HRM AND PERFORMANCE: ETHICAL DILEMMAS 61such as process re-engineering or some of the current features of outsourcing.
The challenge lies in putting in place mechanisms to ensure that when and
if HRM is applied it occurs within a framework that provides workers with
some oversight, safeguards against the more exploitative elements of HRM,
and independent voice. If this can be achieved, some of the ethical concerns
might lose their salience. In the UK, one approach that has been hailed as a
means of achieving this is partnership.
Partnership at work is an old idea that has found fashion as a contemporary
vehicle for managing the ‘new deal’ between government, employers, and
unions. It has been endorsed by the UK Trades Union Congress (TUC) which
has proposed six core principles for partnership. These are employment secu-
rity; commitment to the success of the enterprise; openness and transparency;
recognition that partners have overlapping but distinct interests; enhancing
quality of working life; and tapping the motivation, commitment, and inno-
vative capacity of employees to make work more interesting and to add value
to the firm.
The TUC principles echo the definition presented by the Involvement and
Participation Association (IPA), a long-established pressure group for greater
involvement in work to which a range of organizations belong, including a
number of companies and trade unions with a long-standing interest in the
subject. They suggest that there are four key building blocks of the partnership
principle, namely security and flexibility, sharing financial success, developing
good communication and consultation, and representative employee voice
(IPA 1997). In both the TUC and IPA definitions, it might be noted that there
is more emphasis on principles than specific practices.
One reason offered for the interest in partnership among trade unions in
the UK is that after what Undy (1999) termed ‘the final settlement’ between
the Labour government and trade unions, including legislation to ensure
that union claims for recognition would more easily be addressed through
ballots and the promotion of individual rights at work, partnership was the
‘only game in town’. This also reflected the pro-European stance of some
senior members of the TUC who supported the notion of social partnership,
reflected in legislated systems of works councils embracing consultation and
communication. This has recently been introduced in the UK in a somewhat
modified form through legislation to implement the European Directive on
Information and Consultation. In the meantime, the government set up a
‘Partnership Fund’, overseen by the TUC, to encourage experimentation and
development of partnership activities, a key criterion for support being that
any initiatives included a commitment from both union and employer repre-
sentatives to develop partnership practices.
There has been a certain amount of research that seeks to address the
question of whether partnership can achieve the kind of goals set for it
and therefore by implication can address the ethical issues. Those who have