Keeping It Quiet? The Micro-Politics of Employee Voice in Company Strategic Decision-Making

Abstract

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.

Keywords

Australia corporate governance employee participation micro-politics New Zealand strategy trade unions voice

Introduction

Questions of employee voice remain an on-going concern in management and employment relations fields (Brewster et al., 2014; Dobbins and Dundon, 2017; Johnstone and Wilkinson, 2018). Debate ranges across a spectrum of considerations of the substantive usefulness of employee voice to multiple parties, from the level of the workplace (Hall and Purcell, 2012; Markey, 2013; Waddington, 2011), to the political economy role of collective bargaining (Bogg et al., 2013; Brewster et al., 2015; Creighton and Forsyth, 2012), and to rights’ claims to, or the strategic value of, employee participation in strategic level decision-making and corporate governance (Casey, 2016; Lippert et al., 2014).

A commonplace management viewpoint in liberal market economies expects employee voice to occur through consultation and information exchange with management at workplace levels, and employment relations bargaining at enterprise or industry levels (Freeman et al., 2007; Hall and Purcell, 2012; Markey, 2013). Those two platforms depict the limits of social legitimacy. Claims for employees to have a voice in strategic level management and corporate governance decision-making are frequently regarded as controversial in Anglo-American debates (Appelbaum and Hunter, 2005; Gospel and Pendleton, 2005; Hill, 2013) on the powerful assumption that shareholder interest maximisation legitimately prevails.

The Anglo-American, liberal market economies share much in common and are typically regarded as a distinct model of capitalism (Freeman et al., 2007; Hanké, 2009). Yet, researchers closely scrutinising Australia and New Zealand find that the two countries share institutional distinctions that mark their difference from the UK and the US. These occur notably in regard to the two countries’ historically similar industrial and labour law (Anderson, 2011; Bogg and Novitz, 2014; Mitchell et al., 2011). That shared institutional heritage, scholars propose (Bogg et al., 2013; Wailes, 2011), continues to exert particular influence. Those propositions warrant further empirical research among on-the-ground actors in Australia and New Zealand and with particular regard to employee voice in company strategic decision-making. Our historical familiarity with labour and company actors in Australia and New Zealand stimulated our further in-depth inquiry into their interests in company strategic decision-making.

This article contributes to debates in two main ways. Firstly, it shows how actors in the Australasian context craft a range of interest expression channels. In addition to their utilisation of formal institutional provisions for adversarial collective bargaining and cooperative participation, labour actors (i.e. employee representatives) and company actors participate in forming and using non-formal channels of expression and engagement. These arrangements – that are of low salience – contribute to de facto co-management arrangements and joint decisions on some matters of strategic importance. Secondly, the article proposes that micro-political dynamics enacted by labour and company actors in regard to substantive decision-making play a distinctive role in widening the scope of cooperation at enterprise level. Their enactments demonstrate the liveliness of embedded interaction in shaping organisational relations and processes. That institutional malleability proposes, in turn, potential for crafting more substantive collaboration. Micro-politics and relational capital are significant, under-recognised resources for use in the advancement of management and governance practices. To date, there is scarce attention to micro-politics in employee voice debates.

Discussion below is structured as follows. A brief discussion of employee participation and strategic decision-making in Anglophone systems and the theoretical framework broadly contextualise the empirical study. Discussion of pertinent particularities of Australia and New Zealand sets the context for discussion of a qualitative empirical study conducted in both countries. An interpretative analysis is developed and further reflections are made in conclusion.

Employee voice and company decision-making

Employees’ expressed interests in company strategic and governance decision-making have fluctuated in political salience and effective demand at different historical times. Strategic level decision-making refers, following Mintzberg (1985) and Kochan and Osterman (1994), to actions taken to achieve objectives at corporate, business and operational levels. Through much of the 20th century, labour’s interests in the governance of enterprises were expressed in movements for industrial and organisational democracy. By the 21st century many had noted a decline in that expression and its achievements along with decline in the strength of trade unions under neoliberal reforms (Baccaro and Howell, 2017; Crouch, 2014; Townsend et al., 2013). Still others contend that despite a widespread reduction in the use of collective bargaining, the role of and demand for employee voice and participation persist (Johnstone and Ackers, 2015; Taipa et al., 2015).

