Perceived Employability, Voice and the Moderatingrole of Social Support

“Perceived Employability, Voice and the ModeratingRole of Social Support”

RémiBourguignon, FlorentNoël and GéraldineSchmidt

IAE de Paris, Sorbonne Graduate Business School

Adress:21 rue Broca 75005 Paris – France

Email:

10th European Conference of the International Labour and Employment Relations Association (ILERA), 20-22 June 2013, Amsterdam

Introduction

During the last decades, human resource management practices evolved towards a growing individualization of the employment relationship as the result of a general reassessment of the management techniques inspired by mass production and scientific management (Tomer, 2001). Most firms now consider their workforce as a strategic partner rather than mere production input. They tend to enhance cooperation and win-win relationships as conceptualized as Pfeffer(1998)’s “High Performance Work Practices” (HPWPs). The concepts of “talents” and individual skills tend to supplant qualifications and statuses. Performance appraisal schemes rely more and more on individual criteria, leading to individualized compensation decisions), etc.

This trend resulted in a evolution of the industrial relations paradigms. As demonstrated by Kaufman (2008) the industrial relation paradigm was originally focusing on the employment relationship and the bargaining activities between worker and management. The emphasis on trade unions and institutions developed after World War II, under the influence of Kerr and Dunlop, to name the more popular authors, as economic and social regulations were conceived at a more macro level. The recent renewal of liberal ideologies and the individualization of human resources management captured by the HPWPs concept should encourage an in-between way to analyse IR phenomena. Management should then be reintroduced into the IR field (Kochan et al. 1986) and, reversely, unions and collective bargaining should be introduced into the analysis of HPWPsand other post-modern ways to manage human resources (Godard Delaney, 2000).

Some commentators argue that this growing concern for individualization within firms would be an explanation for the decline of unionization. Human resource management may indeed provide workers with benefits and protection they used to get from their representatives. Moreover, human resource management promotes individual commitment and individualization of compensation, which unions cannot handle (Guest, 1995; Godard 2004). Others emphasize the fact that the social support provided by management modifies the kind of voice workers may opt for. As trustful relations are established within firm, direct voice – thatis voice not being mediated by unions – would be more likely (Bryson, 2000).

All these evolutions may be interpreted as the result (or the cause) of union decline that can be observed in most western countries. However,this interpretation remains challenged by empirical evidence. For example, Akorsu and Akorsu (2009) demonstrate that unions and HRM can co-exist and complement each other. Workers will continue to require unions’ protection, but for this, the role of representatives must evolve towards more cooperative strategies. The coexistence of unions and individualized HRM practices and cooperation between them is also supported byMagenau et al. (1988) who state that there is no clear contradiction between commitment towards the employer and union membership. The presence of union may even be a condition for worker-management relations to remain balanced and thus sustainable (Bryson, 2001).Since unions protect workers, they may feel more confident in exposing themselves individually through direct voice or through individualized human resource management. Liu et al. (2012) support this idea: unionization may hinder the development of individualized HRM practices because individualization undoubtedly threatens collective bargaining. But they also evidence that this negative relation is tempered when individualization does not jeopardize job security.

As far as security is concerned, modern HRM does not emphasize anymore work-life job security, but employability. The focus on individual employability is probably one of the more emblematic features of these workplace practices. Recently, HRM rhetoric has been emphasizing the need for individuals to prepare for organizational changes by developing their employability which can be understood internally or externally. The concept of employability evolved over time. In its earliest definitions, employability was conceived as a matter of ability to enter the labor market or not. The issue was to decide whether an individual should be qualified for work or be eligible for social benefits. When used for this discriminatory purpose, employability criteria remain quite objectively and collectively defined by social policies makers (Gazier, 1998; McQuaid Lindsay, 2005). But adaptive and social skills were progressively introduced in the concept, and the incidence of human resource management is now acknowledged as a trigger for these skills to be actively developed by workers. De Grip et al. (2004) provide an integrative definition of employability: “Employability refers to the capacity and willingness of workers to remain attractive for the labor market (supply factors), by reacting to and anticipating changes in tasks and work environment (demand factors), facilitated by the human resource development instruments available to them (institutions)”. This new approach of employability refers to labor market skills as well as to individual dispositions (Fugate Kinicki, 2008). It also offers the basis for exploring careers and professional mobility in a way that emphasizes individual decisions and skills required to perform “boundaryless trajectories” (Arthur Rousseau, 1996). But at the same time, employability is also conceptualized at the internal level, as it refers to the ability of a worker to keep one’s job and to adapt to organizational changes (Rothwell Arnold, 2007). Employability is then all about the way employers and workers negotiate worker’s participation to the production and the business.

