The effort of partnership: Capacity development and moral capital in partnership for mutual gains

The article discusses the enactment of a strategic partnership undertaken by a large, multi-site company and several trade unions. The enterprise aimed to institute highly engaged practices of employee and management voice to create a collaborative culture throughout the organization. The study finds that five years since the inception of the project of institutional change, considerable challenges to its embedding and effectiveness remain. It also finds that particular characteristics of the partnership propose resource generation for addressing those challenges and progressing collaborative relations to mutual benefit. Substantive actor effort and organizational learning generate capacity for new relationships. That includes activation of moral capital including toleration, patience, mutual respect, reciprocity and trust

Transnational employee voice and knowledge exchange in the multinational corporation: The European Company (SE) experience

The European Company (Societas Europaea, SE) regulations include the highest mandatory provision for negotiation of transnational employee voice. What are the effects of transnational employee voice, enacted at works council and board levels, on knowledge exchange within the multinational corporation? This qualitative study of globally active SEs incorporated under the SE regulations that have ‘dual-forum’ transnational employee voice addresses that research gap. Our main contribution reveals that, over time, transnational employee voice facilitates multifaceted knowledge exchange, both widening the platform and strengthening relations for intra-multinational corporation collaboration. Alongside expressing labour interests as intended, dual-forum transnational employee voice stimulates managers and employees to develop mutually beneficial competencies and trust. These aid multilateral knowledge exchange. That knowledge, which includes factors affecting employees and quality of organizational and work life, also includes insights into country-specific market, industrial and operational issues. Importantly, dual-forum transnational voice fosters development of a participatory culture across the multinational corporation. Robust multifaceted knowledge exchange generates better-informed and more productive decision-making that yields plural socio-economic value

Keeping it quiet? The micro-politics of employee voice in company strategic decision-making

Employee voice in company strategic and governance decision-making in Anglophone countries commonly has few formal channels. This article’s investigation of labour’s (collective employees) interest expression in Australia and New Zealand finds that labour actors engage with company actors to craft a range of channels of expression and participation. In addition to actors’ utilisation of formal institutional provisions for adversarial collective bargaining and cooperative participation, actors utilise other ‘at the table’ arrangements that are typically of low salience. These include non-formal, inter-actor arrangements that facilitate contribution to decisions that can include matters of strategic importance. Labour actors engage with company actors in intricate micro-political relations to contribute influence in framing understandings and horizons of decisions and norm-building. Their quiet activities contribute regulatory effect in company decision-making

Reflexive self-identity and work: working women, biographical disruption and agency

The article examines how women workers reflexively shape their self-identities and work identities following a significant biographical disruption incurred by breast cancer diagnosis and treatment. Based on interviews with 22 women navigating their post-diagnosis life course, the article addresses participants’ challenges in their relationships with paid employment, their responses, and self-identity narratives. It finds that women strive to revise and innovate their self-identity and work identity in the midst of personal and social constraints in working life. They craft their cancer disruptive experiences into new developments of who they are, and want to be, as persons and as workers. Multiple intersectional features of participants’ work-related self-identity are identified, including reassessment of priorities, capabilities, and workplace relations