Yet, in addition, researchers demonstrate that labour, as collective employees, has objective interests not only in their traditional concerns, but in how companies are run and regulated (Casey, 2016; Gospel and Pendleton, 2005; Lippert et al., 2014). Strategic and governance decisions affect companies’ management, reputation and sustainability. As well as good management and sustained wages, employees have a direct interest in decisions including those regarding operational and geographic expansion or retraction, choices over substantive technological adoption, company and organisational restructuring, and corporate responses to climate change.

Most consistently demanded across Anglophone countries are forums for the expression of voice within organisations and workplaces below formal strategic level decision forums. A rich international employment relations literature on workers’ voice and representative participation documents these efforts and debates (Freeman et al., 2007; Hall and Purcell, 2012; Johnstone and Ackers, 2015; Wilkinson et al., 2013). That literature distinguishes between forms of employee voice, commonly including indirect formal-representative, direct formal and informal (Gollan and Xu, 2015; Marchington, 2015; Wilkinson et al., 2010), and its depth, level and range (Wilkinson et al., 2013). In brief, formal-representative manifestations typically refer to systems and forums in which employee representatives (union and/or non-union) meet with management to discuss company issues and information of interest to labour (i.e. Joint Consultative Committees (JCC), labour–management partnerships, tripartite forums). Direct formal voice encompasses forms in which management interacts directly with employees, rather than through employee representatives (e.g. engagement surveys, ‘town-hall’ meetings, newsletters). Lastly, informal voice refers to ad hoc interactions between management and employees, typically at the workplace and in small groups, and relating to operational concerns (Marchington, 2015). Much scholarly attention investigates the various combinations of these three forms of voice, enabling and constraining forces, and evaluations of their outcomes (Marchington, 2015). Some research points to the influence of inter-actor communication and relational qualities that affect at a micro level the chances of employee interest items gaining salience and being included on the discussion agenda and achieving positive outcomes (Casey and Delaney, 2019; Fiedler et al., 2020).

Many trade union actors as well as company actors remain ambivalent towards labour’s influence in strategic level decision-making (Appelbaum and Hunter, 2005; Kelly, 2004). For some, ambitious labour–management partnerships that entail high levels of cooperative engagement and ‘high performance work’ practices (Boxall and Macky, 2009; Posthuma et al., 2013) and include employee voice in strategic decision-making at corporate levels, assist both labour and company business objectives (Appelbaum and Hunter, 2005; Geary and Triff, 2011; Kochan, 2016). However, critics contend that partnerships can also fail to achieve any of these levels of cooperation and merely exploit employees’ good will and organisational loyalties for one-sided company advantage (Danford and Richardson, 2016; Dobbins and Dundon, 2017).

In sum, labour’s interest expression in strategic and governance decisions is empirically visible when corporate scandals occur and protest campaigns are mounted against companies (Holland and Pyman, 2012), and in sophisticated channels of formal representation (Appelbaum and Hunter, 2005). The intensive scholarly focus on representative, direct and informal forms of voice may obscure additional ways in which labour expresses its interest in substantive strategic company decisions. Our approach takes a sociological lens to understanding organisational life, management and labour relations. We are alert to multiple and dynamic aspects of inter-actor relations and their accomplishing of organisational cooperation and expression of interests. Our enquiry brings to light an under-recognised form of employee voice that comprises an indirect – as understood in the employee voice literature as representative expression – and non-formal channel of expression and attention. That hybrid form of voice entails a micro-politics of representative employee voice with significant effectiveness.

Micro-politics, organisations and employee voice

Micro-politics have long been a recognised feature of complex organisational life (Burns, 1961; Clegg et al., 2006; Crozier and Friedberg, 1980; Pfeffer, 1992). Micro-politics in our inquiry refers, following Blazejewski and Becker-Ritterspach (2016), to the political behaviour (e.g. influencing, persuading, claiming, negotiating) of individuals in and around organisations who seek to pursue their interests (individual or collective, formally legitimate, or boundary pushing) in interactions. Research on multinational corporations (MNC) draws sharp attention to the dynamics of intra-organisational micro-political power conflicts (Clark and Geppert, 2011; Ferner et al., 2012; Morgan and Kristensen, 2006). Actors’ strategic mobilisation of their resources of power and their legitimacy claims (Mintzberg, 1985; Pfeffer, 1992) create temporary balances of power (Morgan and Kristensen, 2006) that shape how formal organisational relationships and processes actually occur. Key actors make and take rules (Crozier and Friedberg, 1980). They are also sense-givers (Clark and Geppert, 2011) who contribute the terms and framing of institution enactment. These MNC organisational dynamics prompt further attention to the deployment of micro-politics through relationships across formal, and quasi-formal, organisational boundaries. Trans-organisational relationships, and those between representative actors – unions and company actors – that can blur organisational boundaries, are less well understood.

