 Welcome to the next clip. This is the first clip of chapter 6, and we will dive into the power of workers. The power of workers topic fits with the contextual perspective of human resource management. So, human resource management in organizations is not just deciding what you do, and then implement it to workers, but actually there's a voice in workers as well. There might be resistance. They might object what the organization is doing. So, this dynamics between the power of workers and the power of employers, that is what is central in this chapter. After this clip, this is the introduction clip. You will understand what the core topic is, which is employment relations. You will have an idea what is meant with the power question. We will have a short discussion about resource dependence theory, because that clearly illustrates this power dynamics. We will introduce the concept of employee voice, and finally I will introduce you to the two theoretical paradigms when it comes to employee voice and how these influence resource and human resource management in very distinct ways. So, let's start with the employment relationship. Employment relations is a domain that influences human resource management, and the definition of an employment relationship is that it is a reciprocal relationship between those who perform work or services, which can be employees as well as self-employed, so anybody who works. And with those who offer employment in the aim of realizing organizational goals. So, there are three concepts here that you need to memorize. There is an exchange between workers and employers, and this is reciprocal, which means there is an interaction happening, this dynamic, and this happens in the pursuit of realizing some organizational goals. So, it's within the context of the organization that there is negotiations, that there are communications that make up this employment relationship. So, what happens in organizations to manage employment relations? Well, let's have a look at how organizations are hierarchically structured to have some feeling about how this employment relationship looks where it takes place in organizations. The power question. So, once an employee accepts a job contract or as a seller self-employed a task or a project, then it is negotiated that they will spend their time under the supervision of the organization. So, in a job contract it is negotiated that people are hired for a certain amount of time in a week, and they will allow management to decide how their efforts are best coordinated in the organization. So, there is a prerogative where in managers have the right to manage during the time that employees work according to their contract in the organization, and that makes sense. In order to realize organizational goals, somebody has to coordinate how all the people are going to work together, and usually in the most simple organization structure it is management who decides and employees who perform. So, employees accept managerial prerogative because they are paid and they have a fair return for what they do in that organization. So, a closer look at what these two parties, so to speak, in the power relationship expect of this employment relationship. First look at employers. What do employers hope to get out of this employment relationship? Well, you can think easy. It should be not too expensive. There should be high productivity. There should be no mistakes. Employees are supposed to work neat and nice. There should be no downtime. So, we work all the time. Everybody is productive all the time. That's the best thing. And they will also contribute to innovations. Well, think of many other things. But employers' perspective is really circles around this idea of productivity. Employees are there to help organizations perform. Do employees expect the same? Well, they might have different expectations of this employment relationship. First, they want to have a good income. So, low cost is all nice as long as I have a good income. They want to be recognized for what they do. So, there's a social aspect as well. They want to have some work life banners. So, a fair distribution about the time that you spend at the organization and the time that you have left to work to enjoy your friends and your family. Nice colleagues also. It's also really nice. Just a nice job would also be appealing. So, you can continue filling the list with employee expectations. Bottom line, what you will see is that employees, they value the outcomes of the tasks. So, what's in it for them? Well, employers are more interested in what productivity employees deliver to the organization. So, it's fair to say that these interests of employers and employees do not align. They are different. Employers emphasize profits. Employees, they provide labor, but what they hope to get out of it is an income to have sufficient rights and to have benefits. So, once more to emphasize that there are different expectations in an employment relationship between employees and employees. Employers are more concerned about productivity and employees are mostly concerned about the fair returns for what they put into it. So, this indicates that there is a discrepancy in interest and we introduced a power relationship. So, who, why and how can workers actually exert influence? Because if you assume that there is full managerial prerogative, then employees have little say about their outcomes for work. Management can just do. But can they? Well, in this clip I will show you that actually there is power even if the employees are the subordinate party in the employment relationship. We will