Local’, Eklund
begins by discussing the broader context, emphasising the importance of the international context, although it would have been useful to consider fundamentals
such as product markets and social ideas. This is followed by a highly readable
example of the historical imagination with three fictional tours of Port Kembla
at three points: 1900, 1920 and 1940.
Then the formal economy from 1900 until World War II is examined, taking
as a theme, industrialisation as the engine of transformation of the locality.
In this respect I was disappointed that there was no reference to either local
industrial historian Don Reynolds or to the important and comprehensive
thesis of Glenn Mitchell, ‘Company, community and governmental attitudes
and their consequences to pollution at Port Kembla, with special reference to
the Electrolytic Refining and Smelting Company 1900-1970’. The latter offers
important findings in terms of the decisions to develop the area in the vicinity
of Port Kembla as an industrial region and the later effects of pollution on the
area. Nevertheless, this is a sweeping and ambitious chapter which seeks to explore
the evolving locality in terms of gender and class.
The following chapter on the informal economy provides interesting vignettes
on its nature and the ways in which families supplemented the family wage, or
even, in the case of small farmers, acted as self-producing economic units.
Drawing particularly on some of his 20 oral history sources, Eklund describes
with verve the different informal economy activities of men, women and children
in the early years of the twentieth century.
The next two chapters deal with the structures of locality and the competing
tensions of class and locality in local politics. This is perhaps the strongest
section of the book, where Eklund teases out some of the notions of locality
in looking at the different cross-sections of the Port Kembla community. He
draws a longbow perhaps in his claim that the ultimate failure of syndicalism was
localism not labourism, but in the main it is this section that Eklund’s attempts
to integrate the ideology, the broad context and local community are strongest.
The chapter on ‘Kooris and Port Kembla to the 1970s’ is an interesting and
sensitive overview of the marginalisation and resistance of local Kooris as they
met the incursions of nineteenth and twentieth century morés and regulations
and their progressive removal from the land. Mindful of his non-aboriginality,
Eklund offers the suggestion that what is needed is ‘an indigenous writer armed
with the Koori community to take Koori stories of Port Kembla into the public
sphere . . . [if] . . . the local indigenous community wants such stories to have a wider
currency’ (page 130).
As with the chapter on the Kooris of Port Kembla, the chapter, ‘Challenges
to Locality 1890 to 1947’ acts as an interface between the earlier history of Port
Kembla and the post-war era when industrialisation dominates much of the story.
In a wide-ranging survey, the chapter covers some of what has been discussed in
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the earlier chapters, but with the difference that it takes a long-term perspective,
focusing on some of the continuities. Thus the chapter highlights the ways in
which changes to local transport services, administrative boundaries, economic
developments, the Great Depression and even management strategies all
appeared to challenge the town’s political and social identity. The section on
competing local organisations begins a fascinating tale but more on the
interaction of local organisations would have been useful as an identifier for
locality.
As noted earlier, the second part of the book, covering the latter half of the
twentieth century, is somewhat thin and the notion of ‘locality’ is still more
ephemeral. This is especially disappointing in light of the subtitle of the book.
The 1960s are almost invisible while on page 176 there is a leap from the 1980s
to 2001 in one paragraph. Indeed the 30 years from 1970 are covered in only
15 pages. The town of Port Kembla receives quite uneven attention.
More problematically, parts of these chapters take on an anachronistic character
where the predominant cultural norms and hopes of the 1950s and 1960s are
dismissed as almost unworthy. This bias is evident for example in the photograph
facing page 116 of the hot strip mill from a 1955 company publication where
‘The workers in this photo are tellingly unnamed’. Yet the same is true in the
photo of the staff at Fairley’s in 1937 opposite page 84, that of the Wentworth
street road layers in 1937 following page 116, and that of the workers in the
government quarry following page 148. All are unnamed. This kind of
Ruskinesque bias diminishes the argument. These are all good and useful photographs, but consistency and rigour is needed in drawing on such sources.