Sociological studies of strategic processes in organisations have long highlighted that power and politics are central to strategy making (Child, 1972; Clegg et al., 2006; Pfeffer, 1992). Debates in strategic management illustrate the uncertain dynamics of strategic decisions and enactments. Mintzberg (1994) contends that strategies are rarely carried out according to their design plans. Strategy contains ‘emergent’ elements. Organisations have decision-making capabilities at multiple levels, with variably effective connections between corporate, business and operational strategies. Strategy formation and enactment is an iterative process in which plural voices and interests interact and synthesise (Vaara and Whittington, 2012). A micro-political approach to strategy making draws attention to the power dynamics of these interactions, including how some voices and interests are excluded and confined (Blazejewski and Becker-Ritterspach, 2016). It recognises that different actors have different power bases and resources, determined in part by the structures, norms and discourses of the context. Nonetheless, it also draws attention to how those deemed less powerful might be able to ‘tackle, adjust, hybridize or create institutions depending on their motivation and their ability to generate powerful coalitions’ (Blazejewski and Becker-Ritterspach, 2016: 36). To date, this perspective is rarely explored in employee voice debates. Our inquiry asks, if labour is objectively interested in company decision-making, does it speak? What does it say, and to whom and how?

Employee participation in Australia and New Zealand

Considering the separate systems of Australia and New Zealand in combination may be considered contentious. However, in regard to the matters under investigation in this study, there are good reasons for doing so. Australia and New Zealand share many similarities with other Anglophone liberal market economies. As well, both countries have pursued particular historical expressions of social democratic polities with emphasis on labour rights and protections. They shared, prior to sweeping neoliberal reforms in the latter 20th century, a century-old industrial relations law of centralised compulsory bargaining, conciliation and arbitration. That aimed to set minimum standards of protections and fairness and ensure employer participation, a provision not available in 19th or much of 20th century English law (Bogg et al., 2013). At the same time, they continue to share some features of coordinated market economies such as mandatory joint consultative forums that are frequently of a substantive quality (Patmore and Gollan, 2003; Macneil et al., 2011; Rasmussen et al., 2006). These can include decision-making on matters of strategic importance to the enterprise (Forsyth et al., 2008; Foster et al., 2011; Markey et al., 2014). In both countries, employment law reforms of the 2000s have restored emphasis on collective and ‘good faith’ bargaining relations (Boxall et al., 2007; Markey, 2013) with cautiously promising degrees of effectiveness (Creighton and Forsyth, 2012; Foster et al., 2011; Wailes, 2011). Nonetheless, trade union membership and collective bargaining remain lower than their pre-1990s (pre-neoliberal reforms) levels and are unevenly distributed across industries and occupations (Gilfillan and McGann, 2018; Ryall and Blumenfeld, 2018).

It must be noted that research findings differ in their measurement of workplace participation. Brewster et al. (2015) report that of their sample of Australian and New Zealand firms, 41% and 27%, respectively, provide works councils and/or JCCs, both lower percentages than those recognising collective bargaining at 61% and 62%, respectively. Others (Boxall et al., 2007; Forsyth et al., 2008; Peetz and Frost, 2007; Teicher et al., 2007; Xu et al., 2016) propose, conversely, that a majority of workplaces practise forms of joint consultation arrangements, usually but not always known as joint consultation committees. These discrepancies urge further investigation into these practices.

JCCs principally serve to facilitate both productivity bargains and workers’ improved satisfaction gained through voice expression. Researchers observe that, in general, joint consultation flourishes where multiple channels, including trade unions, of voice at workplace and organisation levels are available and effective (Boxall et al., 2007; Sablok et al., 2013; Teicher et al., 2007; Xu et al., 2016). Similarly, trade unions play a key role in the establishment and practical enactment of labour–management partnerships. Partnerships, in both countries, have utilised elements of productivity bargaining and workplace modernisation prominent in the US partnership form while at the same time exhibiting features of the social partnership concept advocated in many European countries (Casey and Delaney, 2019; Huzzard et al., 2004; Macneil et al., 2011; Townsend et al., 2013; Xu et al., 2016) in which unions are recognised as contributing to the social regulation of labour markets.

