Sage Handbook of Human Resource Management

Adrian Wilkinson, Tom Redman, Scott Snell, and Nick Bacon, editors

CHAPTER 6

THE EMPLOYMENT RELATIONSHIP

John W. Budd
Devasheesh Bhave

Industrial Relations Center

University of Minnesota
3-300 Carlson School of Management
321 19th Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN 55455-0438

[email protected] [email protected]
(612) 624-0357 (612) 626-8301
fax: (612) 624-8360

Version Date: March 19, 2008

We are grateful to Nick Bacon for helpful comments.

 The employment relationship is the connection between employees and employers

through which individuals sell their labor. This might consist of an immigrant day laborer paid

by the bushel to pick fruit in the hot sun, a salaried manager who has been working in an air-

conditioned office for the same company for 40 years, or innumerable other situations.

Irregardless, all employees and employers have fundamental interests they pursue through the

employment relationship, all forms of this relationship are mediated by labor markets and states,

and each instance of this relationship is governed by some form of a contract ranging from

explicit union contracts and civil service rules to implicit expectations and understandings. These

common building blocks of the employment relationship—employees, employers, states,

markets, and contracts—are the first topic of this chapter.

These common denominators make it possible to craft a singular conceptual basis for

analyzing the employment relationship that applies to the otherwise diverse forms of this

relationship across occupations, industries, countries, and time. This is not to say that there is

universal agreement on the nature of this common model of the employment relationship. In fact,

scholars and practitioners from different schools of thought see the employment relationship

quite differently—as a mutually-advantageous trade among self-interested agents in a free

market, a long-term partnership between employees and employers with common interests, a

bargain between stakeholders with some competing economic interests, or an unequal power

relation embedded in complex socio-political inequalities. The second part of this chapter

therefore develops four models of the employment relationship based on different

conceptualizations of the common building blocks.

The third and final major section of this chapter demonstrates that these four models of

the employment relationship, in turn, provide very different perspectives on key issues in human

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resource management. Depending on one’s frame of reference, human resource management

practices, for example, can be seen as administrative mechanisms for implementing the dictates

of the free market, essential strategies for creating productive employment relationships by

aligning the interests of employees and employers, employer-driven initiatives that inadequately

represent workers’ interests when they clash with employers’ interests, or manipulative

managerial tools for shaping the ideology and structure of the workplace to favor employers over

employees. Similarly powerful contrasts can be developed for other issues in human resource

management, such as equality and diversity, labor unions, and the globalizing employment

relationship. In sum, a deep understanding of the field and practice of human resource

management is impossible without fully appreciating the elements of the employment

relationship, their conceptualizations, and the resulting four frames of reference for human

resource management.

ELEMENTS OF THE EMPLOYMENT RELATIONSHIP

In this section we sketch the major conceptualizations of the elements of the employment

relationship. Each subsection starts with a description of the relevant dimension, but of central

importance are the alternative conceptualizations of each dimension embraced by individuals

with differing perspectives. The objective is to provide a foundation for understanding the

employment relationship generally; readers interested in specific forms of this relationship in

practice are encouraged to also consult other chapters in this Handbook. A more extensive

discussion of the interests of employees, employers, and states can be found in Budd and Bhave

(forthcoming).

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Employees

The legal landscape is littered with cases that seek to define who exactly is an

“employee” as employment relationships change and as the definition of employee can vary

from law to law. An ongoing controversy, for example, is whether temporary and contingent

employees are legally considered employees. For the purposes of this chapter, however, it is

sufficient to define an employee as anyone who sells their labor. Executive, managerial, and

supervisory employees might also have roles as agents of their employers, but when they sell

their labor, conceptually they are employees.

Employees are frequently conceptualized as an economic or a behavioral being

(Kaufman, 1999). An economic or purely rational person (“homo economicus”) is seen as

making self-interested, utility-maximizing decisions in well-defined situations by optimally

choosing actions from the entire set of possible alternatives. In this perspective, the central

objective of homo economicus employees is defined as maximizing utility which increases with

both income and leisure. As such, there is a labor-leisure trade-off in which work is desirable

only to the extent that it produces income, at least on the margin when deciding whether or not to

work a little bit harder (Lazear and Oyer, forthcoming). This approach further sees employees as

factors of production, or “instruments” (March and Simon, 1958: 29), to be optimally allocated

by employers to maximize profits.

However, the “homo economicus” assumptions pertaining to rationality, self-interest, and

information are extremely strict (Kaufman, 1999; March and Simon, 1958). As such, the

behavioral alternative to “homo economicus” sees individuals as making satisfactory rather than

optimal decisions that reflect a variety of intrinsic goals beyond selfish desires for income and

leisure—such as equity and voice (Budd, 2004), justice (Folger and Cropanzano, 1998), power

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and control (Edwards, 1986; Kelly, 1998), individual fulfillment (Donovan, 2001; Latham and

Pinder, 2005; Maslow, 1943), social identity (Tajfel, 1978; Turner, 1982), full citizenship rights

and self-determination (MacLean, 2006), pursuit of a “calling” (Weber, 1904/1976), social

exchange (Emerson, 1976; Kirchler, Fehr, and Evans, 1996), and altruism (Piliavin and Charng,

1990).. Seeing employees as behavioral rather than economic entities also means seeing labor as

more than just a commodity or a factor of production (Kaufman, 2005); rather, employees are

seen as complex human beings motivated by intrinsic rewards and, by some, entitled to fairness

and justice.

Employers

An employer is a buyer of labor. At its core, an employer is comprised of the owners of a

private, for-profit organization, or those who control a non-profit or public sector organization.

Executive, managerial, and supervisory employees are also often considered part of an

“employer” as they frequently act as an agent of their employer in managing other employees.

