*Work and Employment Research Unit Seminar Series*
*Centre for Research on Management, Economy and Society, Hertfordshire
Business School, University of Hertfordshire*
**
*Title: /Restructuring, deindustrialisation and redundancy: contemporary
debates and issues/*
*Date: /Wednesday February 15^th 2017/*
*Time: /13:00 – 17:00/*
*Location: /Room W040, Law Building, de Havilland campus, University of
Hertfordshire, Hatfield, AL10 9EU/*
*//*
*//*
*This is an open seminar, but please contact Chris McLachlan to confirm
attendance and for any further information – **[log in to unmask]*
<mailto:[log in to unmask]>**
**
**
*Ola Bergström, Gothenburg University, Sweden*
*/Changing restructuring regimes in eleven European Member States after
the financial crisis/*
*//*
This paper is concerned with the developments in a selection of European
Member States since the global financial crisis in 2008 as regards how
the policy frameworks to manage organizational restructuring has
changed. Restructuring is here used as a unifying concept for all types
of changes in work arrangements that, from the point of view of the
individual worker, imply a change in employment status or working
conditions. The aim of this paper is to analyse the impact of the
economic crisis on the national restructuring regimes and to identify
how the changing policy frameworks affect the conditions for employers’
social responsibility as regards restructuring. The comparative analysis
in this paper is based on data collected by an international group of
researchers in a EU-financed project “MOLIERE” analysed through the
restructuring regime framework suggested by Gazier (2008). The findings
show that there are considerable changes in the way restructuring is
managed and regulated in the selection of European Member States. Member
States are increasingly adopting measures aiming at facilitating
quantitative adjustment, primarily through the use of working time
reduction schemes, which enables firms to reduce their labour costs when
demand suddenly decreases. A second group of Member States are adopting
measures that support qualitative adjustment, for example transition
services designed to help workers find new jobs. The third main movement
is a shift in the role of the state, with declining use of state funded
early retirement scheme and an increasing involvement of social
partners. The findings suggest that the changing restructuring regimes
has implications for the practice and definition of employer social
responsibility.
*Ola Bergström*is Professor in Management and Organisation at the
Department of Business Administration at the School of Business,
Economics and Law, University of Göteborg, Sweden. He obtained his
doctorate at the University of Gothenburg in 1998. His research
interests evolve around the interface between organizations and labour
markets and in particular the field of restructuring in a European
context. He has published articles and books on a wide range of topics
such recruitment, corporate social responsibility, and temporary agency
work, restructuring and labour market policy. He has taken part in
several European projects on Restructuring in Europe (e.g. MIRE, IRENE,
ARENAS and MOLIERE). He is chairman of the centre for Global Human
Resource Management at the University of Gothenburg and is currently one
of four members of the Economic Council for Swedish Industry which
provides independent analyses to the social partners of the Swedish
manufacturing industry
*Tim Strangleman, University of Kent*
*/Picturing work, envisaging closure: The life and death of an English
Brewery /*
*//*
In 2005 the Guinness brewery at Park Royal in west London closed its
doors after nearly 70 years of production. From its foundation in the
1930s through to its final years the brewery acts as a powerful
‘privileged occasion’ for understanding the changing nature of the
organisation and work more generally in the twentieth and early
twenty-first centuries. This paper will draw on the author’s extensive
research in the brewery before closure and in Company archives to tell
this story. Using oral history interviews, archive material and a huge
range of visual material it will reflect on what one company’s
trajectory can tell us more generally about capitalism historically and
in contemporary society. In doing so it engages with issues such as
industrial citizenship, work meaning and identity, and corporate image
making.
*Tim Strangleman*, FAcSS**is Professor of Sociology, in the School of
Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research, SSPSSR, University of
Kent, Canterbury. He has researched and written widely on work identity,
culture and meaning; traditional industries in decline and
deindustrialisation. Tim is an historical sociologist who uses oral
history and visual methods and approaches in his research.He has
published articles in a range of journals including /Sociology/,
/IJURR/, /Sociological Review/ and /ILWCH/. He is the author of two
books: (2008)**/Work and Society: Sociological Approaches, Themes and
Methods/, with Tracey Warren, Routledge; and (2004)**/Work Identity at
the End of the Line? Privatisation and Culture Change in the UK Rail
Industry,/ Palgrave. He is currently completing a book based on his
Guinness research to be published by Oxford University Press in 2017.