Labour–management cooperation and partnership arrangements have remained active in Australia and New Zealand even as they have declined in the UK and the US. Macneil and colleagues’ (2011) analysis of significant government programmes to encourage workplace partnerships in Australia and New Zealand reports successful interventions as well as persistent problems in their consolidation. They, and others (Delaney and Haworth, 2016; McAndrew et al., 2010; Xu et al., 2016), note wider political economy conditions which pressure and enable employers to enact managerial prerogative and strategic flexibilities which undermine the ethos of partnership. Mitchell et al. (2011) report that company directors in Australia often speak positively about partnerships with employees, but there is little evidence of substantive collaborative practice in the highest level decision-making.

In both countries, corporate law developed from British company law and traditions. Corporate governance regulation maintains a non-prescriptive and self-regulatory approach and is typically shareholder centred (Hill, 2013), as indicated in Australia’s primary legislation, the Corporations Act (2001), and in New Zealand’s Companies Act (1993). Both countries present a dynamic mix of hard and soft corporate law and neither accords explicit attention to labour’s interests. Employee representation on company boards of directors, when it occurs, is at the discretion of the company. In sum, both countries exhibit enduring similarities with each other in regard to their legacy of distinctive labour law and employment relations and engagement with Nordic countries’ practices of cooperative voice expression (Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), 1987; Rasmussen et al., 2006), and in regard to the conservative influence of British company law. Their similarities on these factors justify our depiction in this article of the two countries as featuring an Australasian experience. This contextual review sets the point of departure for an empirical inquiry informed by sociological approaches to organisational and employment relations research.

Methodology

Informed by a critical-interpretive approach to research (Prasad, 2005), we conducted a qualitative empirical study from 2013 to 2018 that inquired into interests, perspectives, strategies and actions in regard to employees and strategic firm decision-making in Australia and New Zealand. The methodology involved conducting in-depth interviews of expert informants. The term ‘expert’ is a descriptive category that refers to persons with specialist, advanced knowledge developed through formal practice (Bognor et al., 2009). The rationale for conducting expert interviews to draw out reflections, experiences and opinions is twofold. Firstly, there is scarce empirical inquiry into employees’ interests and engagement regarding strategic decision-making. Expert data contribute a qualitative landscape from which further research questions can be generated. Secondly, strategic and regulatory decisions in a company entail cognitive limits of rationality and the play of multifaceted power and affect and normative rules (Casey, 2016; Pfeffer, 1992) that are typically of low salience. Interrogating expert actor reflections reveals nuances and effects of normative taken-for-granted elements practice.

The data discussed below utilise 55 in-depth interviews with expert informants: trade union actors and labour leaders (N = 30), corporate actors, board members and executive officers (N = 13), and academic researchers in fields of corporate governance and law, industrial relations and HRM, management and international business (N = 12). All respondents were institutionally senior and have held varying and multiple roles over time. That breadth and depth of expertise was significant to our inclusion of respondents. In all categories, a majority of informants confirmed Trans-Tasman expertise (competence to comment on aspects of their home and neighbour country’s experience). Respondent numbers are therefore inclusive of both countries. A large majority of respondents, while designated in this research by their current position, possessed multifaceted historical profiles that included memberships of works and industry councils, JCCs, company boards and multipartite international forums.

We approached senior officers in trade unions, senior corporate actors and internationally reputed academic researchers with requests for interviews. We used purposive sampling to invite other national union participants and expert participants from industry, research and international forums (Bryman, 2012). We conducted the interviews in person or by telephone. The semi-structured interviews typically of 60–90 minutes (one exceeded three hours) sought open-ended reflection. Question categories include: what is labour’s interest in strategic and governance decision-making? Is/how is, that interest expressed? Who are the interlocutors? How does interest expression play out?

Our abductive approach to the research design and analysis enabled theoretical dialogue with empirical reflection (Alvesson and Kärreman, 2007; Denzin and Lincoln, 2008) in the course of data gathering to identify novel insight. We conducted a thematic analysis of the data, which entailed close study of the interview transcriptions and field notes for the identification of recurrent elements, patterns and regularities that ‘captured the essence’ (Saldana, 2013) and depicted themes (Bryman, 2012). We identified two principal themes: (i) the role of formal and public institutions and expression of employee interests, and (ii) the role of non-formal, micro-political channels of expression towards significant decision-making. The material in theme (i) emerged first. Respondents spoke freely of their experience or familiarity with formal and public arrangements of collective bargaining, JCCs, industry tripartite bodies and company decision-making boards. Our discussion below summarily addresses that readily visible data. Theme (ii), the non-formal, quiet and micro-level engagements, emerged from careful analysis of the detailed reflections from participants. We focus our analytical discussion principally on that.

