Unitarist and Pluralist Managerial Perspectives

Introduction People have different ways of interpreting the events they come across in their daily life. School and family circumstances, encounters at the workplaces, clubs, religions, friends, society, and occupations influence most of the interpretations. Employment is one of the elements that influence people’s life.Advertising We will write a custom case study sample on Unitarist and Pluralist Managerial Perspectives specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More Hence, management and nature of employment are some of the issues that trigger heated debates. Most of these debates are based on principles and postulations that people use as reference points, a theoretical device first used by Alan Fox in 1974 as a way of explaining how people hold different opinions towards various issues. It is possible for two people to look at a common issue but interpret it in two different ways. People have two different perspectives of interpretin g managerial practices that take place at workplaces. The two perspectives are unitarist and pluralist perspectives. The unitarist perspective holds that workplace conflicts are avoidable. According to unitarists, managers may avoid workplace conflicts by bringing all the stakeholders together and making sure that an organisation is managed from a single source of power. On the other hand, pluralists hold that workplace conflicts are inevitable. According to pluralists, managers ought to convert the conflict into profitable initiative rather than criticising it. This paper aims at analysing the unitarist and pluralist managerial perspectives. Besides, the writer will decide on the best perspective based on the findings of the analysis. Unitarism Unitarists base their arguments on postulations that workplace conflict is an avoidable feature of relationships between employees and their managers. They claim that as long as managers continue interacting with employees, they are likely t o quarrel.Advertising Looking for case study on business economics? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More According to unitarists, both managers and employees share a common interest of making sure that their organisation grows steadily, and thus when a crisis occurs within the organisation, it would not lead to insolvency of the organisation (Ross Bamber 2009). Hence, the conflict that emerges between the parties is a result of personality muddle, poor communication, poor promotion practices, or inappropriate recruitment. Unitarists hold that to avoid such conflicts, the management team ought to identify the actions that might lead to conflicts and avoid implementing them. The management has the duty to conduct a free and fair promotion and recruitment exercise, come up with quality communication systems that are capable of showing the employees where their interests fall, and deal with people susceptible to personality disorders (Bacon Blyton 2007). Unitarists position on employee management draws from a number of theories. One of the theories is the theory of scientific management devised by Taylor (Ross Bamber 2009). The theory holds that for managers to come up with productive employee management strategies, they have to start by assuming that the employees are likely to avoid work whenever they get a chance, they have limited knowledge about the work, and are prone to pursuing personal interests. Therefore, to address these problems, the managers ought to come up with rigid and direct mechanisms that would help to control all the activities the employees undertake. The management has the duty to portray rational leadership during the recruitment process and when instructing employees. According to the unitarists, organisations ought to have a single source of authority. All instructions ought to come from the management team (Ross Bamber 2009). Managers are supposed to treat employees in a manner th at tries to suppress internal conflict over power by ensuring that it does not allocate powers to individual employees.Advertising We will write a custom case study sample on Unitarist and Pluralist Managerial Perspectives specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More Another theory from which unitarists draw their position regarding employee management is the human relations theory. They believe that for an organisation to curb organisational tension, it has to make sure that it establishes a working environment that promotes self-fulfilment. Workers are qualitatively different from all other elements of production (Ross Bamber 2009). Therefore, whenever workers are deprived the opportunity to make decisions in the organisation, the unitarists believe that they will definitely look for ways to resist the management system that enforces these conditions. Organisations need to handle their employees with great care since they are the most cri tical resource in production. The management has the duty to design workplace relations in ways that promote self-satisfaction within the employees. The managers need to understand that the employees have the right to present their opinions on how they would like to be governed (Bacon Blyton 2007). Moreover, they are required to work on employee development as a way to show that they are committed to improving the wellbeing of all employees. In whichever way, the ultimate goal of this managerial approach is to curb internal conflicts by promoting self-satisfaction through involving the employees in running the organisation. Unitarists do not believe in the role of trade unions in the organisations (Dzimbiri 2008). According to them, trade unions are illegal interruptions to management objectives. Trade unions tend to neutralise the power of organisational leaders in making all the crucial decisions in an organisation. They champion for the employees’ interests and makes sure that leaders address the interests. In a way, there appears to be a second source of authority within an organisation.Advertising Looking for case study on business economics? