The Goals and the Stakeholders

The labor relations process affects and is affected by a number of different groups and individuals. All of these are called stakeholders in the process. These include businesses/owners, management teams, workers, unions, society, consumers, and the government. Each of these groups and the individuals within them have various goals and objectives, and they are all important.

 

Employees

Consider your goals as an employee. What do you want to get out of working? Money, health insurance, a feeling of accomplishment, a sense of self-worth? Organizational behavior studies of workers tell us that employees want all of these and more. How do you want to be treated as an employee? Like a machine or with dignity and respect? Would you like to have input into the nature of your job? (Budd, 2008). We know from workplace studies that dignity, respect, and voice are all important to employees. When we think about the goals and issues of workers, we need to think about the multitude of different employment situations. Often, we find ourselves focused on white collar and/or high-skilled workers, but the majority of American workers fall into other categories: blue collar workers, retail workers, hospitality workers, low-wage workers, and contingent workers, and we need to make sure that we consider the issues of these workers as well.

 

Management

Think about the goals you have as a manager or might have as a manager. These goals might include meeting your daily objectives, operating efficiently, having consistency from your employees, having employees who show up for work, and having employees who provide organizational citizenship behaviors and discretionary effort.

 

Owners

Consider the goals you might have as an owner. These might include receiving a return on your investment, making money, or achieving some other mission.

 

Society

Consider the possible goals of society. These might include the ability to access and purchase needed and/or wanted goods and services, and societal outcomes like inequality, poverty, homelessness, and unemployment.

 

Government

Consider the goals of the U.S. government. Enumerated goals include establishing a more perfect union, establishing a system of commerce that benefits the country and its citizens, and ensuring life, and liberty, and happiness for all.

 

Three Goals of the Employment Relationship

All of these goals affect and are affected by the labor relations process and, therefore, there are multiple goals for labor relations. In this course, we specifically focus on three broad goals, which encompass many of these other goals (as well as others).

Budd (2008) states that the three objectives of the employment relationship are efficiency, equity, and voice:

• Efficiency: The productive, profit-maximizing use of labor to promote economic prosperity.
• Equity: Fairness in the distribution of economic rewards, the administration of employment policies, and the provision of employee security.
• Voice: The ability of employees to have meaningful input into workplace decisions.

There is often inherent conflict between these goals, and it falls on the labor relations process to strike a balance between the three. For instance, equitable treatment might reduce flexibility and efficiency. Employee voice might make decision-making more cumbersome and therefore less efficient. Unions centralize power to better achieve equity but often become less responsive to individuals, and sometimes those individuals will lose some voice.

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