There are also errors of fact. For example, on page 175 Eklund asserts that
nearly 12 000 jobs were lost from the steelworks in 1982-3. If that were the case
the workforce by 1985 would have been about 9000 — from the high of around
20 000 in 1982. Yet records indicate that there were nearly 13 000 employees at
Port Kembla steelworks in November 1984 and employment numbers remained
at this level for some years. Similarly, Eklund lists J.C. McNeil as the managing
director of the Steel Division. This position was held by Brian Loton, not McNeil
who was director of BHP. There are other errors in the book which should have
been avoided by an experienced historian such as Eklund. For example, the
photograph facing page 117 is of the foundations of Number 1 Open Hearth.
Yet the caption states that it is of a blast furnace, even despite the fact that the
handwritten annotation on the photo states that it is of a steel furnace.
In his conclusion Eklund highlights the importance of the oral histories on
which some of his analysis was based. These, he asserts, serve ‘as a reminder
that social life is constituted within places, however defined, and that the spatial
component of any history is crucial’ (page 195). Most people would appreciate
the potential richness of oral history and few would disagree with his assertion
about the spatial dimension. What has been difficult though is that the notion
of ‘locality’ on which the spatial dimension depended in this book has been
ephemeral and has perhaps not illuminated the realities of Port Kembla life as
much as the author had hoped. In part this may reflect his choice of sources for
oral histories which seem to be quite a narrow group of people. Eklund draws
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on their memories in creative and interesting ways, but it is not clear why and
how they were chosen. Availability of appropriate (however defined) sources
for oral history is an occupational hazard and that may have been an issue for
Eklund. The difficulty is that a wider array of oral sources may have enabled more
effective use of the notion of locality.
This is a bold and ambitious book which covers big and small issues over
100 years. It seeks to present the making and breaking of a steel town, taking
account of the broad context and local lives. It deals with important issues which
deserve thorough and scholarly analysis. The first two-thirds of the book
highlight elements of such attributes, but it then fades. I hope we can see more
of Eklund’s material of the early years of Port Kembla.
UNIVERSITY OF WOLLONGONG
NEW FRONTIERS
OF
DEMOCRATIC PARTICIPATION
DIANA KELLY
AT
WORK
Edited by Michael Gold. Ashgate, Aldershot, 2003, xvii + 326 pp., £50 (hardback)
This edited collection of conference papers on democratic participation at work
seeks to combine a ‘new frontiers’ perspective with a still new-ish millennium
opportunity for stocktaking, reflection and renewal. It succeeds, despite rather
than because of, its adoption of a quasi-scientific model of explanation. It
succeeds in providing information, illustrations and insight into relatively
recent European experience with the struggle (or is it now the social partnership?)
for democratic participation at work. The book describes some of the conditions
that have sustained or hindered democratic participation and sheds some light
on possible future developments in Europe. It is, however, perhaps less about
‘new frontiers’ and more about ‘familiar territory’. It is less about the frontier
of control and more about the frontier of cooperation. It will fail to convince
either friend or foe of the scientific basis of democratic participation at work.
Nevertheless, the scientific approach adopted provides structure, illustration and
theme and thus some coherence to the perennial challenges posed by an edited
collection.
The chapters in the book were originally presented as papers at a seminar of
the Scenario 21 Network in December 2000 at the European Trade Union
Institute (ETUI). This Network is a group of academics and researchers from
across Europe who share an interest in promoting the ideals of democracy
and participation and are supported by the Brussels-based ETUI. The authors,
individually and collectively, draw on considerable experience and knowledge of
European developments in democratic participation at work. The information
and insights presented have a certain timeless quality. Nevertheless, the threeyear delay till publication is both frustrating and unhelpful in reviewing the book,
particularly given the dynamic yet still vulnerable nature of the case studies that
underpin the book’s argument and conclusions.
The collection seeks to validate, or at least illustrate the validity of, the four
key propositions or hypotheses about employee participation that emerged in
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1996 out of earlier research undertaken by the Scenario 21 Network. The
four propositions are: (i) that different forms of employee participation can be
cumulative and may mutually reinforce each other; (ii) that major shifts in employment relations require innovative approaches to employee participation, including
the need to link shop-floor and enterprise changes to local, sectoral, national
and international labour issues; (iii) that appropriate conditions (including the
provision of information, research, training, media and legal support) are required
for the spread of participation; and (iv) that trade unions remain a crucial
foundation for the promotion of participation.
These four propositions all echo key premises of the Dunstan state government’s initiatives to develop industrial democracy in South Australia over 25 years
ago. The most controversial perhaps, being the debate on the complementary
nature, or otherwise, of direct and indirect forms of worker participation. So much
for ‘new frontiers’.