Employers are typically modeled as maximizing profits (Manning, 2003; Wachter, 2004), or

optimizing an analogous objective function for non-profit and governmental employers. The

Anglo-American shareholder model of corporate governance reflects this importance of profit

maximization. In this system, shareholders are residual claimants; all other stakeholders are seen

as receiving fixed payments such as wages and salaries for their services. As such, shareholders

are viewed as single-handedly bearing the risk of making a profit or loss and economic

performance will consequently be optimized when corporate decisions maximize shareholder

value (Blair, 1995). Maximizing profits and maximizing shareholder value are therefore

equivalent.

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 Alternatively, stakeholder theory asserts that all stakeholders—not only shareholders and

owners, but also employees, customers, suppliers, local communities, and others—are

sufficiently affected by corporate actions to deserve the right to be considered in corporate

decision-making (Donaldson and Preston, 1995). Within the context of the employment

relationship, then, an employer as a collection of stakeholders rather than shareholders seeks to

balance employee interests with the interests of shareholders and other stakeholders. A third

conceptualization of employers sees them as complex social institutions with their own norms,

cultures, and bureaucracies (Perrow, 1986; Weber, 1919/1946). Ospina (1996: 5), for example,

models employers as “stratified social system[s] embedded in a broader system of stratification.”

Along similar lines, Marxist thought conceptualizes employers as controllers of the means of

production. In this perspective, employers are not simply black boxes of production technologies

seeking to maximize profits; rather, corporations are seen as bundles of power relations in which

employers use their socio-politico-economic power to continue their dominance over the

working class (Bowles, 1985).

States

The state is the third important actor in the employment relationship, and has four roles

beyond that of an employer in its own right (Godard, 2005). The role that receives the most

attention is the regulative role—that is, in regulating the employment relationship through

employment law (in North American terms) or individual labor law (in European terms) that

specifies individual employment rights and standards such as minimum wages and

nondiscrimination, and through labor law (in North American terms) or collective labor law (in

European terms) that regulates employees, works councils, unions, employers, and employers’

associations as they interact with each other collectively. The state is a major actor in the

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employment relationship as the creator and enforcer of these laws. Not to be overlooked,

however, are a facilitative role in which the state establishes social norms, a structural role

consisting of economic policies that influence the economic environment, and a constitutive role

which determines the fundamental nature of the employment relationship by the type of socio-

politico-economic system embraced by the state, such as a market-based capitalist economy or a

state socialist economy.

Within these roles, the state has fundamental interests in the employment relationship.

The state assures freedom and the rule of law by protecting property rights and instituting legal

systems for establishing and enforcing contracts (Posner, 1986). Pluralist political theory sees the

state as also balancing competing power groups such as employers and employees to promote

equitable outcomes (Dunleavy and O’Leary, 1987; Faulks, 1999). A Marxist perspective views

the state as a mechanism for maintaining the power of the ruling class or other elite segment of

society (Faulks, 1999; Pierson, 1996). Based on how state interests are conceptualized, therefore,

the state’s role in the employment relationship and labor markets can be considered to be those

of laissez-faire promoter, an interventionist regulator, or even as an instrument that engenders

domination by one group.

Markets

Buyers and sellers of labor are brought together by the labor market in capitalist societies.

For some jobs, this might be a spot market in which employees bid for work and employers look

for workers on a daily basis. For a long-term employee, the employee-employer labor market

match might have been made many years ago, but the contemporary labor market nevertheless

likely continues to influence the terms of this match by establishing the parameters for

compensation and working conditions that will sustain the relationship.

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 In theory and practice, a key issue is whether labor markets are perfectly competitive

(Manning, 2003). Perfectly competitive labor markets exist when both employees and employers

are price takers such that labor demand and supply completely determine wages and working

conditions. In mainstream neoclassical economic thought, the invisible hand of perfectly

competitive markets guides self-interested employees and employers to optimal outcomes that

maximize aggregate welfare and allocate scarce resources to their most productive uses. In

layperson’s terms, nearly all markets appear “competitive”, but perfect competition requires

solely private transactions, perfect information, and no transactions costs. Some therefore argue

that externalities, information asymmetries, mobility costs, liquidity constraints, and transactions

costs render labor markets imperfectly competitive (Kaufman, 1997; Manning, 2003). If

employers have monopsony power in imperfect labor markets, employees and employers are

bargainers rather than price takers, and labor market outcomes are not necessarily socially

optimal. Debates between neoclassical economists and others over whether labor markets are

perfectly competitive are longstanding (Kaufman, 1988) and continue to attract supporters to

each side of the debate.

Contracts

The terms, conditions, and expectations under which an employee sells his or her labor to

an employer are captured in a contract. This contract might be an explicit written document.

CEOs, professional athletes, and unionized workers are examples of employees that are

frequently covered by written contracts. An employee handbook can be another form of a

contract. Employment contracts may or may not be legally enforceable depending on a country’s

legal doctrine, but whether legally enforceable or not, written contracts are incomplete as all of

the tasks and performance expectations of employees are not specified in advance. As such, it is

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common to think of the employment relationship as also governed by implicit contracts of

informal, legally unenforceable promises that are economic, psychological, or social in nature.

In economic theorizing, implicit contracts are rooted in uncertainty such as unknown

future labor market conditions (Rosen, 1985). Rather than receiving wages that vary over time

with changes in labor market conditions as in a spot market for labor, risk averse employees

prefer an implicit arrangement in which the employer and employee agree to a predictable, fixed

wage over time (Beaudry and DiNardo, 1991). The use of corporate pay policies rather than pure

market forces to set wages is seen as consistent with this type of implicit arrangement which is

not explicitly written down and is not legally enforceable (Bertrand, 2004). The agreements are

seen as self-enforcing because of transactions costs (it’s costly to find a new employee or job)

and the importance of maintaining one’s reputation (Bull, 1987).

In psychological theorizing, the key implicit contract in the employment relationship is

seen largely from the perspective of the employee and is labeled a “psychological contract”—the

employee’s perception of the employer’s and employee’s mutual obligations in the employment

relationship (Rousseau, 1995). When an employee’s perceptions are fulfilled, positive work

outcomes such as job satisfaction and trust are expected to result (Robinson and Rousseau, 1994;

Robinson, 1996). If an organization violates what an employee believes to be the terms of the

psychological contract, counterproductive work behaviors are expected (Greenberg, 1990).