Job security is no longer the core issue when HRM tends to promote employability instead of employment security, and this may determine the way workers perceive unions and collective bargaining. On the one hand, employable workers should develop market-related behaviors and be more likely to bargain for themselves. Using Hirschman’s (1970) typology of dissatisfaction coping strategies, it can be argued that employable workers would tend to use exit strategies instead of voice, causing a decline in unions’ audience and power. In addition, the individualization of the industrial relations may cause workers to prefer establishing direct discussion with their employer rather than mediated interactions. On the other hand, employable workers may also feel more secure to express themselves as a result of the fact that they can more easily leave in case of retaliation. But if so, they may prefer to by-pass unions in order to maximize individual benefits.

Beyond this guesswork, it remains unclear whether employability is determining voice or exit behaviors. As evidenced by Withey and Cooper (1989), exit, voice and loyalty strategies can be set as the result of costs and benefits, risks and opportunities associated with each option. This paper aims at deepening this question by investigating the relationships between the internal or external nature of employability and voice behaviors,and the individual propensity to favor union mediation instead of direct voice. We argue that voice behavior would be explained both by the bargaining power individuals can draw from their employability and by the social support and trust that workers get from their professional environment. In so doing, we conceive employability as a resource individuals can mobilize in order to choose whether they would prefer to cope with problems or dissatisfaction at work using exit strategies or voice strategies. This resource can also interact —come as a substitute or as a complement-— with other resources, such as the kind of relations and social support they find internally with management, colleagues or union representatives.

To investigate this question, we collected data from a questionnaire over a population of non-unionized workers belonging to one major French retail bank. The article is structured as follows: we first develop our theoretical framework and present hypotheses combining internal and external employability, direct or union voice and other securing resource such as social support from management, co-workers and unions (1). Second, we present our methodology and the measurement scales we constructed to grasp employability and voice behaviors (2). Then we present our statistical results (3), and eventually conclude with a discussion of the contributions and limits of the research.

Literature and hypotheses

Our theoretical framework is grounded on the argument that voice behaviors can be, at least partially, explained by the perception of employment security by workers. Among many other triggers, we explore security as a potential result of employability and social support workers get from their professional environment.

‘Exit-Voice-Loyalty’ and employment relationship

Hirschman originally conceived his ‘EVL’ model as a typology of possible customers’ reactions to decreasing product or service quality and, more generally, to organizational decline (Hirschman, 1970): either they stop buying the product or service (the economic option, ‘exit’), or they complain about it (‘voice’, the political option), hoping to trigger off an action of improvement by the organization. And the degree of ‘loyalty’ plays as an explanatory factor or a kind of trade-off between exit or voice strategies, «the likelihood of voice increas[ing] with the degree of loyalty» (Hirschman, 1970). At the root of his model, as an economist of development, Hirschman observed that the poor performance of railroads in Nigeria did not led to any reform, even if there were some complaints from customers, because most of the customers could easily defect to private competitors, trucks or buses. In short, Hirschman stands against «the mechanism of the market, i.e. ‘exit’, as the only possible efficient social coordination mechanism» (Christiansen, 2010). Since then, numerous scholars have suggested to broaden the scope of his model, considering that it could constitute a relevant middle-range theory to understand the mechanisms of any kind of «markets», «organizations», or even of any kind of relationships, even the «romantic involvements» (Rusbult et al., 1982).