The four propositions are explored in 12 chapters organised into three parts,
comprising European Union and national dimensions, sectoral and company
case studies and thematic aspects primarily focusing on worker participation,
working time, trade union strategy and training. The book considers an eclectic
range of European experiences with chapters on European works councils, the
role of the Social and Economic Councils, the Dutch information and communications industry, French and Italian hospitals, the Norwegian offshore petroleum
industry, new management systems in Sweden, working time issues in France
and Italy, self-organisation at work in Germany, worker participation in Central
and Eastern Europe, and trade union education and democratic participation in
Malta.
The introductory chapter provides the expected background, summary and
overview of key themes and findings in regard to the four propositions previously
outlined. The new frontiers of participation are reviewed as comprising initiatives
toward more concerted democratic participation in the workplace, initiatives
toward more inclusive democratic participation and initiatives toward greater
investment in the development of participation. The introduction includes a
reappraisal of Scenario 21, particularly with a view to analysing the extent to
which the data now available confirm, qualify or reject the four propositions
articulated in 1996.
It is concluded, first, that the four key propositions or hypotheses of the
Scenario 21 Network have been illustrated, if not affirmed, by the book’s findings;
and second, that the new model of democratic participation is best understood
as being dynamic, evolutionary and primarily about partnership and win–win
possibilities. It is here that the clearest statement is made to suggest that a new
philosophy of social partnership may be emerging in Europe based on cooperation and a win–win game that forces employers and managers, workers and
unions, to reconsider the ‘rules of the game’ and their respective roles. The new
frontier alluded to in the book’s title appears to be regarded as a product of a
retreat by workers and unions from Utopian concepts such as self-management,
converging with the advance of so-called new management ideas such as the
learning organisation, empowerment and the high performance organisation.
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The editor argues in the introductory chapter that the opportunity to
. . . broker grass roots experiences and expectations at all levels of decision making by taking
into account broader issues of social and economic justice and solidarity . . . may well be the
most important mission for the trade union movement in the twenty-first century. Failure could
lead to further social disintegration; success to a new partnership with benefits for all.
This is a strikingly similar sentiment to that expressed by the Guild Socialists
and others 100 years ago about the workers’ rights case for industrial democracy.
Despite this, the book has much to offer to trade unionists, managers and
researchers and it should be part of any library on employee participation. For
trade unionists the book provides cause for optimism and for caution: optimism
that a broadly-based agenda for democratic participation at work remains on the
agenda and that a foundation of representative structures and processes has been
established in Europe; caution that the focus on partnership and co-operation
intensifies the risks of co-option by management and the state. For managers the
book provides cause for optimism and realism: optimism that high performance
workplaces can be built by taking the perceived risks involved in extending
democratic participation at work; realism in better understanding the scope of
the broadly-based changes and the investment in time and resources required
for transformative change. For researchers the book provides, as always, more
questions than answers.
Finally, it needs to be recognised that the new frontiers for democratic participation at work are now in China, India and Brazil. It is in these countries and
the like that millions of people are grappling anew with issues of safety, control,
co-operation, equity and democracy at work.
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA
PROMISE UNFULFILLED: UNIONS, IMMIGRATION,
WORKERS
STEWART SWEENEY
AND THE
FARM
By Philip L. Martin. Cornell University Press, Ithaca and London, 2003, vii + 232 pp.,
US$22 (paperback)
This book examines why the efforts of Californian reformers in the 1970s and
beyond have failed to improve farm worker wages and alleviate poverty in this
industry. It examines the history and operation of the Californian Agricultural
Labour Relations Act (ALRA), the key unions, the employers and the changes
in immigration policy over the past quarter-century and arrives at a clear and
definite analysis of the important factors.
Martin is an agricultural economist who has published several books on
immigration and poverty. He writes in a clear, concise and engaging manner.
At the same time, his prose is dense, making this volume an invaluable resource
of facts and figures on the agricultural workforce and industrial relations.
The book is organised into three major sections: part 1 examines the characteristics and history of farm labour and its unions, especially the United Farm
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Workers Union; part 2 examines in detail the provisions of the ALRA and a
multitude of cases relating to union elections, unfair labour practices, strikes and
remedies; part 3 examines non-traditional farm worker unions, as well as the role
of immigration in agriculture.