Economic and psychological perspectives on the employment relationship therefore both

view implicit contracts as a tacit agreement between the employer and the employee about the

terms and conditions of employment. The economic perspective focuses on the role of implicit

contracts in establishing expectations for the economic exchange of work effort and pay. In

contrast, the literature on psychological contracts focuses on perceived mutual obligations

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regarding the broad manner in which employees are treated and encompass dimensions such as

fairness and respect (Robinson and Rousseau, 1994). Another difference is that psychological

contracts are continually adapted during the tenure of the employee with a particular

organization (Rousseau and Parks, 1993), but economic contracts are mainly revised at discrete

time points, particularly in responses to changes in the economic environment.

While implicit economic and psychological contracts focus on individual employee-

employer interactions, a social contract is more of a macro-level perspective in which social

values shape the expectations of the employment relationship. Kochan (1999: 138), for example,

argues that the postwar social contract embodied the norm that “hard work and good

performance, and loyalty would be rewarded with security, fair treatment, dignity, and status.”

Others argue that in today’s global economy, the liberal market value system has created a new

social contract of personal responsibility and short-term economic opportunism in which layoffs,

job-hopping, contingent employment, and variable compensation are the norm (Cappelli, 1999).

FOUR MODELS OF THE EMPLOYMENT RELATIONSHIP

The discussion to this point shows that the key elements of the employment relationship

can be conceptualized in very different ways. Employees can be seen as commodities, or as

human beings. Employers might be black boxes of profit-maximizing technologies, or complex

webs of power relations set within a broad socio-politico-economic system of class conflict.

States play at least five different roles in the employment relationship. Markets are seen by some

as perfectly competitive, and as imperfectly competitive by others. Contracts can be explicit or

implicit, economic, psychological, or social. Moreover, these different conceptualizations of

individuals, employers, states, markets, and contracts can be bundled together into four key

models of the employment relationship—the egoist, unitarist, pluralist, and critical employment

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relationships (see Table 6.1). Appreciating the roots and implications of these four models is

essential for understanding all aspects of work, including human resource management.

The Egoist Employment Relationship

The egoist employment relationship focuses on rational agents pursuing individual self-

interest in economic markets, and is most closely associated with mainstream neoclassical

economic thought (Boyer and Smith, 2001). Employees’ objectives are assumed to be income

and leisure; the objective of employers is profit maximization. Labor is seen as a commodity no

different from other productive resources, except in its tendency to shirk and therefore in its need

to be monitored or motivated with economic incentives. The state’s role is to protect property

rights and enforce contracts in order to foster free economic transactions. Labor markets are

generally seen as perfectly competitive and therefore as the primary driver of the employment

relationship—wages and salaries, benefits, and other terms and conditions of employment are not

set by individual employees, employers, or states, but by the invisible hand of the labor market.

Under these assumptions, the egoist employment relationship is one in which employees and

employers engage in voluntary, mutually-beneficial transactions to buy and sell units of

productive labor based on what the market will bear.

It should be noted that the egoist label used here is not intended as a pejorative term with

negative connotations; rather, it is intended to highlight the centrality of self-interest rather than

conflict and power. In fact, power and conflict in the egoist model are generally sterile constructs

that are treated in market-based terms. Conflicts are resolved by the marketplace such that

employees and employers agree to terms that are mutually beneficial, or look for other

employers or employees when the terms are not mutually beneficial. Similarly, power is market-

driven and is seen as what someone can command in the marketplace. But this is largely

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determined through supply and demand. Self-interested trades, not power and conflict, are

central to the egoist employment relationship.

Employment-at-will—the right to hire and fire, or take a job and quit, at anytime for any

reason—is a key element of the egoist model of the employment relationship. Employers and

employees should be able to enter into any explicit or implicit contract involving any mutually-

agreeable terms and conditions of employment, including compensation, hours, duration of

employment, job duties, and the like. In the interests of both economic optimization and

individual freedom, employers and employees should likewise be able to end these arrangements

when conditions or preferences change, or if a better deal comes along (Epstein, 1984). Note

carefully that the egoist employment relationship critically depends on embracing a value system

in which efficiency is the primary objective of the employment relationship and whatever the

market bears is best. Moreover, if employees and employers are equal in terms of economic

power, legal expertise and protections, and political influence, then neoclassical economic theory

shows that abuses and exploitation are prevented by perfect competition in the labor market.

Wages are never too low or too high, they simply reflect each employee’s economic value and

the impersonal forces of supply and demand.

The Unitarist Employment Relationship

The second model of the employment relationship tends to see employees as

psychological rather than economic beings, and is most closely associated with scholars in

industrial/organizational psychology and human resource management (Coyle-Shapiro, Shore,

Taylor, and Tetrick, 2004; Roehling, Cavanaugh, Moynihan, and Boswell, 2000). Coldly rational

decision-making is de-emphasized in favor of behavioral elements such as fairness, social

pressure, and cognitive limitations. Narrow economic interests are de-emphasized in favor of

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psychological interests. Perhaps most famously, Maslow (1943) hypothesized that employees

seek love, esteem, and self-actualization after their physiological and security needs are met. The

literature in psychology on work motivation therefore stresses intrinsic work rewards over pay

and other extrinsic rewards (Donovan, 2001; Latham and Pinder, 2005). Markets are seen as

imperfectly competitive, and are therefore not completely deterministic. As such, profit-

maximizing employers have a range of strategies for pursuing their organizational goals.

Moreover, a key assumption is that employees and employers share a unity of all of their

interests—hence, the “unitarist” employment relationship (Bacon, 2003; Fox, 1974; Lewin,

2001)—which means that the optimal employer strategies are those that align the interests of

employers and employees.

