AAFM Manufacturing

Prior to 2005, did local AAFM management adopt a unitarist or pluralist approach to employment relations? Does the new management team espouse the same ideology?

AAFM case generally reflects on opportunities, which are unique to untangle both the pluralist and the unitarist roots on employment relations roots. This is in relation to the marked shifts that existed between the paradigms on the managerial periods. With reference to this concept, Gennard reveals the existing distinction between pluralist and the unitarist approaches on aspects to do with human resources. He emphasizes that this form will remain harmonious indicative, a one-team aspect and an integrated approach while it will always distinguish that different groups will always exist in organizations. Additionally, he emphasizes that conflict between employees and their employers will always remain inevitable. With this in mind, the AAFM adopted the pluralist agenda, which enabled the facilitation of the internal groups by supporting the AMWU union. Additionally, some of the communication channels that were used were generally circular hence allowing organizational employees to maintain their interests’ representation through AMWU consultations with the management.

However, after the 2005 managerial exchange, the unitarist agenda replaced the pluralist vision. This was done by adjusting the decision to make it fit an authoritarian framework. This aspect was rejected by the AMWU representation contract merits. In its bid to prescribe an effective corporate employee vision adherence, the leadership staff of AAFM decided to pursue the unitarist employee policy of relations. This was also established to prevent interests of the group in influencing group-oriented objectives and the performance based objectives. The pluralist leadership model gave the employees an opportunity to have a common voice under the protection of the AMWU.

Identify the ways industrial conflict is being expressed at AAFM and the factors contributing to this conflict

Generally, industrial conflicts roles in protecting organizational worker’s interests have changed over the past years. With reference to human resources conflicts and industrial relations in Europe, the aspect of organizational conflicts tends to affect both organizational works and their companies negatively. AAFM lacks reciprocity of mitigation and bargaining opportunities when it comes to organizational communication hence a direct influence on organizational conflict. In most cases, this aspect tends to result in different measures by the affected parties, which stemmed from the dissociated organizational goals and objectives.

With reference to industrial conflicts, there are aspects that play a key role in such breakdown especially on matters that relate to employment relations. Some of these factors include strike-based advantage, fractured identity and consciousness, determined regime of accumulation and union dynamics that are variable. In as much as these factors were obvious to some extent in the AAFM conflict, the aspect of consciousness and identity and accumulation regime were main determinants of outcomes that were negative. According to both Blyton and Bacon, modern partnerships addresses mutual gains principles in a situation where the aspect of integrative bargaining allows the organizational employees to share the performance-based rewards. Nevertheless, at AAFM, employee interest’s marginalization limited the organizational employees’ identification degree within the agenda of the organization and the elimination of profit sharing potentials in their organizational economic interests.

Generally, the AAFM management was not willing to recognize AAFM employee’s dissatisfaction at the organization; instead, the unitarist position generally affected the employee’s ability to reflect on the interests of the employees. In this case, instead of putting more focus on the larger scale agenda of the pay-based concerns, the organization put priorities on other aspects. The introduction of the conceptual collective model of bargaining was an important determinant on the organizational attritional behaviors. However, reputation perceptions in such organizations are inaccurate, hence the emergence of a bargaining conflict strategy. In this case, AMWU and AAFM management established an inflexible aspect of the winner takes it all situations in the organization against compromise. In such organizations, this aspect resulted into significant losses of performance and efficiency from the workers because of the confrontational work stoppages. It was quite evident that, the in ability to establish reputational biasness and the organizational managers in ability to establish some of the employees’ motivations aspect in conflicts pursue played a key role in conflicts in the organization thus leading to strike decisions and workforce lockout.

How would the conflict at AAFM be explained and resolved from (a) a unitarist perspective and (b) a pluralist perspective?

Conflicting with the AAFM management perspectives, most practitioners claim that organizational strike activities tend to be largely intrinsically and rational generally especially when there is the aspect of a faulty negotiation framework in the organization. The main breakage of indeterminacy that is unavoidable especially in establishing relationships tends to result in positions that might be rigid which might fail to establish rational opportunities that come with collective bargaining. Van Buren et al thoughts on unitarist describe two main strategic measures of the human resources management including both hard and soft employee perspectives on contributions. In the AAFM industry, various aspects play a key role in influencing productivity against resource based employee value perspectives. Some of these factors include high volume-low industrial cost nature and labor intensive. With reference to this aspect, strategic managerial agenda might fail to align the value of organizational employee perspectives thus resulting in organizational disconnection, which might then lead to healthy conflicts in organizational labor.

Generally, unitarist aspects put more emphasis on organizational performances and market opportunities in as much as organizational employees’ interests might be subjugated. Additionally, economic priorities and human assets values according to the unitarist agenda might sometimes be overwhelming. Most unitarist agendas emphasizes on managerial controls and informational management. These agendas mostly view the thoughts as important mechanisms, which play an important role in developing, attaining, enacting and achieving organizational explicit performance objectives. In as much as it is based on harmonious agenda, unitarist authoritarian nature plays a key role on the satisfaction of AAFM employees because of their negotiation strategies and past pluralist experiences values. Over the past years, AAFM managers have pursued unitarists agenda regarding their employee perceptions for the sake of the interests of the employees. However, the underlying priorities in the unitarists agenda are economic generally. This means that outsourcing threat in the organization would be of employee concern thus thrusting this aspect might discourse into pluralistic debate within the organization for the purposes of resolving the competing interests.

Generally, pluralist regime enables organizational employees to view information aspect as a managerial accountability source and an organizational responsibility hence providing the organization with an intra-organizational competition. In as much as the core conflicts in an organization are likely to be aggravated by this particular group-based orientation, a pluralist organization gives organizations an opportunity to offer support on the organizational objectives and interests. As many practitioners would argue, conflicting aspects in such relationships are mostly based depending on the genuinely of different interests that generally assume a bargaining quality. This aspect is unlikely to attain equality especially through operational frameworks that are holistic. Instead, pluralist agendas depend on specific achievements, conflict resolution strategies and achievement of specific strategies. Additionally, pluralist resolution of conflict schemes would generally adjust towards mutual negotiation forms where organizational managers and employees tend to amend their requests for the purposes of achieving outcomes, which were agreeable. Alternatively, managerial positions which have unitarist framework and ways of thinking, in most cases, the negotiating ability tends to be limited by the operational agendas and business-based strategies.

In AAFM situation, the pluralist and unitarist positions tends to be conflict of purpose indicative whereby both the organizational employees and managers tend to prioritize specific organizational objectives without proper discussions of such arrangements. In this case, the organization preferring to the pluralist based negotiation framework, the organizational strike that was influenced by the employees was enacted for the purposes of challenging the organizational management to look into their objectives and outcomes. Enacting a unitarist-oriented management type, the organizational management dealt with the issue by being dictatorial to the organizational employees and threatened them with the possibility of denying them benefits and wages. The pluralist framework would highly depend on compromise and mutual agreements towards organizational activities while the unitarist framework would largely depend upon communication-driven aspects and different shared ideologies that mostly focus on the long-term organizational stability and performances in the organization.

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