The role of physical space in labour-management cooperation: A microsociological study in Danish retail
Anna Ilsøe* & Jonas Felbo-Kolding**
Abstract: Many studies on labour-management relations have focused on formal cooperation in manufacturing. This calls for further research and theory development on labour-management interactions in private service companies, where cooperation practices appear to be less formal. In this article, a typology of cooperation between managers and employees is developed, based on a microsociological study conducted in Danish retail trade in 2013. Drawing on six in-depth case studies we identify four different physical spaces of labour-management cooperation: open collective, closed collective, open individual and closed individual. The article discusses the potentials and limitations of the four spaces of cooperation for employee influence.
Key words: Cooperation, Microsociology, Retail, Space, Workplace
*Anna Ilsøe is associate professor at the Employment Relations Research Centre (FAOS) at Copenhagen University, Copenhagen, Denmark. Her research interests include collective bargaining, digitalization of work, labour market segmentation and comparative industrial relations.
**Jonas Felbo-Kolding is a PhD Fellow at the Employment Relations Research Centre (FAOS) at University of Copenhagen, Denmark. His research interests include workplace collaboration, labour market segmentation, labour migration and labour market integration of immigrants.
Introduction
The tertiarization of the economy in the Western world has moved job creation from the manufacturing industries to private services. This means that the number of workplaces is decreasing in well-organized sectors with union presence, collective agreement coverage and local work councils, whereas it is increasing in less-organized sectors without the same level of formal institutions representing employees (Bosch & Lehndorff, 2005; Dølvik, 2001). One of the significant examples in Denmark is retail, which is the largest sector in private services in terms of number of employees. Collective agreement coverage is lower and only one in four employees in retail is covered by a shop steward compared to one in two employees in manufacturing (Larsen et al., 2010).
Despite all this, we know little about the cooperation practices that develop between managers and employees in private services. Does an absence of formal cooperation mean an absence of cooperation as such? Which forms of cooperation can we observe? Do informal forms of cooperation contribute to employee influence? Based on an empirical investigation in Danish retail, this article argues that psychical spaces in the shop play an important role in shaping cooperative practices at workplace level. The article uses a microsociological approach to develop a typology of four physical spaces of labour-management cooperation that is useful for the analysis and discussion of cooperation practices in private services.
There are two main theoretical approaches to the study of cooperation between management and labour. First, the Employment Relations literature, which is based on the argument that employees can get access to influence on their pay and working conditions if they organize in unions and/or elect employee representatives that can negotiate and cooperate with employers (Freeman et al. 2007; Markey and Knudsen 2014; Rogers and Streek 1995). Second, the Human Resource Management literature focuses on informal labour-management cooperation and has a different perspective on employee influence (Alfes et al. 2010; Cotton 1993; MacLeod and Clarke 2009). They are mainly concerned with the effects of employee influence on employee performance and company results – and less concerned with the gains for the individual employee. In recent years, it has been argued that we lack a framework for a more detailed study of the labour-management relations in private services that can grasp different forms of (informal) cooperation and their potentials and limitations (Barry and Wilkinson 2015; Marchington and Suter 2013).
The article seeks inspiration in microsociological theory and methods for an explorative investigation of the cooperation between managers and employees in Danish retail (Collins, 2005; Goffman, 1959). More specifically the article draws on the theory of interaction rituals, which addresses the power aspect of social interaction in different physical spaces (Collins 2005). This is highly relevant for a study on labour-management relations, which are characterised by an asymmetry of power. Retail is characterized by a number of specific working conditions at shop floor level that might challenge the cooperation between managers and employees (customer presence, high personnel turnover, part-time employees etc.) depending on the physical spaces available. Customer presence might challenge the use of the shop floor as a physical space for cooperation, which makes the presence of back offices or storage rooms important. The fact that employees might not be regularly present in the shop at the same time as managers also puts the physical space of the shop into question as an arena for the development of cooperation practices. The microsociological perspective allows us to investigate the various physical spaces in the shop as important contexts for the development of cooperative practices between managers and employees who possess different amounts of power. Our work is based upon six in-depth case studies in Danish shops that combines visits at shop floor level with a total of 45 interviews with managers and employees at different levels and in different job functions. The article is structured in the following way; first, the background of the study and the theory used is presented. After this, we present the methods section and the analysis. Finally, our typology of cooperative practices is presented and important contexts for - and implications of our findings discussed.
Background
Today, job creation in the Western world primarily takes place within private services. This is also the case in Denmark, where employment in manufacturing has decreased over the last 10 years, whereas employment in different parts of the service sector has increased (Dansk Erhverv, 2009). Most of the literature on labour-management relations has had a strong focus on the manufacturing industries both empirically and theoretically (Knudsen, 1995; Walton et al., 1994).
There are important differences between the service sector and manufacturing that make the application of the methods and concepts developed in manufacturing on the service sector difficult if not misleading. Private services is often characterized by lower union density, fewer union representatives and works councils and less coverage by collective agreements just to mention a few (Bosch and Lehndorff, 2005; Edwards et al., 2006). This means that formal cooperation bodies are more or less absent, which is also the case in Denmark. However, we do not know which cooperation practices are in fact used, what managers and employees cooperate about and whether this cooperation contributes to employee influence. Cooperation is defined broadly to include all forms of interaction and dialogues between managers and employees.
The article focuses on cooperation practices in retail as a significant example of cooperation in private services. Danish retail trade is the largest industry within private services (Dansk Erhverv, 2009). It also represents some of the key features found in private services in general, when it comes to the actors and structures that shape labour-management relations.