talk about behavioral strategies that employees can use to amend the terms and conditions of the employment relationship. In this clip I will dive into the different perspectives that exist in the power of employees and then in clip 15 and 16 I will continue with the critical perspective and with more unitary perspective. But that is for later. So, let's first have a look at the power question itself. And I turn to resource dependence theories which was developed by Fever and Solantik. They are not human resource management researchers. Actually, they are organization scientists who try to understand how one organization can exert power over another organization. That one organization once needs a resource to realize their organization goals. So in order to build a house you need bricks, right? Can the organization that delivers the bricks to the organization exert influence over the price that the demanding organization is willing to pay? And yes, they can. Of course, it depends on availability of that resource. If there are many other companies providing bricks then of course there is a lowering effect on the price that they can ask. But on the other hand, if they are unique and blah, blah, blah, all the things that we discussed in the clip about the resource based theories then a supplier organization can actually ask a good price. With this logic you can continue to apply to the labor market as well. So imagine that organization A is looking for employees with certain talents. And in order to be able to find those two, in order to realize their goals they need these employees. So they are dependent on a certain group of employees with specific knowledge. Whilst this knowledge is scarce, so knowledge is not a common good, it comes in different forms and shapes, and the scarce of the knowledge that these employees have is in the labor market, the more power they can exert over the conditions that the organization is willing to offer to them. So the resource dependence theory is a theory about power, about power that potentially subordinate parties can exert to the demanding party. In this case the demanding party A being the employer and B being employees. So this summarizes again the example of the bricks easily translates to the relationship between employers and employees. So the more there's power in employees they can demand favorable conditions as long as the employer is dependent on what the employee has to bring to the organization. So labor like the bricks that we just introduced is a resource to organizations, it's an important resource because without people in organization basically nothing happens. And unlike some other resources, labor is never owned by an organization. The only extreme exception to this not being owned is a organization that uses slaves. Well, we are past that, nobody does that anymore. However, this means that workers have a power because they can decide not to do the work and they can decide to go elsewhere. So that is the power that is in workers. So workers can think, act and feel, they can make up their minds if the organization is providing a fair deal as compared to what they are supposed to do. So consequently, there is power in workers because of this resource dependence. A trend is there in knowledge workers. Knowledge workers are people with specific knowledge that are highly look after by many organizations and they know that they are valuable to organizations. So based on this scarcity, they have a good position to negotiate a fair or valuable employment relations outcome for themselves. So according to the resource dependence theory, this reciprocal relationship where the resources delivered by the employer are matched with the compensation that the employees receive. So like we discussed in some other theories, as long as there is a balance, employees will be happy and they will be willing to subject to this managerial prerogative. But remember, employees can exert power by forcing up or by not doing work. I will zoom into the potential reactions that employees have in their position to when they are not happy with their jobs. So if employees are dissatisfied, what happens? Imagine that you don't like your job. So what are potential reactions of employees who dislike their jobs? What can you do? I turned to a theory that was developed by Hirschman in the 1970s. Again, originally this theory is not a human resource management theory. Actually it was a theory about customer loyalty. Hirschman reasoned that there are potential responses of customers to an organization that had delivered a not so good product or a not so good service. And he said that the loyalty of customers would be influenced by a bad performance of the organization. In the worst case, customers could decide to leave the company and to buy their goods elsewhere. So that would be an exit reaction. Another reaction is that the customers would think, OK, this was a one-off. I do my shopping all the time here. This was a nasty day. But let's forget about it and I'll come back tomorrow and let's see what happens. Companies enjoy the loyalty of their customers in that case and they are willing to forgive, customers willing to forgive the company about a bad service. Both of these are not ideal for organizations. What you really prefer is that the customer would say what their complaint is because only then a company can actually improve. But this logic one-in-one translates to how employees can react to being dissatisfied at work. What you can see is that employees can decide to leave the exchange relation and look for another job or they can complain to