The unitarist employment relationship, therefore, is seen as a long-term partnership

between employees and employers with common interests. Profitability and other organizational

goals go hand-in-hand with fulfilling work, fair treatment, and the satisfaction of employees’

other intrinsic desires. This model of the employment relationship is therefore the foundation for

contemporary human resource management and its focus on creating policies that simultaneously

benefit employees and employers (Pfeffer, 1998; Ulrich and Brockbank, 2005).

It is important to note that the unitarist employment relationship assumes away issues of

power and conflict. Because employees and employers are assumed to share unified interests,

power is unimportant and conflict is seen as a suboptimal state of affairs. Scholars in this

tradition certainly recognize that diverse forms of conflict are an organizational reality (De Dreu

and Gelfand, 2008), but this literature frequently focuses on conflict between employees, and the

presence of such conflict in a particular organization is largely perceived as an opportunity for

improved human resource management practices to reduce this conflict. If employer-employee

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conflict exists in a particular employment relationship, it is seen as stemming from poor human

resource management practices that need fixing. Sustained conflict is an anathema in the unitarist

model, and contemporary human resource management therefore tries to manage conflict away

rather than embrace it as an inherent part of the employment relationship.

The Pluralist Employment Relationship

The pluralist model of the employment relationship rejects the egoist perspective that

employees are simply commodities (Kaufman, 2005); rather, employees are seen as complex

economic and psychological agents that, as human beings, are entitled to key rights such as

equity and voice (Budd, 2004). This perspective also rejects the unitarist view and instead

believes that there are a plurality of interests in the employment relationship (Clegg, 1975; Fox,

1974). In other words, employees and employers are seen as having a mixture of common and

conflicting interests. Both parties to the employment relationship want profitable organizations

and productive workers, but conflicts are also seen as inherent such as those between wages and

profits, flexibility and security, or speed and safety. Imperfect labor markets are also a key

element of the pluralist model dating back to Sidney and Beatrice Webb, John R. Commons, and

other founders of industrial relations (Kaufman, 1997). Today, pluralist academic views of the

employment relationship are most likely found in industrial relations (Budd, Gomez, and Meltz,

2004; Kaufman, 2004) and institutionalist labor economics (Champlin and Knoedler, 2004).

Putting the above assumptions together means that the pluralist employment relationship

is a bargained exchange between stakeholders with some competing interests in which the terms

of this exchange are influenced by the varied elements of the environment—including states and

markets—that shape each stakeholder’s bargaining power (Budd, Gomez, and Meltz, 2004). The

egoist model’s complete determinacy of competitive markets is replaced by the indeterminacy of

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monopsonistic labor markets; the unitarist reliance on employer policies to simultaneously

satisfy employers’ and employees’ interests is replaced by a concern for ways to balance

interests such as efficiency, equity, and voice, such as through government regulations or labor

unions (Budd, 2004). Economic incentives and markets are seen as important mechanisms for

allocating and effectively using scarce resources as in the egoist model, but pluralist thought also

includes more of a role for institutions to help overcome market imperfections and serve non-

economic goals.

In contrast to the unitarist model, the pluralist model sees some conflict as a natural,

healthy feature of the employment relationship. As such, conflict is to be managed, not

eradicated and avoided. Conflict is often managed through bargaining, and power is therefore

seen as bargaining power—the leverage one has to win economic gains in the employment

relationship within some range of market indeterminacy.

The Critical Employment Relationship

The fourth and final model of the employment relationship is labeled the critical

employment relationship, and is most closely associated with radical, heterodox, and feminist

scholarship in economics, sociology, and industrial relations (Bowles and Gintis, 1990; Kelly

1998; Thompson and Newsome, 2004). This model shares the labor-as-more-than-a-commodity

and labor-markets-as-imperfectly-competitive assumptions of the unitarist and pluralist models.

But this perspective emphasizes the socio-political embeddedness of the employment

relationship, and the resulting broad-based conflicts. Employers are seen as the owners and

controllers of the means of production which provides a power advantage in the labor market,

and in the broader socio-political arena (Bowles, 1985). In fact, the labor market and the state are

seen as elements of a socio-politico-economic system throughout which elites are able to

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perpetuate their dominance (Hyman, 1975). Unlike the pluralist model in which employer-

employee conflict is largely economic in nature and confined to the employment relationship, the

critical perspective is that employment conflict is part of a broader societal clash between

competing groups (Kelly, 1998).

The critical employment relationship is therefore conceptualized as a struggle for power

and control between competing groups (Gall, 2003; Hyman, 1975, 2006). The employment

relationship is not seen as a voluntary or bargained exchange, but as a contested exchange

(Bowles and Gintis, 1990). The critical model encompasses Marxist, feminist, and other

sociological theories rooted in the division and control of labor. A Marxist perspective assumes

that employer-employee conflict is one element of unequal power relations between the capitalist

and working classes throughout society. A feminist perspective focuses on unequal power

relations between men and women; a critical race perspective focuses on segregation and control

along racial lines (Amott and Matthaei, 1996; Delgado and Stefancic, 2001; Gottfried, 2006;

Greene, 2003; Lustig, 2004).

Compared to the other models of the employment relationship, power and conflict are

given the greatest importance in critical scholarship. In fact, the defining feature of the critical

employment relationship is broad-based socio-politico-economic conflict such that the

employment relationship is largely seen as a complex power dynamic—that is, a contested

exchange (Bowles and Gintis, 1990). Marx’s (1844/1988) view that workers are alienated under

capitalism is rooted in powerlessness—the product of their labor does not belong to them, they

have no control over what is produced, and no power over how it is produced. In Marxist

thought, as employers control the means of production, they are able to extract labor’s surplus

value which further empowers the capitalists at the expense of workers, not only in the economic

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arena, but in the socio-political arena, too. This extraction perpetuates the importance of power

relations and reinforces the broad-based nature of class conflict. Kelly’s (1998) application of

mobilization theory to industrial relations is another example of critical scholarship in which

power and conflict are key.