Empirical findings

Formal and public arrangements for employee voice in substantive decisions

Participants described a spectrum of formal institutions and arrangements for employee voice that occur with public visibility and audibility. Collective bargaining and JCCs are reported as frequent, uncontroversial and highly visible operations in companies and society.

‘Unions have a high capacity to bargain in Australia. They achieve good wages for workers. For most workers, that’s the end of it [interest expression]’ (Labour lawyer #Aus 11). Employee voice in industry and tripartite bodies that exert influence on company decision-making through industry level agreements, recommendations and forms of mandatory or voluntary reporting is reported to occur notably in major, established industries such as manufacturing, mining, construction, distribution and agricultural processing. It is absent in low-cost food, retail and services sectors with casualised employment practices and little or no union representation. A further element in the reported range of participatory forums is the persistent interest and aspiration in both countries regarding labour–management partnerships. Partnerships, despite their frequent ‘disappointments’ (Corporate exec #Aus 21) remain ‘a going concern’ in Australia and New Zealand (Academic #NZ 18). Labour actors have gained further experience and expertise through these engagements that has stimulated further interest in participation in company channels in which substantive decisions are made. They include participation in high-level working parties on specific and strategic projects in larger enterprises regarding technological investment, operations planning, redundancies and skills development.

Union leaders reported a wide scope of interest in substantive issues: ‘Labour’s interest extends beyond the employment relationship; it’s interested in product and investment decisions, energy efficiency, environment factors . . . Ownership, governance, strategy – these definitely matter to us’ (NZCTU executive #NZ 1). Increased attention to environmental sustainability and transnational labour standards in company supply chains prompts practical collaboration among management and labour actors. Developments such as United Nations global reporting indexes on environment, social and governance (ESG) goals pressure companies to address responsibilities beyond financial interests. Union actors reported that awareness of supply chain labour and climate issues raises attention beyond a particular union’s national membership base and local concerns: ‘corruption and [irregular] markets – these are governance issues. We’re involved with this on a global scale. It has to be joint; on many levels’ (ACTU executive #Aus 4). Respondents also reported collaborative roles in developing non-financial reporting into collective responsibilities: ‘These things [non-financial reporting indicators] are usually top-down. Management usually does it. But we’ve started working around the table on this. We’ve got the unions involved especially on the labour situation with some of our suppliers’ (Corporate consultant #Aus 40).

Employee voice in company decision-making through participation on corporate boards or their committees, the data indicate, is rare or uncommon and of very low visibility to publics. Nonetheless, executives of the peak union bodies in both countries (respectively, the ACTU and the NZCTU) reported examples of board level membership in companies within Australasia and internationally. An ACTU officer added that ‘few people know that’ and they do not publicise it. Academic respondents corroborated that point: ‘There are things going on; there are some real efforts about being at the table. But it’s not talked about’ (Academic #Aus 9).

Two principal reasons for the low visibility of labour leaders’ interest and involvement in strategic questions stand out: the power of traditional trade union politics, and of corporate shareholder conventions. Traditional rhetoric and mobilisation strategies typically win legitimacy through showing a ‘strong arm’ and ‘standing up to the employers’ in pursuit of workers’ core interests in wages and conditions. That traditional adversarial behaviour commonly attracts public attention and apparent legitimacy. Public deviation from those traditions incurs political risk to unions. Union leaders reported that their membership ‘doesn’t want to know about this’, ‘they think we’re wasting their money [subscriptions] if we’re not just fighting for wage increases’, and, ‘our members would suspect us if we collaborated’ (Union exec #Aus 3). Similarly, companies rarely advertise to their publics that they have employee representatives on boards, sub-committees, or ad hoc working parties. They want to avoid risks that powerful shareholders may regard these engagements as distractions from shareholder profit maximisation: ‘Nobody’s going to have them [employee reps] on the board. It’d just be seen as a risk; unnecessary’ (Corporate officer, board member #Aus 16).

In sum, formal avenues for employee voice in strategic company decision-making are few and obscure. Those that do exist, ‘whet the appetite’, as one labour actor put it (Union exec #Aus 23), for further engagement and influence, and provide an opportunity for further relationship development. Actors reported the existence of non-formal, non-public, quiet expressions and influence that reveal an arena of micro-politics.

