The Rehabilitation of Joint Consultation: A Recent Trend in the Participation Debate

Abstract

This paper focuses attention upon the current public policy debate on employee participation in managerial decision‐making before the publication of the Bullock Report and, in particular, the apparent resurgence of popularity for the concept of joint consultation. In view of joint consultation's relatively unsuccessful history it may be that the implications of this development have been largely unrecognized. Current attitudes towards participation as exemplified in certain of the more important policy statements of management, unions and political parties are analysed in terms of the role allotted to joint consultation within them. Similarly, European experience with joint consultation is considered for its relevance for developments in Britain. The paper closes with discussion of the future role joint consultation could play as a vehicle in the development of employee participation and the key issues involved.

Persuasion and industrial relations: a case of argument in a joint consultative committee

“…While persuasion has been accorded significance in the process of the JCC it has not per se been the research focus. Instead while the literature upon JCCs has concentrated upon such things as, the determinants of JCC failure and requirements for success (Cuthbert and Whitaker, 1977), the perceptions and attitudes of interested parties to JCCs as a means for employee participation (Bate and Murphy, 1981), the wide ranging purposes which JCCs can fulfil (Marchington and Armstrong, 1981), the dying and decaying JCC and its location within the context of the employment relationship (MacInnes, 1985), and the JCCs position vis-à-vis collective bargaining (Marchington, 1994) a treatment of argument is omitted. For example, the case studies by Marchington and Armstrong (1981), MacInnes (1985) and Marchington (1992), all based around interviews, contain no attempt at deconstructing the views of the interviewees.…”