IMPLICATIONS FOR UNDERSTANDING HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

As we can now see, the employment relationship can be modeled as a mutually-

advantageous transaction in a free market, a long-term partnership of employees and employers

with common interests, a bargain between stakeholders with some competing economic interests

in imperfect markets, or an unequal power relation embedded in complex socio-politico-

economic inequalities. Each of these four models provides very different perspectives on the

fundamental aspects of human resource management, such as human resource management

practices, equality and diversity, labor unions and work-related public policies, and

globalization. As such, these four models, which we illustrate through the examples below, are

essential for understanding the scholarship and practice of human resource management.

Human Resource Management Practices

Human resource management practices are the policies and procedures used by

employers to manage their employees—including key functions such as selecting, evaluating,

rewarding, training, promoting, and terminating employees. Such practices, however, are seen

very differently through the lenses of the four models of the employment relationship (see Table

6.2). In the egoist employment relationship, such practices are seen as essentially dictated by the

labor market—fall behind the market, and employees will quit; get too generous relative to the

market, and the employer will be unable to sell products and services at a competitive price. And

by assuming a homo economicus approach, the economic aspects of such policies are

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emphasized, such as pay-for-performance plans, while intrinsic rewards are overlooked or

assigned monetary values (Lazear, 1995). So-called low road human resources strategies that

include low wages and managerial control are perhaps also most consistent with the egoist theory

because such strategies are rooted in a narrow conception of employee interests and in an

emphasis on what the labor market will bear. In the egoist model, then, human resource

management practices are largely administrative mechanisms for implementing the dictates of

the labor market.

The other perspectives see human resource management practices as rules and procedures

that govern the employment relationship within a particular firm through an internal labor

market. But the origins and consequences of these practices are interpreted quite differently in

each of these perspectives. In the unitarist model, well-designed human resource management

practices are seen as the key managerial mechanism for creating profitable organizations because

these practices are the way to align the extrinsic and intrinsic interests of employees and

employers. Human resource management practices such as valid and reliable selection measures

to hire and promote employees; training and development opportunities; respectful methods of

supervision; compensation that provides more than a living wage while also rewarding

performance; benefits that foster personal growth, security, and work-life balance; and open

channels of communication to prevent conflict therefore directly embody the central unitarist

belief in the commonality of employee and employer interests As a result, a plethora of

management consulting programs now focus on employee engagement and alignment.

In the pluralist employment relationship, in contrast, job ladders and other elements of

the internal labor market result from a mixture of pressures, such as economic efficiency, relative

bargaining power, and customs (Doeringer and Piore, 1971; Osterman and Burton, 2005). But

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compared to egoist theorizing, limited ports of entry from the external labor market into the

internal labor market are seen as shielding some human resource practices from competitive

pressures (Kerr, 1954). From this pluralist perspective, then, the determination of human

resource management practices occupies a conceptual middle ground between the complete

determinism of competitive (external) labor markets in the egoist model and the unilateral

managerial control of the unitarist model. Moreover, whereas the unitarist perspective is

generally comfortable relying on employer self-interest to promote both employee and employer

objectives (since by assumption these can be aligned), the pluralist perspective rejects a sole

reliance on employer goodwill (since by assumption there are some interests that clash). As will

be described below, the pluralist school of thought therefore sees a productive role for

government regulation and labor unions to complement human resource management practices.

In the critical employment relationship, human resource management practices are also

seen as rules for governing the workplace, but through a different interpretive lens. Because of

the socially-rooted, ongoing conflict between employers and employees assumed in this model,

human resource management practices are not seen as methods for aligning the interests of

employee and employer, but rather as disguised rhetoric that quietly undermines labor power and

perpetuates the dominance of capital (Legge, 1995). The design of routine low-skill jobs

(Braverman, 1974; Montgomery, 1979) and organizational structures such as bureaucracies that

create management routines through rules and procedures (Edwards, 1979) are seen as examples

of employer strategies to obtain power and control over the employment relationship through the

manipulation of human resource management practices. Above-market compensation policies

and informal dispute resolution procedures are viewed as union substitution strategies to prevent

employees from gaining more power by unionizing. Some critical scholars further contend that

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human resource management practices seek to redefine how individuals relate to employers and

to employment itself, and aim to gain employees’ adherence to a value system in which the

values of business trump all other social values (Keenoy and Anthony, 1992).

As a specific example, consider employee monitoring. Psychological research sees

monitoring as an activity to collect performance data on individuals, teams, and other

organizational units (Larson and Callahan, 1990). Consistent with the unitarist view, monitoring

is hypothesized to influence productivity only when it is used in conjunction with mechanisms

such as providing feedback and removing barriers to effective work performance. In contrast,

agency theory in economics sees monitoring as a mechanism to curb the opportunistic behavior

of self-interested workers (“agents”), especially when worker effort is reasonably easy to observe

(otherwise, economic incentives are needed to solve these principal-agent problems) (Fama,

1980; Jensen and Meckling, 1976). This theory is squarely within the egoist approach to

theorizing about the employment relationship. In the critical model of the employment

relationship, in contrast, monitoring is seen as a strategy to enhance managerial control over

labor, and further augment the power of capital (Braverman, 1974).

These differences are further reflected in the fact that scholars from the various

perspectives differ considerably about how they think about jobs and promotions. In the egoist

model, work is pursued to earn income so self-interested workers will only exert the minimum

level of effort required. Jobs, then, are seen as bundles of tasks designed to allow monitoring of

effort, or when effort is difficult to observe, as bundles of tasks designed to reveal information

about effort. Similarly, promotions are seen as incentive mechanisms for eliciting effort.

Economics research therefore devotes a lot of attention to the incentive effects of jobs and

promotions (Dewatripont, Jewitt, and Tirole, 1999; Ito 1994; Lazear and Oyer, forthcoming). In

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the unitarist perspective, employers and employees are seen as having common interests so jobs

are instead seen as bundles of tasks designed to promote the most efficient and effective

completion of these tasks, and promotions allocate workers to these tasks based on skills.