their employer about not being satisfied and then the organization can start a dialogue with their employees. You may think that that is maybe not a preferred reaction because complaining employees are a hassle. Well, actually, maybe it's better to have loyal employees who just sit and wait until they get a little bit more motivated again. However, loyal employees are not necessarily happy employees. Loyal employees are maybe frightened employees who dare to speak up and loyal employees may, even if you don't notice as employer, they may feel all kinds of withdrawal thoughts and maybe even withdrawal behaviors which translates in unwanted behaviors. So loyalty waiting until it gets better leads into a silenced employee. A silenced employee is one who is afraid to be perceived as disloyal. So in this power relationship with the organization that they say that, oh, I don't accept this managerial prerogative and then the managers might say, but you're a very bad employee and I will fire you. So the power relationship between employers and employees really lead employees to not complain when they are dissatisfied with their jobs. But like said, silence is not necessarily the best reaction. It will lead to dissatisfaction. It will lead to feeling less motivated in the job. So voice eventually is the preferred reaction both for employees because it will clear their minds if they can speak up and go into interaction with the employer about their outcomes for the work but also for the organization because that's the only way the organization can find out what they can improve in this employment relationship to make sure that all employees are happy again. So voice means having a dialogue, having a dialogue that can solve dissatisfaction and reduce exit thoughts and behaviors which is eventually, as we have seen before, unwanted behavior both for the employer but also for employees. If employees however fear to be viewed as disloyal in this managerial prerogative relationship they may stay silent and this is a missed opportunity because silence like said on the one hand has negative effects on performance in the organization but also on the well-being of employees. So a big question in human research management in this employment relations perspective is how to stimulate employee voice. Well by now we know this debate has started two different routes of research and the one is known as the critical perspective and the other is known as the uniterious perspective and I will try to explain in a nutshell what the difference between these two streams these two visions on employee voice are. On the one hand we have the critical theories. Critical theories are theories that originate in the idea that employers and employees have fundamentally different interests in the employment relationship. Employers always are looking after getting the most profit out of employees being the subordinate position in the power relationship they can't stand up to these powerful employers and to speak up for their rights. It's just unsafe for employees to voice their concerns because one employee has no power. Employers are the powerful part in the employment relationship and this inequality is seen as fundamentally problematic because voicing concerns in this perspective is always dangerous for employees and then the focus of critical theories is on this power problem. Employees should be protected in order to be able to exercise voice. We will dive into this theory in the next clip. On the opposite there is a more positive view to speak and this is known as the unitarist theories and the reasoning of unitarists is that well-being of employees is related to the well-performing of organizations and well-performing organizations they are in the capacity to also make sure that employees are happier. So organizations that perform well they have more money and they have more resources to also invest in the outcomes for employees. So key thinking behind unitarist theory is that there is an aligned interest between employers and employees to stimulate voice because employee voice is really important for making optimal use of the knowledge of employees to improve the organization and an improved organization in turn like said leads to more investments in employees. So there is a win-win. Voice behavior is very appreciated by the organization. It's not put away or employees who voice their concerns are not regarded as troublemakers. They are seen as engaged and involved employees who are there to help the organization become better as a whole. We see this line of reasoning a lot in human resource management literature. So if you contrast critical theory perspective with unitarist theory perspective you could roughly say that critical theories is more the domain of industrial relations. In human resource management maybe our 20% of research covers this perspective. Whilst the unitarist perspective the investing in people and making everybody happy is the dominant perspective in human resource management theory and covers about 80% of all the research. So wrap up. Now you know organizations need labor but cannot own it. It's resource dependence theory. Managerial prerogative gives management the right to manage otherwise organizations wouldn't function. Speaking up about the fairness bears risks for employees and this may lead to different types of reactions where of voice is the preferred reaction for employers and employees depending on the perspective that you take on this last one. So either you take a critical perspective or a unitarist perspective which will be central in the next two clips. Thank you.