Martin’s historical analysis charts the influence of political change, union
strategies, immigration policy and employer policy on the final outcomes. He
concludes that the continued immigration of large numbers of poorly educated
men from Mexico and the Caribbean is the major factor undermining attempts
to upgrade farm labour wages and living standards. An associated factor was the
switch by employers from the 1980s onward from direct hiring to the use of
contractors. In this, there are parallels with sectors in Australia which make
extensive use of sub-contracting to employ very low-paid immigrant workers,
such as non-unionised areas of clothing and building construction. Attempts
to unionise and regulate these employment arrangements have proved largely
unsuccessful in both countries.
Since immigration has been shown consistently by economists to provide small
but measurable economic benefits for the national economy, it is unlikely
this policy will change. Moreover, Martin documents well the preference by
agricultural employers for cheap imported labour and the reasons for it. Cheap
labour translates into high land prices, which benefits the large businesses
operating most agricultural concerns in the US. In contrast, given the low
annual expenditure by most US households on fresh fruit and vegetables, Martin
shows that even major wage increases for farm workers would have a negligible
impact on household budgets. As such, producer claims that higher wages would
hurt consumers are shown to be groundless. All this is clearly and engagingly
explained by Martin in a way that makes the economics very transparent and easy
to understand.
For those whose interest focuses on the industrial relations side of the issue,
there is plenty of detailed analysis of Agricultural Labour Relations Board cases,
with colourful descriptions of characters and circumstances. Of particular importance to analysts of union strategy is the discussion of the four main industrial
tactics available to farm worker unions — the strike, consumer boycott, union
control of labour supply and political action. There is also an excellent discussion
of how and why the United Farm Workers Union failed to keep close to its
membership and run its affairs efficiently, although this factor alone does not
explain the continuance of wages that are about one-quarter the average wages
of non-farm workers. Martin examines why most union strategies proved
ineffective in the long-run, despite some high profile union-run consumer
boycotts which gained mass support from the late 1960s onwards and a temporary
rise in wages and benefits in the 1960s-70s. Paradoxically, strike action in this
industry actually helps growers get richer, since the inelastic demand for products
like lettuces and strawberries ensures that higher sales can be generated with lower
volumes of product.
However, unions have been successful from time to time in publicising the
plight of poor Latino and indigenous workers and mobilising community,
academic and trade union support behind them. The strategy of using boycotts
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and mass negative publicity is reminiscent of the ‘Fair Wear’ campaign in
Australia by the Textile, Clothing and Footwear Union, though on a much larger
scale. Farm worker industrial relations, it seems, is the stuff of popular media
coverage in the United States.
Nevertheless, this book argues that the ‘farm labour problem’ is unlikely
to disappear until curbs on immigration and abandonment of ‘agricultural
exceptionalism’ (the notion that agriculture is different from other industries),
as promoted by employers, finally occurs. It paints a credible scenario of what
would happen if this alternative policy course were taken — fewer farm workers,
but higher wages, more mechanisation and little impact on consumer food costs.
In contrast, the book ends with the spectre of continuing poverty and social
exclusion of a large section of US workers if the current policy continues. One
wonders, however, whether Martin’s analysis is too rooted in a deregulated labour
market framework to consider alternatives to curbs on immigration. Minimum
wage legislation for farm workers seems an obvious alternative. Given that he
indicates that higher wages would not have a large effect on product demand, it
is reasonable to question whether such legislation would affect labour demand
significantly and assist in raising living standards.
Promise Unfulfilled is recommended to anybody interested in the role of
immigrant workers in a Western capitalist economy, industrial relations and its
history in the US and the economics of immigration and industrial relations.
VICTORIA UNIVERSITY
SANTINA BERTONE
GOING PUBLIC: THE ROLE OF LABOR-MANAGEMENT RELATIONS
DELIVERING QUALITY GOVERNMENT SERVICES
IN
Edited by Jonathan Brock and David B. Lipsky. Cornell University Press, Ithaca and
London, 2003, vi + 320 pp., US$30 (paperback)
This book is the ninth in a series on public sector employment relations
published under the auspices of the Industrial Relations Research Association.