Psychology research therefore analyzes task complexity, autonomy, the worker’s immediate

social context, and other factors that may promote or inhibit task completion (Hackman and

Oldham, 1980; Salancik and Pfeffer, 1978). In the critical perspective, jobs are seen as bundles

of tasks designed to reinforce managerial control. Task specialization is therefore seen as a way

of deskilling work to reduce the knowledge and therefore power of workers (Braverman 1974).

Lastly, one of the hottest areas of contemporary human resources—specifically, high-

performance work practices such as flexible work arrangements, performance-based pay, and

employee empowerment (Huselid, 1995; Becker and Huselid, 1998)—further reveals the

importance of using the models of the employment relationship as a foundation for a deeper

understanding of human resource management practices. Within the egoist and unitarist visions,

questions about the effects of these practices largely reduce to questions about efficiency and

organizational performance. The effects on employees beyond efficiency-related issues are

frequently ignored because in the egoist employment relationship, dissatisfied employees are free

to quit, and in the unitarist employment relationship, common interests mean that what’s good

for employers is good for employees. But by seeing the employment relationship as including

competing interests, the effects of high performance work practices on workers’ stress, injury

rates, pay, and job security are of equal importance to the effects on organizational performance

in the pluralist employment relationship (Budd, Gomez, and Meltz, 2004). In the critical

employment relationship, such high performance work practices are further seen as

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“management by stress”—new employer tools for increasing the pace and effort of work while

increasing the uncertainty of rewards and security (Parker and Slaughter, 1995).

Equality and Diversity

Beyond human resource management practices, the four models of the employment

relationship generate contrasting perspectives on policy issues related to human resources (see

Table 6.3). First consider equality and diversity. In the egoist employment relationship with

perfectly-competitive markets and self-interested agents, discrimination on any basis except

economic value should not exist. Suppose an employer discriminates by paying white men a

higher wage than women and minorities in similar jobs. In a perfectly competitive market, profit-

maximizing behavior will drive down the wages of white men and bid up the wages of the other

groups until they all equal the value to the organization (Becker, 1957). If there is imperfect

information about worker quality, then it might be profit-maximizing to generalize on the basis

of demographic characteristics (for example, by assuming that parents of young children will be

absent more frequently); this is called statistical discrimination (Aigner and Cain, 1977). The

unitarist perspective is similar in that discrimination is rooted in ignorance (Guion, 1998).

In any case, the existence of employment-related discrimination in the egoist and unitarist

employment relationship is then seen as a type of market failure (Figart and Mutari, 2004) or

managerial failure stemming from imperfect competition or information. The favored public

policies are therefore skill enhancement—so that disadvantaged workers can compete better and

add more value to their organizations—and non-discrimination laws that promote formal

equality—that is, laws that promote colorblind or gender-blind equal opportunity for everyone,

not just the traditionally-disadvantaged (Heneman and Judge, 2003). In the corporate sphere, the

drive for equality has turned into a corporate-led diversity movement in which diversity

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embraced not as a route toward social justice, but as a potential source of competitive advantage

in which diverse employees will better serve a diverse customer base (MacLean, 2006).

Managing diversity is therefore an important component of contemporary human resource

management (Cleveland, Stockdale, and Murphy, 2000; Herriot and Pemberton, 1995), and

starkly reveals the unitarist assumption that the right human resource management policies can

align employee and employer interests—in this case, diversity and profitability.

In the pluralist employment relationship, segmented labor markets and occupational

segregation are rooted in the core tenet of this model—unequal bargaining power. Women and

minorities, for example, might be crowded into certain occupations because they lack the

bargaining power to break into other better-paying occupations. Integration, not just diversity or

non-discrimination is important (Estlund, 2003). The resulting policy solutions involve

institutional changes to break down barriers between segments of the labor market (Woodbury,

1987) and the promotion of labor union representation to enhance workers’ power. One could

further argue that the need to study gender and race in the egoist, unitarist, and pluralist schools

of thought results from a failure of these models to eradicate discrimination in practice; ideally,

gender and race should be a non-issue. The concept of class is similarly assumed away in the

egoist, unitarist, and pluralist models as the employment relationship is seen as a largely an

individual or an economic affair.

In the critical employment relationship, however, gender, race, and class are key

constructs inseparable from culture and markets. Whether in terms of gender, race, or class, the

dominant elite is seen as controlling access to good-paying jobs and therefore as restricting

economic prosperity to members of this elite group whether they be men, whites, or the upper

class. Gender, race, and class are further seen as integral for defining the very definition of labor.

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Feminist thought, for example, emphasizes that a male-dominated society equates valued work to

that which occurs for pay outside the home on a full-time basis—that is, work typically done by

breadwinning men (Figart and Mutari, 2004; Williams, 2000). Redressing inequalities rooted in

gender, race, and class therefore require deep structural reforms that move beyond formal

equality or corporate diversity programs; from this perspective, genuine equality and inclusion

requires re-defining society’s values and aggressively opening up good-paying jobs to

traditionally disadvantaged workers (MacLean, 2006; Marable, Ness, and Wilson, 2006;

Williams, 2000).

In critical scholarship, gender, race, and class are furthermore seen not only as sources of

conflict and oppression, but also of identity and mobilization. It is out of this scholarship that

comes important work on working class studies (Zweig, 2000), working class agency and social

history (Thompson, 1963), working class consciousness (Aronowitz, 1973; Mann, 1973),

whiteness (Roediger, 1991), race-conscious union organizing (Crain, 2002), and labor feminism

(Cobble, 2004).

Labor Unions and Public Policies on Work

The four models of the employment relationship yield starkly different perspectives on

labor unions (Budd, 2008; Budd, Gomez, and Meltz, 2004) and work-related public policies

(Befort and Budd, 2008). In the egoist model, labor unions are seen as labor market monopolies

that reduce economic welfare by impeding the operation of competitive markets and violating

the liberties of individuals to freely enter into economic relationships (Epstein 1983; Troy 1999).