Micro-political channels of expression

In addition to and in dynamic relationship with formal forums of expression, the data indicate that labour and firm actors engage in networks of micro-political relations. Actors established and nurtured these non-formal channels for a number of reasons. As illustrated in the previous section, labour actors noted a desire and responsibility to influence and contribute to more substantial strategic decisions:

We were just into all this bargaining, which is fine . . . but we were really missing out . . . We’ve come to realise it’s really important . . . about the say we have . . . about what we can contribute. There’s lots of ways we can do it. (Union officer #NZ 45)

Management and labour actors recognised shared interests in serious and complex challenges, and could foresee the potential benefits of mutual exchange: ‘It’s the environment, now, everything depends on that . . . We have to work together on this. We’re all stakeholders’ (Company director #Aus 32). Labour actors reflected that such issues often go beyond the remit of traditional and formal mechanisms of collective voice: ‘Green jobs, greener companies; climate change and the sustainability agenda – this is where things are heading . . . this is definitely beyond wage bargaining’ (Union officer #NZ 19).

Labour actors depicted their aims for a multi-pronged approach to voice expression that include multi-party relationships and extend to strategic and governance decision-making. Union leaders described ‘engaging with senior managers and directors whenever and wherever we can’ (Union leader #NZ 10) and ‘staying in touch’ (NZCTU exec #NZ 2) with senior executives through virtual and face-to-face ‘catch-ups’. Their approach, they contend, is that influential voice is ‘not just about boards’ (NZCTU exec #NZ 1). They spoke of their direct, interpersonal and networked micro-political engagement with company actors in ways that create further avenues of interest expression and problem-solving on diverse issues. One labour actor described these as ‘channels that work like corporate governance’. This person elaborated:

A union has an on-going relationship with a particular firm. Some of the achievements in the union’s relationship – like the in-put and perspectives on things that are brought into the meetings and exchanges – they can have a very effective role in decision-making at the strategic level. (NZCTU exec #NZ 1)

As the above quote highlights, the development of non-formal avenues emerges from relationships built over time that develop mutual respect. This is a complex interpersonal process, not without risk and discomfort. For labour, it entails contributing useful knowledge and expertise related to business matters; for management, it entails recognising union actors and knowledge as legitimate and valuable. One senior corporate manager relayed his favourable impressions of a senior union leader: ‘I’d never seen a union guy like this before. Speaking to him, it was like talking to another senior leader in an organisation’ (Company executive #NZ 13). Their ongoing relationship involved not only the sharing of expertise and knowledge but also mutual support when industrial relations were strained. This speaks to the ongoing and subtle interpersonal practices needed to ‘keep the conversation going, nudging . . .’ (National union exec #NZ 16). That relational capital enables further productive exchange.

These relationships, we contend, become chambers that are typically of low visibility, but in which important decisions are influenced and framed. Union actors talk of being ‘always on the phone’ with company managers (ACTU officer #Aus 31). For example: ‘Managers ring me to say, hey, I’m really concerned about this . . . can you give me your [thoughts]? Or they’ll ring and say, look, I’m just giving you a heads up . . .’ (Union officer #NZ 45). One union actor described it as the:

unofficial soft power behind the scenes . . . that can become quite influential both within the union and within [the company]. There’s always a degree of negotiations, and manoeuvrings, and discussions that take place in and amongst what’s officially happening. (Union leader #NZ 27)

Union actors, concerned that such interactions may be perceived as ‘backroom dealing’, emphasised the influential effect of soft power. Such relationships are a direct channel to make requests, seek assurances, to persuade and to suggest. Senior union leaders recounted interactions in which company executives offered recognition and thanks for particular union actions. In response, union actors sought company executive agreement regarding various strategic issues at the level of the firm (such as restructuring, staff ratios and operational location), and for advancing industry and national industrial relations policy and practice. Nevertheless, many union actors noted the riskiness of ‘the quietness of us working together’ (Union leader, #NZ 28), and were concerned about bringing into the open these low visibility forums.

Discussion: The quiet politics of labour voice

Labour actors pursue a spectrum of political strategies and relationships with firm actors that indicate a multifaceted and complex engagement. The issues of traditional member-based trade unions promoting and defending employees’ particular and asymmetric interests through collective bargaining are highly visible to employees and managements. Similarly, other engagement forums, especially JCC and direct (non-union) employee voice arrangements, are visible and variably recognised as effective in decision-making influence. Of particularly low visibility are micro-political engagements with a quiet voice. These engagements enable expression of interest and influence towards strategic company decision-making in the absence of formal channels for its provision.