First, fewer institutions for formal cooperation are found in retail than in manufacturing. Three in four manufacturing companies are covered by sector-level agreements, and three in four employees are members of trade unions. Furthermore, half of the employees in manufacturing have local shop stewards present that are elected among union members at the workplace, and five in six shop stewards have negotiated local agreements (Due et al., 2010; Larsen et al., 2010). Retail is a different story. Available figures on retail, hotels and restaurants reveal that agreement coverage and union density are somewhat lower in this part of private services than in manufacturing. Six in ten employers report agreement coverage, and about the same share of employees report union membership (Due et al., 2010). Other analyses using a segmentation approach report a union density among sales and postal workers of less than a third (Toubøl et al. 2015). The biggest difference is perhaps found in the presence of shop stewards. Only one in four retail workers is represented by a local shop steward, and only one in four shop stewards have negotiated local agreements (Larsen et al., 2010). The absence of shop stewards in many shops might result in less formal employee influence, but possibly also lead to more direct forms of employee influence.
Second, retail is characterized by customer presence (Bélanger and Edwards, 2013; Korczynski et al., 2000). This means that managers and employees often cooperate in front of customers. Unlike an industrial plant, where customers are rarely in the room, managers and employees need to reflect on whether the topic and the wording of their conversation are suitable for customer ears. Customer presence might therefore limit cooperation practices in retail.
Third, retail in Denmark (and in a number of other Western countries) is characterized by a preponderance of transitional workers, i.e. young unskilled workers who work part-time and for a shorter period of time (Alsos and Olberg, 2012; Esbjerg et al., 2007; Price et al., 2011). This is contrary to manufacturing, where the typical worker is a middle-aged skilled worker who works full time and has been with the company for some time (Ilsøe 2009). The number of young people working part-time in retail has even increased since October 1st 2012, where the Danish Shops Act was revised to allow all shops to extend their opening hours significantly (Felbo-Kolding 2014). The large number of transitional workers working part-time and unusual hours challenges the cooperation between managers and employees, in a very practical way because managers and employees might not be present at the same time.
Fourth, retail shops often experience a high personnel turnover, which is costly (Booth and Hamer, 2007; Grugulis and Bozkurt, 2011). It is difficult to retain transitional workers, and it is difficult to recruit other types of employees. This means a less stable work force and limited time and incentive for both employees and managers to engage in labour-management cooperation. Typically, young people in Denmark take on jobs in retail, while they study, and leave retail again, when they finish their studies. Young students do not identify with the sector, because they are on the move, and they do not join the union that negotiates the collective agreement (Felbo-Kolding 2014; Konnerup et al., 2011).
Given the characteristics of the actors and structures that shape labour-management cooperation in Danish retail, not only formal cooperation seems to be difficult. The conditions might also make it difficult to establish other forms of cooperation practices on the shop floor. This calls for an investigation of how the physical space in retail shops facilitates the establishment of cooperative practices between management and labour.
Employment Relations and Human Resource Management – two theoretical perspectives on cooperation
The literature that deals with cooperation and management-employee relations draws on two very different theoretical traditions, which sometimes are used separately and sometimes in combination (Marchington 2015; Wilkinson and Fay 2011; Wilkinson et al. 2013). Both traditions rest on the basic assumption of the asymmetry of power between managers and employees due to managers´ right to hire and fire and the managerial prerogative.
First, there is the Employment Relations (ER) literature that has addressed cooperation at workplace level in terms like employee representation, employee participation or employee voice (Freeman et al. 2007; Markey and Knudsen 2014; Rogers and Streek 1995). The core argument in this approach is that employees can get access to influence on their pay and working conditions if they organize in unions and/or elect employee representatives that can negotiate or cooperate with management. Union and non-union representatives attain a bargaining power that to a smaller or lager extent can balance the bargaining power of management. In this perspective, employee influence is understood as a formalized influence and an influence that is to the benefit of employees. Studies that draw on this tradition often demonstrate that employees gain influence on their own pay and working conditions at workplaces where employees have formal representation in the form of union representatives and/or employee representatives. Methodologically these studies often draw on surveys and/or interviews with managers and union/employee representatives. Empirically, the ER literature has first and foremost focused on cooperation in manufacturing and related industries (Knudsen 1995; Rogers and Streek 1995), but in recent years more studies have investigated cooperation in the public sector and selected service industries like telecommunications (Doellgast et al. 2009; Hansen 2015).
Second, there is the Human Resource Management (HRM) literature that has addressed cooperation in terms like employee involvement, employee commitment or employee engagement (Alfes et al. 2010; Cotton 1993; MacLeod and Clarke 2009). Here, cooperation is perceived as a tool for management to improve employee performance and overall company results. Changes in management, work organization and performance systems are used to spark employees to engage themselves in the work and the organization and to lift their voice when they spot opportunities for improvement in performances and results. Employee influence is gained via informal cooperation between managers and employees and/or informal cooperation between different (groups) of employees. The cooperation is informal in the sense that it is not based on the participation of employee representatives or union representatives. Studies in line with this tradition often argue that employee involvement and commitment improve employee performance. Empirical investigations are frequently based on surveys among HR managers, and they include a variety of sectors like manufacturing, private services and public services (Alfes et al. 2010; Cotton 1993; MacLeod and Clarke 2009).
To sum up, the ER literature has mainly focused on empirical studies of formal cooperation in well-organized sectors and whether this has been to the benefit of employees, whereas the HRM literature has mainly focused on empirical studies of managements perception of informal cooperation in a broad range of sectors and whether this has been to the benefit of the company. This leaves us with a potential blind spot. Employment Relations research rarely focuses on less-organized sectors. These sectors are covered by the HRM literature, however, not with a similar strong focus on how cooperation can benefit employees. As we are looking at retail, which is a less-organized sector with little formal cooperation between managers and employees, we therefore need a different approach to grasp possible employee gains from cooperation. Here, we seek inspiration in the microsociological approach.