Work-related public policies such as those mandating a minimum wage or paid family leave are

similarly seen as negative interferences with the operation of free markets.

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 Labor unions and government-mandated labor standards are viewed as unnecessary in the

unitarist employment relationship. When employers successfully align their interests with their

employees’ interests through effective human resource management practices, employees will be

satisfied and will not support a labor union or need mandated employment standards. The

presence of a union or employment law is taken as a signal of failed human resource

management practices. Unions are further seen as outside third parties that add conflict to what

should be a conflict-free employment relationship. The unitarist emphasis on individual, not

collective, fulfillment and intrinsic rewards further reduces the need for these labor market

institutions. Ironically, however, human resource managers in practice have greater influence in

their organizations when there is a threat of unionization or new work-related government

legislation even though one of their important objectives is to prevent such developments

(Jacoby, 2005).

Labor unions and mandated labor standards through work-related public policies are

embraced to the greatest extent in the pluralist employment relationship (Budd, Gomez, and

Meltz, 2004). A core pluralist value is the rejection that labor is simply a commodity (Kaufman,

2005). Therefore, labor is entitled to equity and voice in the employment relationship (Budd,

2004). In fact, basic labor standards are increasingly argued to be human rights (Adams, 2001;

Gross, 1998; Wheeler, 1994). But in contrast to the egoist and unitarist perspectives, the twin

assumptions of imperfect labor markets and some inherent conflicts of interests render markets

and human resources managers unreliable for guaranteeing employee rights. Rather, labor unions

and government laws are seen as essential instruments for leveling the otherwise unequal playing

field between employers and employees and thereby promoting rather than interfering with the

optimal operation of markets (Kaufman, 1997). As argued by the Webbs (1897) over 100 years

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ago, “by the Method of Collective Bargaining, the foreman is prevented from taking advantage

of the competition [between workers] to beat down the earnings of the other workmen” (174).

This view of unions is very different from the egoist and unitarist views because of the different

conceptualizations of the employment relationship embodied within these different perspectives.

In the critical employment relationship, strong, militant labor unions are seen as

important advocates for employees’ interests that can counter their exploitation under capitalism

by mobilizing and raising the consciousness of the working class, and by fighting for improved

compensation, better working conditions, and greater control over workplace decision-making.

The anarcho-syndicalist perspective within the critical school of thought also sees radical unions

as the key revolutionary vehicle for overthrowing capitalism and creating a society managed by

workers. But ultimately, the pluralist reliance on collective bargaining to promote employees’

interests is seen as inadequate in critical thought because structural employee-employer

inequalities are modeled as embedded in the entire socio-politico-economic system. Critical

scholars and activists therefore criticize U.S. unions in particular for not doing enough to

challenge employer power and raise working class consciousness (Eisenscher, 1999; Moody,

1999). As the state is further seen as largely promoting elite interests, work-related public

policies under capitalism are also viewed as insufficient. For example, Lafer (2002) argues that

government-funded job training programs for disadvantaged workers have largely been reduced

to training positive attitudes such as a strong work ethic and submission to authority. As such, in

the absence of good-paying jobs, these government-funded programs reinforce the power of

employers by teaching workers to accept lousy working conditions and to not question the

authority of employers.

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Globalization and International Labor Standards

Globalization places great pressures on the employment relationship. Some fear that

globalization creates a race to the bottom as international trade, foreign direct investment, and

offshoring undermine wages, benefits, and job security in locations where these terms and

conditions of employment are more generous. The four key models of the employment

relationship provide key insights into the major perspectives on debates over globalization and

employment issues. Moreover, by now it should be apparent that the four models contain

analytical as well as a normative implications—analytical in that they provide alternative

methods for understanding how the employment relationship works; normative in that they

provide alternative perspectives on how the employment relationship should work. As applied to

globalization, a key normative issue is how the global workplace should be governed (Budd,

2004).

In mainstream economic thought, globalization is seen as a good thing as it expands

consumer choices, lowers costs, and spreads economic development (Irwin, 2002). The egoist

model therefore embraces free trade and the reduction of barriers to global trade and investment.

Legislated international labor standards are seen as disguised protectionism, and the global

workplace should be governed by free trade. In the unitarist model, international labor standards

are best achieved through educating corporations as to how to align the interests of employees

and employers, and to rely on self-monitoring—this is exactly what campaigns for corporate

codes of conduct seek to create (Paine, et al., 2005; Tsogas, 2001). Corporate codes of conduct

will be successful only if the global employment relationship is best characterized by the

unitarist model.

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 The model of the pluralist employment relationship instead indicates a need for global

institutions to help balance conflicting employer-employee interests in imperfect labor markets.

Calls for fair trade, enforceable labor standards attached to global trading agreements, and

transnational labor solidarity and collective bargaining (Alexander and Gilmore, 1999; Nissen,

1999) are all rooted intellectually in a pluralist perspective. This parallels traditional pluralist

calls for labor standards and protections for labor unions in the domestic workplace (Budd,

2004). The critical perspective sees globalization as another example of employer domination of

markets and institutions such as the World Trade Organization, and therefore sees the need not

only for checks and balances in the labor market, but for deeper institutional reform, too (Coates,

2000; Cox, 1987; 2002).

CONCLUSION

The employment relationship is the exchange of labor for compensation via a contract as

conditioned by states and markets. The elements of this relationship—employees, employers,

states, markets, and contracts—are conceptualized by scholars and practitioners in very different

ways which results in four key models. In the egoist employment relationship, employment is

seen as a mutually-advantageous transaction in a free market between self-interested legal and

economic equals. The unitarist employment relationship consists of a long-term partnership of

employees and employers with common interests. The pluralist employment relationship

emphasizes bargaining between stakeholders with some common and some competing economic

interests and unequal bargaining power due to imperfect markets. The critical employment

relationship is an unequal power relation between competing groups that is embedded in and

inseparable from systemic inequalities throughout the socio-politico-economic system.

