64 SITUATING HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
context of the decline in trade union membership and workplace influence,
a decline which authoritative sources expect to continue in the future (Finan-
cial Times29 March 2004). Partnership, a distinctive approach advocated by
government, unions, and some employers, has been considered as one means
of addressing the ethical issues. It was found to have the potential to do so, but
in practice, without high trust on the part of employers, may often fail to do
so in practice.
Implicit in this chapter are assumptions about the possibilities of an ethical
HRM that still offers prospects of high performance. It appears most likely to
take the form of what is sometimes termed ‘the high road’ approach, based on
an explicit pursuit of mutual gains within the context of pluralist oversight.
The manager will seek high performance, but not only high performance.
The model of HRM may recognize that high performance is achieved by
successfully engaging workers and by ensuring their competence, motivation,
and commitment. In addition, an explicit goal of HRM will be to ensure
good employment and the well-being of the workforce. The evidence indi-
cates that in the UK this is unlikely to be achieved without a change in the
institutional context. The evidence cited, for example by Boselie, Paauwe, and
Jansen (2001) in the case of the Netherlands, suggests that a European Social
Partnership system offers the best realistic prospects of mutual gains.
Throughout this chapter, prominence has been given to the range of acad-
emic research and debate on HRM and performance. It is easy to assume from
this that some form of high-performance or high-commitment management
has become the dominant mode of people management in Western organiza-
tions, or at least in the USA and UK.
While any organization has to undertake some sort of people management,
the evidence indicates that in the UK at least, the application of a distinctive
HRM approach, let alone one embedded in a pluralist approach, is very lim-
ited. There is evidence for this at both workplace and company levels. Perhaps
surprisingly, across the public and private sectors, more practices are likely to
be in place where trade unions are recognized. In WERS 98, it was found that
based on a list of fifteen high-commitment HR practices, more than half were
in place in 25 per cent of workplaces where a trade union was recognized but
in only 5 per cent of workplaces where unions were not. Focusing only on the
private sector, the authors of WERS note:
only 4 per cent of recognised workplaces had a majority unionised workforce, where
local representatives negotiated with management over some issues and where at least
half of these high commitment management practices were in place. (Cully et al. 1999:
111)
By implication, in most private sector workplaces, only limited HRM is
applied; and where HRM is applied, there are rarely realistic safeguards for
workersreflectedinaneffective independent voice.