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More Unitarists believe that this second source of authority, which is the trade union, is to blame for tension that arises between employees and managers. They make it hard for an organisation to solve internal differences harmoniously. Apart from the scientific management and the human relations theories, the Unitarists draw their inspirations from the human resource management theory. The management theory holds that, for an organisation to surmount tension it has to foster a psychological contract rooted on cooperation. Unitarists believe that the forces that bring together the managers and the employees are much stronger than the forces that draw them apart (Ross Bamber 2009). Hence, the management ought to work on the forces that unite it with the employees by establishing a working environment that promotes autonomy. The management needs to treat the issue of workplace relations as a hole. In a bid to encourage cooperation between the management and employees, the management need s to create a corporate culture that brings parties together, use an insidious and strong leadership style, and have a clear revelation of the organisational goals. Workplace social classes are a major hindrance to organisational success. They lead to the breakdown of communication across the different departments. Besides, the social classes lead to regular conflicts due to contradicting interests (Bacon Blyton 2007). Unitarists maintain that for an organisation to succeed, it has to have a management system that discourages establishment of social classes, establishes open communication, and champions for the interests of all parties to the organisation. Such a system is achievable by encouraging teamwork within the organisation. Teamwork promotes cooperation between employees, therefore, avoiding chances of conflict of interest. Besides teamwork, conducting employee performance appraisal would go a long way to encourage cooperation between employees. Pluralism Pluralists hold th at conflicts at workplaces are inevitable, which contradicts the unitarists’ position who believes that it is possible for institutions to circumvent conflict at workplaces. Pluralists perceive business organisations as intricate social constructions that comprise of groups of people with conflicting interests. Employees and the management form part of these groups (Giles 1998). Based on the nature of the organisation’s system, employees and management are seen to pledge to different objectives and values. Based on this perspective, pluralists believe that it is hard to do away with different sources of power within a business institution. For this reason, organisations cannot overcome conflicts. By acknowledging that organisations are incapable of overcoming conflicts, the pluralists consider conflict to be of significant benefit to an organisation (Giles 1998). It acts as the conduit through which employees present their problems. Moreover, they posit that whenever t he management senses that conflict might erupt in an organisation, they work towards coming up with innovative methods that would turn the conflict into a productive initiative. Pluralists assert that learning that trade unions and shop stewards are likely to cause trouble in an organisation leaves the management at a better position to address the issues of employee relations in a holistic manner. Incidentally, workplace conflict does not only help the management to come up with strategies for institutionalising employment regulations but to also promote a level ground for all parties since employees are able to stand their ground when negotiating on contract terms (Bacon Storey 2000). This assertion underlines the reason why pluralists advocate for trade unions to act on behalf of the employees when bargaining for stable working conditions. Pluralists draw their inspirations from the systems theory devised by Dunlop in 1958. The theory treats industrial relations as constituents of a wider social system (Kessler Purcell 2003). They believe that for an organisation to succeed there has to be numerous leaders or lines of command to make sure that one leader does not pursue personal interests at the expense of others. Unlike the unitarists who do not see the role of trade unions in organisations, pluralists believe that trade unions play a significant role in bringing sanity into an organisation. According to pluralists, organisations are more susceptible to conflicts than harmony. Hence, it is illogical to claim that trade unions are the root cause of conflict witnessed in organisations (Kessler Purcell 2003). The pluralist theory holds that the workplaces are made up of different sets of attitudes, values, behaviours, and beliefs. Hence, it is hard for any organisation to bring all the stakeholders together and share common interests and values (Kessler Purcell 2003). For the management to bring the employees together, it requires to go through the heavy task of convincing them on the need for coming together. Since the different employees have different interests, the management ought not to run away from conflicts. Instead, it needs to embrace workplace conflicts and look for ways to turn the conflicts into productive undertakings. Pluralists call upon the management to institute industrial relations and select skilled personnel to advice it on how to address industrial matters, rather than intimidating the trade union’s personnel. Pluralists maintain