Like the preceding monographs, Going Public focuses on the changing workplace
and the ensuing pressures on workplace actors. The specific setting for this book
is the US public sector, which employs around 40 per cent of the country’s union
members. Pressures for reform in the US, as elsewhere, have been intense, and
many of them have directly affected union–management relations. With its focus
on the ‘growing and promising practice of cooperative relationships’ (page 3)
between labour and management, the book comprises a series of essays by a
number of authors divided into three broad sections. These sections explore,
first, the critical issues in public sector collective bargaining; second, the balance
between equitable employment practices and efficient service delivery; and third,
the effect of the structure of labour–management relations on the quality of
service.
In the first section, Bordogna considers the universal trends of downsizing,
the shift to part-time work, decreasing unionisation and decentralisation of
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bargaining in the public sectors of the US, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and
Canada through privatisation and contracting out. The breadth of the chapter
makes it a necessarily limited, if otherwise useful contribution. Thomson and
Burton take up the issue of declining US unionisation rates in chapter 2, arguing
that while the overall rates for federal and state governments have remained
relatively stable over the past few decades (thus providing unions with an
ongoing representational presence in the workplace), this has not led to greater
cooperative labour–management relations. Indeed, at the federal level, unions
have been under threat from current privatisation policy (which, if implemented,
will affect the jobs of half the civilian workforce) and the limitations on collective
bargaining rights.
The second section opens with a case study describing successful union–
management co-operation during the relocation of city fire stations in
Indianapolis. From this particular management-driven initiative, chapter 4 moves
to a knowledge-worker environment and considers the role and responsibility
of union leaders spearheading the delivery of quality services. Tobias, in a
polemic piece, argues that ‘if unions can enhance knowledge-worker satisfaction
by creating opportunities for meaningful participation, worker productivity
will be enhanced, thereby satisfying management needs’ (page 126). The
final essay in this section, by Ospina and Yaroni, continues the cooperative
labour–management theme by arguing that such relations should be the norm
rather than the exception in the public sector. From their empirical study of
three cases of successful labour–management co-operation they provide a
taxonomy of behaviours (competencies) identified as conducive to co-operative
relations.
The third (and most substantial) section of the book opens with a piece by
Masters and Albright, which sets out the political dimensions of the US debate
in labour–management relations. As public sector reform has proceeded along
the ‘conservative-to-liberal ideological spectrum’ (page 173), chapter 6 puts
into context some of the references made to the Bush administration in earlier
chapters. Keefe, in chapter 7, canvasses the research on employee and union
participation in the transformation of work, but then rather disappointingly,
follows much of the same terrain as Tobias (chapter 4) in asking whether unions
can be transformational agents in public sector workplace design. Next, Kerchner
argues that ‘producing quality has become union work’ in his essay on the US
public school system, suggesting that traditional guild structures can contribute
to the delivery of quality services. Chapter 9 considers the role of public sector
labour law in assisting labour–management co-operation. Malin argues that
current US labour law is not conducive to co-operation as it provides too many
incentives for litigation: ‘consequently, to the extent that labour–management
co-operation exists, it does so in spite of, rather than because of, the law’
(page 268). Relegated to the end of the book (but perhaps better situated
in another book altogether), is Eaton and Voos’ contribution on supervisory
unionism. The chapter, apart from its discontinuity with the main themes of
the book, concludes that supervisory unionism has no bearing on labourmanagement relations.
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The expectations of union–management co-operation in the US public
sector by the contributors to Going Public, particularly those advocating a more
proactive role by union leaders, belie the ideology of the current Bush administration, which is actively seeking to avoid (and even eliminate) unions and a labour
law regime which does not consider alternatives to litigation or collective
bargaining. The empirical work presented demonstrates that the many
employers, employees and unionists support a more cooperative work environment. So, while not offering solutions to these dilemmas, the contribution of
Going Public is in its identification of the source of tensions between the rhetoric
and (limited) practice of labour–-management co-operation in the US and the
reality of its political and legal barriers.