Labour actors pursue relationship building with key firm actors, including at senior management and director level. Along with expression of labour’s particular interests, exchange of knowledge and expertise useful to organisational effectiveness occurs. The micro-politics that occur between labour and company actors through their, often mutual, efforts to ‘put a word in his ear’, ‘make sure there’s understanding’ and meet informally, including ‘a conversation in a corridor or over coffee’ to influence decision-making, are dynamic and contingent. The effectiveness of sustaining relationships and establishing trust may be seen as mutually favourable outcomes of decisions over time.

The quiet, micro-politics of voice brought to light in our study, we contend, advances understanding of employee voice. Taking a cue from scholars studying micro-politics in MNCs, we take up Blazejewski and Becker-Ritterspach’s (2016) identification of hybridising action to argue that sustained micro-political inter-actor engagement as identified in our study is a ‘hybrid’ form of employee voice. It is distinguishable from recognised forms of employee voice: it is direct in the sense that it occurs unmediated through voluntary inter-actor (labour–management individuals) relationship. At the same time, the labour actors involved are representative of collective workers whose interests are indirectly spoken for by their skilled representatives. Their representative character is the source of their legitimacy to forge labour actor–management actor trusted exchange relations and forge micro-political channels of decision-making influence. We stress, its legitimacy is dependent on its representativeness, yet its enactment differs from indirect voice as conventionally understood because it does not occur through formal channels of union–management negotiation typical of representative voice.

The micro-political voice we identify is a representative yet non-formal, low visibility, ‘on the quiet’ interaction with company executives, in which both parties inter-relate in ways that influence strategic decisions and outcomes. The quiet, relational micro-politics across de facto blurred formal domain boundaries revealed in this study contribute to rule-making and sense-giving within the company. Actors utilising micro-politics enact and shape particular institutional resources and legitimacies. Firstly, micro-political intervention occurs because labour actors perceive an opportunity gap. Australian and New Zealand industrial and corporate law makes no formal provision for inclusion or exclusion of labour interests in strategic decision-making. These are matters of company choice. That formal (legal) institutional flexibility is typically utilised by companies to exclude labour’s participation, especially at governance level (Marshall and Ramsay, 2012). Yet that exclusion is not definitive. Labour actors strategically use that space of ambiguity and indeterminacy as an opportunity to activate non-formal pathways of regulation (MacKenzie and Martinez Lucio, 2005). In micro-political interaction, they nudge, trade, contest, ally and exchange valuable information. They give sense, influence and shape norms in decision processes. Their capacity to quietly influence firm actors is politically forged. Structural asymmetry between the parties, we propose, can be interrupted or moderated by strategic action at the interstices by organic relations.

That political potential is increased by a second factor: recognition of mutual pragmatic value. Large and medium-sized companies encounter increased complexity in increasingly transnational markets. Local concerns intersect with those in globalising value chains, notably in regard to labour and environmental issues. Company actors recognise a resource gap in the limits to their knowledge and problem-solving capacity and pragmatically draw on labour actors’ relevant expertise. Through demonstrating competent interest in the company’s organisation and operations, labour actors gain a normative legitimacy of their primary labour-centred interests embedded in the fortunes of the company. Practical engagement enables recognition of a complex domain of mutual interests as well as conflict.

A third factor in mobilising micro-political influence is a particular legitimacy drawn from normative institutions in the Australasian context. Labour actors in this study claimed a further legitimacy in addition to those pertaining to scope and pragmatic value for their interest expression. They recurrently expressed an imperative, drawn from historical cultural norms, of ‘we all want a fair go’ (a ‘fair go’ is an Australasian vernacular expression for a cultural idea of relative egalitarianism valued in diverse areas of social life and interaction), ‘fair’s fair’ and non-deferential, frank interaction. These normative expressions evoke a legitimacy claim that their fellow citizens working at any level in the company are presumed to acknowledge. Demands for greater equalities in economic participation and fate, which in the 1980s in Australia and New Zealand were explicitly influenced by the models of the Nordic countries and Germany (ACTU, 1987) due to recurrent international exchange and visits among key actors, evoke an industrial citizenship sustained by aspirations to social fairness. Those long-held aspirations legitimise demand and motivate concrete interventions towards collaboration in various guises. They are retained, for example, in the Australian Government’s Fair Work Commission and New Zealand’s Fair Pay Agreements Working Group.