that the management has the duty to promote pluralism and give all parties in the organisation an opportunity to participate in making decisions on matters affecting the organisation (Ackers 2002). In a bid to achieve this goal, managers ought to understand that employees are not the cause of conflict witnessed in organisations, but they show the diversity in industrial relations. Therefore, to harness this diversity and use it productively, managers need to embrace conflictin g opinions. The opinions might be rich in novel operation methods, therefore, helping the organisation to grow its performance. A pluralistic managerial perspective occasionally embraces a balancing archetype. Pluralists view business organisations as plural societies that hold numerous related but separate goals and interests, which the managers ought to establish some form of equilibrium to maintain them. In case one of the interests dominates the others, an organisation is likely to face a crisis (Ackers 2002). Pluralists emphasise on the need for striking an even-handed balance between the different interests in a business organisation to circumvent negative results. Overlooking some interests and addressing others might lead to the demoralisation of employees whose interests are overlooked. Such employees would stop being productive subjecting the organisation to retarded growth (Ackers 2002). In a bid to ensure that all employees commit themselves to organisational goal, plura lists claim that management and employees need to compromise on some of their interests to reach a common ground where they would be able to work on the interests that are feasible and within the organisation’s budget. According to the pluralist managerial perspective, the management can and should play a central role in coming up with minimum standards and designing other policies to rectify the imbalance in the bargaining power and foster equity. Employment is not enough (Singh Loncar 2010). Managers ought to ensure that employees enjoy quality working conditions and employment security. Besides, pluralists maintain that the management needs to address both work and non-work related needs of their employees. It needs to give employees the power to make decisions at their workplaces, which would facilitate in avoiding conflicts, as employees would agree with their colleagues on policies to adopt. The pluralistic approach does not view the role of managers as to implement or ganisational policies. Instead, it views managers as the link between the organisation and the employees (Singh Loncar 2010). Rather than imposing policies on employees, managers are supposed to help in reconciling the competing parties within an organisation. Besides, they are supposed to help in aligning the employee interests with the organisational goals. The best perspective The assumption that workplace conflict is avoidable, as the unitarists believe is not true. Unitarists teach that organisations need to have a common interest and a single focus of loyalty. Nevertheless, this scenario is not the reality in many organisations. Different employees and organisational leaders hold different opinions and have competing interests (Gennard Judge 2002). Consequently, it is hard for any organisation to circumvent workplace conflicts. Since it is hard for organisational leaders to do away with competition within the organisation, they need to look for ways of exploiting the competi tion in a profitable way. The pluralist managerial perspective offers the best solution for dealing with contemporary organisations. In the modern organisations, the workforce comprises of people with different cultural backgrounds. This diversity makes it hard for employees to share common interests. In a bid to achieve organisational growth, the management has to have knowledge on how to motivate the diverse workforce. Besides, it has to have clear knowledge of the diverse interests held by the workforce and work on modalities to harmonise them. Unitarists claim that trade unions are the main cause of conflict in organisations and that to avoid conflicts; organisations need to eliminate trade unions. However, trade unions are not accountable for workplace conflicts. Actually, conflict is endemic within the workplaces. Most of the modern organisations do not have trade unions (Abbott 2006). Nonetheless, the organisations still witness workplace conflicts between the different group s of employees or within the management team. The managers ought to go by the saying â€Å"if you cannot beat them, join them†. Rather than trying to curb workplace conflict, which is hard to do away with, organisational leaders ought to bring back sanity by sharing the control of the organisation. Unitarists believe that using a single source of power might help to curb conflict, which may apply for small institutions (Abbott 2006). However, for bigger organisations, it is hard for the management team to use a single source of power, which underlines why organisations are working to remove the hierarchy that exists in their administration structure. The hierarchy not only leads to conflict, but also delays in the implementation of organisational policies. Therefore, pluralists offer the best solution to workplace conflicts, which is to share control of organisation between several leaders who would work on the various interests to reach at a common agreement with all the sta keholders. A single leader cannot manage to address all the employee demands and might end up enforcing his or her ideas, therefore, amplifying the conflict (Abbott 2006). The employer-employee relations can be said to have two crucial but different features. These features are the managerial relations and the market relations. The market relations entail the terms