The model has been widely applied to better understand employment relationship, analyzing employees’ behavior in response to adverse work conditions and job dissatisfaction. Farrell (1983) performed a multidimensional scaling study in order to support a model of four categories of employees’ responses to job dissatisfaction, extending the ‘EVL’ model to a ‘EVLN’ model, the ‘Neglect’ option referring to the former work by Rusbultet al. (1982). Having collected data from a panel of expert judges and non-expert subjects, Farrell contributed to define different types of responses to dissatisfaction, distinguishing active from passive responses on the one hand, and constructive from destructive responses, on the other hand. In the active/destructive quadrant of his two-dimension matrix, he locates three types of behaviors: deciding to quit the company, getting transferred to another job and getting into action and looking for another job, all referring to the exit option; in the active/constructive quadrant, he identifies three other responses, namely talking to supervisor to try and make things better, putting a note in the suggestion box hoping to correct the problem and writing to a government agency to find out what could be done. (Farrell,1983). Interestingly enough, neglect and loyalty behaviors both fall into the passive/destructive quadrant with responses such as being absent, making errors, being late to avoid problems [Neglect], or saying nothing and assuming that things will work out, quietly doing job or hoping that the problem will solve itself [Loyalty] (Farrell, 1983). Besides, it is worth mentioning that, in this study, none of the three voice responses refer to union membership or union representatives in acting as an intermediary between individual complaints/expression and managers or employers.

Freeman and Medoff devoted much of their work to theorizing the role of unions in playing a central part in the labour market, unions being conceived as actual institutions of collective voice. More precisely, they assert that «a trade union is the vehicle for collective voice» […] «providing workers as a group with a means of communicating with management»(Freeman & Medoff, 1984): in other words, unionism, as a voice mechanism, can both benefit employees and employers, as it is expected to reduce voluntary departures, absenteeism and other types of exit behaviors, which in turn will «reducelabor turnover and training costs, and increase firm-specific investments in human capital and possibly have efficiency gains» (Freeman, 1976). Conversely, if the exit option seems uneasy or nonviable, employees will more probably use collective voice. Freeman and Medoff’s theory has been much debated and challenged in the academic literature, especially in order to foster a more contextualized view, taking into account national, institutional and/or industrial specificities, but also in order to balance union-forms of employee voice with the increasing development of non-union and direct forms of employee representation (collective decision-making, information sharing, joint consultation, participative management…) and, more broadly, the development of individualized HRM practices and the so-called «High Performance Work Practices». This challenging literature tends to contradict Freeman & Medoff’s theory, arguing that, in those contexts where direct forms of employee representations do exist and are efficiently implemented, or in those organizations where employment-management relationships are based on mutual trust and actual leadership, the role of unions appears at least ambiguous or useless, at worst counter-productive (Guest, 1987; Benson, 2010). It also tends to moderate the scope of Freeman and Medoff’s theory in the light of national contexts: their theory seems to be culture-bound — or institution-bound, given the existing gaps among the different national industrial relations systems. DoucouliagosLaroche performed a meta-analysis on 73 empirical studies that test the link between unionism and productivity in different contexts. They prove that this link is near zero, but that «country and industry specific associations» do exist (DoucouliagosLaroche, 2003). For instance, in France where the union rate is particularly low, “there are good reasons to believe that the effectiveness of the union voice is weak” (Laroche, 2004).