Company actors possess formal organisational power to refuse or withdraw non-formal relational engagement with labour actors. Relational micro-politics entail variable risks for all parties. For company actors, these risks occur notably in regard to their legitimation according to formal regulatory arrangements, and competing interests. For labour actors, an immediate risk arises in regard to competing norms in traditional trade unions of adversarial or bounded cooperation. The apparent tenacity of relational, quiet voice arrangements may lie in their pragmatic utility and/or in company actors’ recognition of the legitimacy of labour’s embedded socio-economic interests – understood as the historical ‘fair go’ – motivating labour’s claims. Our data do not enable robust judgement on that dynamic, and further empirical investigation in future studies on this question is warranted.

The micro-politics of influence, valuable exchange, norm-building and norm-enactment by labour and firm actors directly contribute to the emergence of strategic decisions and multi-level regulation of the company. The potency of relationality – of deliberate cooperation, compromise and valuable exchange – is utilised as a resource to influence decision-making that occurs within and outside of established high-level forums. Micro-political engagement occurs in the midst of tension, conflict and economic disparities. Participants strive to negotiate those discordances and win mutual gains.

The potential of the actor-shaped resources of micro-politics and relational capital for greater utility in the expression of labour’s interest in and emergence of substantive and multi-level decisions is under-recognised in management and employment relations debate. Yet these resources potentially directly contribute to the cultivation of conditions for new ways of thinking and acting in post-industrial organisations. It is prudent to be very cautious against over-stating the effectiveness of micro-politics and norm-enacting relations in contributing to regulation of competitive firm strategies. Micro-politics are undoubtedly located in macro-political and macro-economic contexts which, in recent years, have enabled re-strengthening of conventional structural asymmetries and weakened trade unions. Furthermore, in the case of MNCs, major corporate decisions are frequently taken far from the in-house forums of the productive organisation. Poor conditions, low wages and employee disempowerment in some sectors and companies may increase as global enterprises expand their operations. These may exert incalculable pressure on institutions regulating enterprises in the Australasian context. In sum, micro-politics are a resource but require minimal conditions to add value for organisational parties. Our data indicate that actors utilise, and optimise, particular historical legacies to persist in forging a regulatory space that may be foreclosed in MNCs that operate under rigid asymmetries of power and obstruct labour collective interest formation and respected representation. That raises a point for future research in regard to prior factors among actors and organisations affecting micro-political dynamics. Actor and industry characteristics, that our data were not able to elicit, may be significant. They require in-depth sociological investigation.

At the same time, union actors face personal and operational tensions in walking a fine line in quiet micro-political forums with scarce scrutiny by the workers they represent. The legitimacy of their quiet politics may be controversial. Actors’ avoidance of maverick eccentricity or corruption is essential. It appears premised on assumptions or assertions of good reputation and trustworthiness. That too may be necessary to practical engagement in micro-political exchange but in turn poses dilemmas for a union’s body politic in valuing democratic and accountable representation. Future research on union democracy and representative actor power is warranted on this point.

Conclusion

Labour actors’ presence as more or less equal participants in formal strategic level company decision-making in Australia and New Zealand is rare. However, in some sectors and some companies, management and labour actors engage in political and practical relations that enable labour’s voice to contribute to substantive decision-making. In addition to readily visible formal arrangements within workplaces, companies and industries for employee voice in decision-making, labour actors engage with company actors in intricate micro-political relations to contribute further influence in framing understandings and horizons of decisions. Outside of board rooms, actors exchange valuable knowledge and exert pressure of normative legitimacies to enact and demand respected inclusion and audible voice. Actors recognise multiple asymmetries; they politic and hybridise within them. At the same time, quiet politics entails risks and dilemmas that for labour actors and their constituency require careful negotiation and legitimation.

Footnotes

Funding

This research was supported by a Marsden Fast Start Grant from the Royal Society of New Zealand.

Catherine Casey is Professor of Organization and Society and Director of the Centre for Work, Organization and Society at Loughborough University, UK. Her research addresses questions in areas of economic sociology including organizational analysis, industrial and employment relations, employee participation and corporate governance.

Helen Delaney is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Management and International Business at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. Her research explores issues in the field of work and organization studies including contemporary expressions of participation and voice at work, the politics of science and knowledge in the business school, and gender, power and identity.

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