Deck 12: Industrial Conflict

Question 1

List the organisational strategies used to manage absenteeism.

Answer 1

Provide flexibility and discretion in absence management
Provide opportunities for job enlargement and multiskilling
Provide for participation in decision-making, fair treatment, good pay and job security
Improve task-related and instrumental communication
Provide a career path and promotional opportunities
Create a more cooperative and harmonious relationship between management, unions and employees.

Question 2

Define proactive conflict.

Answer 2

This is conflict to improve working conditions, earnings or other aspects of the employment relationship.

Question 3

According to Edwards et al. (1995), why do employees engage in informal resistance practices?

Answer 3

The authors believed that covert forms of conflict-which they labelled as worker resistance-may have increased in Britain during the 1990s as employees found it more difficult to express their dissatisfaction through industrial action because of the higher levels of unemployment and greater job insecurity. They also contended that informal means of resistance appeared to have grown as management intensified the work effort of employees and exposed them more directly to competitive pressures. According to these authors, resistance practices are used by employees to create greater space and autonomy in order 'to exercise a degree of control over various aspects of the work process and its rules, norms and environment'.

Question 4

How do unitarists view conflict within the employment relationship?

Question 5

What is an industrial dispute?

Question 6

Explain the difference between involuntary and voluntary absenteeism.

Question 7

What are the potential positive outcomes of absenteeism?

Question 8

Absenteeism is an example of:

A) collective conflict.
B) proactive conflict.
C) individual conflict.
D) defensive conflict.

Question 9

The dramatic decline in strike activity in Australia since the 1970s demonstrates that industrial conflict is a thing of the past. Discuss.

Question 10

What values are important in determining the ways in which scholars and practitioners approach industrial conflict?

A) Income distribution, job security and managerial control
B) Income distribution, job security and unions
C) Income distribution, managerial control and unions
D) Unitarism, pluralism and radicalism

Question 11

List the job characteristics that have been found to be associated with higher levels of absenteeism.

Question 12

Give three (3) examples of resistance strategies.

Question 13

Research shows that the presence of trade unions in workplaces is associated with:

A) significantly higher levels of labour turnover.
B) significantly lower levels of job satisfaction.
C) significantly lower levels of labour turnover.
D) neither higher nor lower levels of labour turnover.

Question 14

Which of the following are dimensions of industrial conflict?

A) Overt and covert forms of conflict
B) Individual and collective forms of conflict
C) Proactive and defensive forms of conflict
D) All of the options given here are correct

Question 15

What is an 'absence culture'?

Question 16

Give three (3) reasons for the general decline in industrial disputes since the 1980s.

Question 17

Which of the following job characteristics has been found to be associated with high levels of absenteeism?

A) Routinisation
B) Role ambiguity
C) Role conflict
D) All of the options given here are correct

Question 18

How do pluralists view conflict within the employment relationship?

Question 19

Overt conflict is best described as:

A) None of the options given here is correct
B) conflict that occurs in the open and is easy to perceive.
C) conflict that is hidden.
D) action taken by an individual.

Question 20

Define defensive conflict.

Question 21

Why are blue-collar workers, particularly women, more likely to have higher rates of absenteeism compared to other categories of employees? Discuss.

Question 22

Explain the interdependent motivational forces that drive voluntary turnover.

Question 23

What impact do unions have on labour turnover rates in Australia? Discuss.

Question 24

Define 'labour turnover'.