In this essay I shall be discussing what the new management strategies are, and how they are applied to a specific organisation. I shall be using Tesco Ltd

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In this essay I shall be discussing what the new management strategies are, and how they are applied to a specific organisation. I shall be using Tesco Ltd as an example to base my findings. I shall then talk about collective bargaining and what is involved within collective bargaining. I will then discuss how new managerial strategies aim to go beyond collective bargaining in employee involvement and participation. Finally I shall provide a meaningful conclusion to my findings.

In order to justify the statement "How do new managerial strategies attempt to create employee involvement and participation beyond collective bargaining", firstly we need to define exactly what we mean by employee involvement and participation. Employee participation "involves workers exerting a countervailing and upward pressure on management control, which need not imply unity of purpose." Employee involvement "in contrast is perceived to be a softer form of participation to imply a commonality of interest between employees and management and stress that involvement should be directed at the workforce as a whole and not restricted to trade union channels" Bratton/Gold 1999 (p301/302).

Employee involvement/participation is the most important aspect of not only Industrial Relations but also HRM in general; the reason being employee is an invaluable asset to an organisation. Employee involvement and participation is said to be the adoption of 'soft' HRM approach rather than 'hard'. 'Soft' HRM is all about working with employees to increase efficiency and productivity. There are four types of employee involvement, which are, outlined as;

) Downwards communication

2) Upwards problem solving forms

3) Financial participation

4) Representative participation

Glover, L (2001)

Downward communication requires very little input relating to the work from employees it is more of a informative type of employee involvement and participation, where the employer sends information downwards in the organisation to keep the employees updated.

Downward communication involves schemes like company magazines or newspapers. Tesco has a scheme where they produce a magazine called Tesco Today every month at every store, which includes all the information regarding the ongoing in the company for that specific month i.e. any opening of new stores, investments, changes in the board of directors etc... The aim of this scheme in Tesco's view is that they make the employees feel involved and updated on latest ongoing of the company. This makes the employees wanted and valued. Another scheme that Tesco use is known as Team5 (T5) which, is like teambriefing. In each store they have various departments like; Grocery, Checkouts and Fresh Foods, T5 involves new issues which have been raised by managers in each respective departments and involves employees being briefed about what the issues are for the week ahead and what next steps are to be taken. This scheme is used to inform the workers and involve them in the issues relating to the store. Upward problem solving requires a more effort and commitment from the employees in the work organisation compared to downward communication. This type of employee involvement and participation involves employees using their own initiative and ideas and putting them in practice. Upward problem solving forms include strategies like Total Quality Management (TQM), Team-working and Quality circles. To begin with it is important to define what we mean by TQM, a set definition would be; "the attempt to establish a culture quality affecting the attitudes and actions of every employee. This is usually attempted by trying to get every work group (or dept) to think of those they work for as customers, even if they are fellow employees".
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A to Z Business book (1994).

TQM enables organisations to become highly competitive through highly organised and efficient methods. One of the most vital aspects of TQM is employee involvement. It encourages employees to use their expertise skills and creativity in the day to day activities. Which in turn will improve their goods and services. TQM was originally formed by the Japanese alongside Just in Time (JIT) Production and was very successful in effective organisation and productivity. It is vitally important that employers provide intense training on TQM principles, which include participative, group, data-collection and decision-making skills. ...

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