Employability and Voice: refining and hypothesizingthe relationship

The concept of employability, as defined formerly, appears to be worth discussing in relation to Hirschman’s EVL model and in relation to the undoubtedly complex link between the three components of the model. Hirschman assumed that, when exit is facilitated by organizations or is just easy for employees, voice is weaker, but he also stated that, to be effective, voice needs the existence of a possibility of exit: exit and voice co-exist in "seesaw," even if their outcomes remain distinct (Hirschman, 1970). In other words, Hirschman himself admits, it remains confused whether exit and voice function as substitutes or as complements (Hirschman, 1993). It also remains confused whether loyalty is an attitude and is expected to play a moderating role on exit and voice, or whether it has to be understood as a third distinct behavioral response to dissatisfaction (Leck & Saunders, 1992). The centrality of employabilityissues in the current political, economic, social and managerial debates encourages to question it from an academic point of view and to better grasp the underlying mechanisms of determinants and consequences of perceived employability. First, the notion of employability focuses more on the feeling of being able to quit than on the actual decision of quitting: the exit option is also a «psychological propensity to leave» (Naus, Iterson & Roe, 2007), and the notion of «perceived employability» finely encapsulates this dimension. Second, both dimensions of employability, internal and external, also seem interesting to differentiate, thus responding to the quit/transfer distinction made by Farrell (1983). Rothwell & Arnold (2007) summarize those dimensions in a matrix where internal and external dimensions of employability are defined on one side, and self-valuation and perceived value of employability are distinguished on the other side, which leads them to suggest a 16-items scale to measure employability. Besides, some scholars suggest to takea dynamic view of employability: Forrier & Sells for instance provide a processual model of employability, where professional transitions result from a complex process combining labour market conditions, ability to move, career expectations, organizational context and external events (Forrier & Sells, 2003). Such a process model of employability responds to the claim for a more dynamic view of the exit/voice framework (Withey & Cooper, 1989;GrimaGlaymann, 2012). Grima and Glaymann (2012) provide a renewed and enriched version of the exit/voice model, including loyalty, neglect and cynism as additional possible responses to dissatisfaction at work and, above all, identifying some «trajectories of responses» based on a longitudinal, qualitative study of a sample of 42 French temporary workers. Withey and Cooper (1989), in their cost/advantages approach of the exit/voice/loyalty/neglect model, assume individuals’ behavior result from a kind of balance between the presumed direct and indirect costs of their response and their expected efficacy depending on prior satisfaction and the perceived possibility of future improvement of the situation.

Yet, in an organizational setting where employability, rather than employment, is increasingly supposed to be the fundament of implicit social contracts, in a non-longer relational but much more transactional employment relationship, it may be hypothesized that the cost/advantage balance of exit or voice options has significantly evolved since Withey and Cooper’s work, for about a quarter of a century. Hence our intention to get some insights in the way employability, be it external or internal, is associated with exit and voice behaviors: if employability can easily be conceived as quite a «natural» antecedent of exit behaviors (the more employable, the higher ability to quit or transfer), the employability-voice association remains less intuitive. We could as well assume that employability is associated with a lower tendency to use voice, since the exit option is easier — exit and voice are substitute(Bernston & al., 2010; Pfeffer, 1998), or conversely assume that employability can be seen as a resource for voice, since complaining remains less risky and costly for an employable individual — exit and voice are complements (Rusbult et al., 1988; Marsden, 2011). The empirical analysis performed by Bernston et al. underscores the moderating role of employability on the association between job insecurity and exit/voice/loyalty behaviors: highly employable people evidence a strong positive tendency to quit their organization in a situation of job insecurity, whereas less employable people (or those who perceive themselves as being so) remain loyal; and in terms of voice, employable individuals, even in a job insecurity context, are less inclined to use the voice option and, more broadly, to reduce their engagement within /loyalty towards their organization (Bernston et al., 2010). In 1988, Rusbult et al. have already, even implicitly, tested the employability variable, when they hypothesize that the existence of «good alternatives […]provides a source of power for bringing about change [exit or voice], because the employee has acceptable options if the job declines further or ends»; on the contrary, if there is no hope of good alternatives, the options are to remain loyal or to engage in neglect. Marsden’s conclusions are convergent: speaking of «marketability of skills», he argues that those marketable and transferable skills strengthen individual’s bargaining power and, consequently, make voice option more secure. (Marsden, 2011).