**
*Ian Greenwood, University of Leeds*
*/Strategic Choice and the response of trade unions to Industrial
Restructuring/*
*//*
As restructuring gathers pace, the strategies for engagement between
unions and management become increasingly important to understand. This
paper, hence, presents an investigation and assessment of the strategic
choices of management and unions in response to industrial restructuring
as manifested through collective bargaining and as liminal moments.
Understanding union responses to restructuring cannot be adequately
captured through a conceptualisation of bargaining strategies as
occurring only at a local or international level or as wholly
adversarial or cooperative. The industrial relations of restructuring is
played out in a complex social space, contingent upon history, (mystic
chords of memory and path dependent propensities), culture, geography,
corporate and union strategies, ‘dominant coalitions’ and the influence
of key individuals. Although a significant body of research offers
insight into union responses to management strategies for restructuring,
at the micro level of strategy formation and collective bargaining
strategies and tactics, research is though, somewhat underdeveloped.
The conceptual framework for analysis is provided by a modified
Strategic Choice model (Walton, Katz and McKersie). Just as the
particular phase of engagement can govern the orientation of union
responses to restructuring, so intra organisational bargaining within
management can modulate dominant management ideological predilections.
Strategic choices and processes are dynamic and reflect the ebb and flow
of power relationships both within and between management and unions.
The empirical basis for this evolving research is provided by a
multi-level, qualitative study of restructuring in the UK steel industry.
*//*
*Ian Greenwood*is Associate Professor of Industrial Relations and HRM at
the Leeds University Business School (LUBS) and member of the Centre for
Employment Relations, Innovation and Change centered on the Work and
Employment Relations Division at LUBS. He has been engaged in a number
of research projects connected to the steel and metals sector. These
include the evaluation of the role that lifelong learning strategies
might play in response to the processes of restructuring in the European
steel and metal sectors and the potential of partnership based
approaches for furthering the learning agenda and employability. Also,
the socio-economic consequences of the contraction of the UK steel
industry. He also researches the role of union learning representatives
and their impact on workplace skill formation; team working; trade union
activism and renewal including Community Unionism. Other research
interests include the contemporary nature of collective bargaining.
*Chris McLachlan, University of Hertfordshire*
*/Internalising the experience of restructuring: steelworkers and
occupational identity/*
The impact of redundancy on affected employees following employment
restructuring includes issues such as poor health, financial hardship,
emotional and psychological distress and feelings of helplessness
towards future employment.Addressing the impact on individuals in
industries that generate a powerful sense of occupational identity, such
as steel, is especially important in understanding the different ways in
which employees respond to restructuring. In order to try and ameliorate
the impact on employees, responsible restructuring has been proposed in
the academic and policy literature as way for organisations to address
the concerns of those affected.
Thus, this paper presents the findings from a case study of UK based
steel plant (SteelCo) that claimed to have conducted its restructuring
process in a responsible fashion. In particular, the impact of the
restructuring, and the supposed responsible approach, on affected
steelworkers is discussed, highlighting a range of social, cultural,
material and experiential factors most pertinent to the response of
employees to SteelCo’s restructuring process. The findings presented
point to the notion that, for steelworkers, the experience of
restructuring had become internalised as part of what it meant to work
at SteelCo, generating an indifference to SteelCo’s description of its
process as ‘responsible’. Understanding the extent to which a
restructuring process is responsible, or not, must therefore be
understood in relation to the social and historical factors that
constitute particular occupational identities, and thus the subsequent
disposition of employees to the onset of restructuring processes.
*Chris McLachlan*is Senior Lecturer in Human Resources at Hertfordshire
Business School, University of Hertfordshire. His main research
interests lie in the intersections between employment relations and
business ethics, and is currently finishing up his PhD from Leeds
University Business School, exploring responsible approaches to
restructuring in the UK steel industry.
--
Professor Jane Holgate
Professor of Work and Employment Relations
Work and Employment Relations Division
Leeds University Business School
31 Lyddon Terrace (room 2.05)
University of Leeds LS2 9JT
email: [log in to unmask]
Mobile: 07960 798399
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