Admittedly, contemporary scholarship within these four perspectives is more sophisticated than

6-27
the models we have outlined here, but our portrayal reveals the core premises of the major

approaches to thinking about the employment relationship; more nuanced portrayals of these

models would not change the fundamental implications of this chapter.

A difficult issue, however, is whether these four perspectives are complements or

substitutes. The models are complementary to the extent that they help us understand different

aspects of the employment relationship such as the importance of economic incentives (egoist),

human resource management practices (unitarist), institutional interventions (pluralist), and

power (critical). Moreover, these different perspectives might reasonably characterize variation

across the employment relationship in practice—terms and conditions of employment might be

primarily determined by the labor market for mobile, uniquely-skilled employees or low-skilled

temporary workers, by sophisticated human resource management practices for core employees

in large corporations, and by formal bargaining for unionized employees. On the other hand,

these four perspectives can compete with each other. Intellectually, the four models force us to

think about human resource management practices, equality and diversity, labor unions, and

work-related public policies in very different and largely mutually-exclusive ways. These

conflicts are heightened when one’s attention turns to normative questions such as the extent to

which public policy should support labor unions. In such episodes, the egoist and unitarist

passions can be quite hostile to the pluralist and critical passions, and vice versa.

Whether as complements or substitutes, though, these four models provide the key frames

of reference and ideologies for scholars and practitioners in human resource management and

other areas related to the employment relationship (Budd and Bhave, forthcoming). When used

to analyze employment relationship issues and to guide one’s actions, the four models become

the four key frames of reference; when used as a platform for advocacy, they become the central

6-28
ideological alternatives. Unfortunately, these frames of reference and ideologies are frequently

implicit rather than explicit in scholarship and practice. A greater shared understanding of all

aspects of work can result if these models are more frequently made explicit. As illustrated in

this chapter, these four models have very different implications for employment practices and

policies. These implications similarly underlie the typical research focus of different scholars—

economists frequently focus on utility-maximizing behavior and markets, human resource

management scholars on organizational performance, pluralist industrial relations scholars on

labor unions, and critical scholars on race, gender, and class.

As either a field of study or a business function, human resource management is

fundamentally about the employment relationship. Understanding human resource management,

therefore, starts with appreciating different conceptualizations of the elements of the employment

relationship, and requires understanding how these conceptualizations form four distinct models

of this relationship. All too often, this intellectual grounding is implicit at best, or absent at

worst. Hopefully this chapter will foster the greater level of explicitness that is sorely needed.

6-29
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 Table 6.1: Four Models of the Employment Relationship
View of Employees View of Employers View of Markets The Employment Relationship

The Egoist Employment Relationship

Rational, utility-maximizing Black boxes of profit- Key driver of the employment A mutually-advantageous
agents optimizing the labor- maximizing technologies that relationship to match self- trade in a free market by self-
leisure trade-off; factors of optimize the use of factors of interested employees and interested economic agents
production production employers; ideally, perfectly
competitive

The Unitarist Employment Relationship

Psychological beings Profit-maximizing Important for establishing A long-term partnership
motivated by intrinsic rewards organizations with a self- broad parameters for terms and between employees and
interest to align its interests conditions of employment, but employers who share a unity
with those of its employees not completely deterministic of interests

The Pluralist Employment Relationship

More than a commodity; Profit-maximizing Imperfectly competitive so that A bargain between
economic and psychological organizations that have some there are imbalances in stakeholders with pluralistic
beings with moral worth and economic conflicts of interests bargaining power between economic interests and
democratic rights with employees employees and employers unequal bargaining power

The Critical Employment Relationship

More than a commodity; Owners of the means of But one part of a broader An unequal power relation
economic and psychological production with systemic socio-political system that embedded in complex socio-
beings with moral worth, inherent conflicts of interests perpetuates structural politico-economic inequalities
democratic rights, and class with employees inequalities between
interests employees and employers

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 Table 6.2: Views of Human Resource Management Practices

Model of the Employment

Relationship Human Resource Management Practices Are…

Egoist Of secondary importance because they are

administrative or institutional mechanisms for
implementing implicit contracts, incentives, and other
manifestations of self-interested economic actors
interacting in competitive labor markets.

Unitarist Essential because they are the key method for creating
productive employment relationships by aligning the
interests of employees and employers.

Pluralist Useful for aligning those employee-employer interests

that are shared, but insufficient for balancing competing
interests because of problems of unilateral employer
authority and power.

Critical Manipulative managerial tools for shaping the ideology

and structure of the workplace to strengthen capital’s
control and power over labor.

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 Table 6.3: Perspectives on Public Policy Issues in Human Resource Management
Model of the Public Policy Issue
Employment
Relationship Equality and Diversity Labor Unions Globalization
Egoist Competitive markets prevent Unions are labor market Free trade is optimal; international
discrimination; formal equality of monopolies that reduce economic labor standards are harmful trade
opportunity is key welfare by impeding the operation barriers
of competitive markets

Unitarist Discrimination stems from short- Unions are unnecessary third Voluntary, self-monitored codes of
sighted managerial practices; parties; their presence signals conduct can effectively promote
diversity is justified as a source of failing human resource international labor standards by
competitive advantage management practices aligning employer-employee
interests

Pluralist Discrimination is rooted in Unions are essential institutions for Fair trade (via enforceable
unequal bargaining power; balancing bargaining power international labor standards) and
equality is a human right that between employers and employees transnational unions are necessary
requires institutional intervention for redressing global imbalances in
bargaining power

Critical Discrimination and inequalities Unions are important working class International working class
across race, gender, and class are advocates that counter exploitation, solidarity and deep structural
pervasive; equality is a human but are disadvantaged by structural reforms are needed to prevent labor
right that requires structural inequalities embedded in the socio- exploitation by globally-mobile
changes politico-economic system capital

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