VICTORIA UNIVERSITY
LEADERSHIP
IN
BERNADINE VAN GRAMBERG
ORGANIZATIONS: CURRENT ISSUES
AND
KEY TRENDS
Edited by John Storey. Routledge, London and New York, 2004, xiii + 349 pp., £23
(paperback)
On the very first page of this overdue but nevertheless most welcome assessment
of leadership, John Storey reveals some quite telling statistics. A literature search
of the word ‘leadership’ on the Amazon.com website netted an astounding 11 686
results. In terms of the focus of current scholarship, a much more sobering
encounter may be experienced if the search term is restricted to ‘leadership and
development’. This netted Storey a mere 4.8% of the total results.
If the Amazon.com experiment isn’t enough to convince the reader that
we are up to our armpits in publications about leadership, then consider this
measured deconstruction of the Ebsco database. Ebsco, which indexes and
abstracts publications on business and management, listed a mere 136 published
articles on leadership from 1970–1971. Fast-forward to 1980–1981 and the
number doubles to 258. By 1990–1991 the total inflates to over 1100 articles but
within another decade (2001–2002), the total is an overwhelming 10 000 or so
publications. Add to this the myriad of workshops and development courses
and you get some impression of the magnitude of the leadership ‘business’; a
business which attracts an annual corporate expenditure of over $40 billion in
the US alone each year.
The trouble seems to be that, despite all this intellectual and financial
investment in the leadership business, the value of leadership is simply asserted
and its nature assumed in most major reports on the subject. In the main, what
we find is ‘an unambiguous declaration of belief’ in leadership as the panacea for
organisational disorders. In an effort to introduce a sense of reality to the notion
of leadership, this collection of essays seeks to address two interrelated questions:
first, what organisations are looking for and seeking to achieve when they give
leadership a high priority on the corporate agenda; and second, why there is
currently so much attention to the topic.
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The answer is the regurgitation of a familiar thesis which remains deficient,
inadequately tested and debated, and ineffectively scrutinised. This thesis posits
that the environment has forced organisations to respond to increasing uncertainty, instability and unregulated competition. Thus, there is a perceived need
to change organisational shape, size, scope and methods of operation. With scarce
resources, flatter structures and employees in need of motivation and direction,
change-management has thus dominated organisational agendas for more than
two decades. Leadership has offered a most attractive response to the challenges
presented.
In considering both these questions, this book starts with the observation that
there are changing interpretations about what constitutes leadership. Various
essays then go on to suggest that interpretations of desired models of leadership
are culturally shaped and that there are signs of a further shift which in turn raises
questions about the viability and sustainability of the charismatic-transformational
model. In parts 5 and 6, leadership development issues in both the private
and public sectors loom as an additional concern. Many of the essays here are
critical of the conventional methods of leadership development and consider some
alternative approaches.
Several of these essays consider the processes involved in leadership training
and development. The success or otherwise of this depends, of course, on whether
it is possible to ‘learn’ leadership or whether, indeed, leadership can be taught.
These questions are old chestnuts in the arena of leadership scholarship but
current trends in leadership research point to a negative answer to both
questions. Antonacopoulou and Bento suggest in their essay that these questions
are redundant as leadership in their view is learning. They explore the notion
of ‘learning leadership’ as one which focuses on the ‘learner’ discovering and
experiencing leadership from within. This is seen as manifesting itself as a
continuous process rather than something which can be conferred by others.
Alternatively, Graham Mole argues that any attempt to teach people the
‘universals’ or the fundamental ‘truths’ of leadership is virtually doomed to
failure. Mole contends that leadership is a job and should be perceived as such.
Jobs can be analysed and Mole’s view is that analysing leadership as a job can
enlighten us as to what is effective performance and what is not. Armed with
this knowledge, says Mole, we are provided with the basis for modelling it
(in behavioural terms) as a means by which to learn.
The book’s prognosis for the future of leadership is shaped around the
contention that the obsession with promoting the ideal as the charismatictransformational leader seems to be over. In its place, we are starting to see at
least a flirtation with collective or distributive forms of leadership. This seems
due, at least in part, to disenchantment with the individual hero-leader but also
because such an alternative seems to be consistent with the preferred cultures
and structures of organisations which embrace the concept of empowered teams
and applaud the value of knowledge work. What all this means, the book
concludes, is that preferred models of leadership cannot be understood outside
wider tendencies, theories and patterns of social organisation. Leadership must
be seen as merely one part of the wider organisational landscape.
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Leadership in Organizations is a particularly thought-provoking book which
leaves the reader contentedly mugged by a welcome reality. But it does not
do it all for us