and conditions of employee recruitment and are economic in nature. The managerial relations are the most crucial in an organisation as they determine its success. One of the aspects of managerial relations is the collective bargaining (Bacon Blyton 2007). This aspect relates with the argument about the importance of trade unions in organisations. Organisations do not have time to get the opinion of every employee. Hence, trade unions would facilitate to gather the opinion of the employees and bring them on the table for the organisation to make decisive decisions. The pluralist managerial perspective advocates for collec tive bargaining, which is a valuable approach in organisation management. Collective bargaining offers a platform where all parties participate in a democratic decision-making process. In return, it motivates employees since they feel empowered (Bacon Blyton 2007). Contemporarily, employee empowerment is one of the strategies used in unleashing the employees’ potential. In an environment where employees have to wait for commands from their leaders (like the one unitarists advocate for), they get demoralised and fail to commit themselves (Schmidt 2009). In such an instance, employees only work because they need money and they leave the organisation upon getting the first chance. The pluralist managerial perspective promotes a working environment that empowers employees giving them a chance to make decisions on matters affecting their organisation. This aspect arouses the feeling of co-ownership of the organisation in employees, and thus they commit to enhancing its growth. An organisation that use pluralist managerial approach is likely to cut down on operations cost with respect to employee turnover (Schmidt 2009). Since the approach empowers the employees, they feel comfortable and they commit themselves to organisational goals. Workplace conflict, if managed effectively, would promote innovativeness in an organisation, which underlines the reason why pluralists advocate for the management to manage the conflict but not rebuke and criticise it. In case of workplace conflict, bringing together all the stakeholders would help an organisation identify the underlying challenges and tensions. In return, the management would be able to come up with measures to mitigate their potential effects or address them before they happen (Bacon Blyton 2007). In a unitarist managerial approach, the management would be caught unprepared by challenges posed by workplace conflict. The approach believes that it is possible to do away with workplace conflicts. However, the strategies it gives appear more intimidating to employees. Therefore, instead of solving the conflicts, the strategies postpone them only to erupt at a time when the organisation is not prepared. On the other hand, the pluralist perspective employs conflict management strategies to address the challenges a conflict poses. It brings together all the parties involved in the conflict and helps them to come up with a consensus (Kessler Purcell 2003). For the modern organisations to prosper, they need to exploit the skills their diverse workforce possesses. Currently, organisations employ people with diverse cultural backgrounds. If these diverse cultures are brought together, they might help an organisation to come up with quality managerial practices, which can be achieved if an organisation accepts to accommodate a wide range of employee relations policies (Gennard Judge 2002). A Unitarist managerial perspective would not accommodate a range of policies since the system advocate fo r a single source of power. Embracing numerous policies would imply having numerous sources of power or a wide range of options to select from, which might lead to conflicts. Conversely, the pluralist managerial approach would accommodate for a range of employee relations policies. The approach acknowledges the potential benefits of workplace conflicts. Therefore, it would not mind to embrace the numerous policies even though they might lead to conflict within the diverse workforce. By bringing together the diverse experiences, an organisation would have a better chance of incorporating novel functions in its management practice thus improving its performance. Integrating the sentiments of every employee into the organisational goals would go a long way to curb workplace conflicts. This aspect underlines why the unitarist managerial perspective calls for common interests among the employees. Nevertheless, the perspective does not advice on how managers can come up with mutual intere sts or how to share mutual interests across the business institution. Storey (2000) posits, â€Å"Unitarism does not provide any guidelines for human resource, so that it can pursue unitarism effectively† (p.12). Individuals supporting unitarism perspective assume that employees are mature enough to reach conclusive decisions on how to integrate organisational and personal interests. This assumption makes the perspective weak, since it is hard for individuals with differing opinions to come up with an agreement without following a particular guideline. The pluralist perspective understands this aspect and that is why it advocates for collective bargaining as the alternative method to help in bringing the personal and organisational interests together. Unitarist managerial perspective holds that workplace conflicts are avoidable. Nevertheless, the unitarists fail to understand that employers are the root cause of the conflict. The unitarists advocate for employers to have abso lute powers in running the organisation. They do not realise that by granting the employers absolute powers, they exert unnecessary pressure on employees, which triggers the conflict. Instead of employees participating in the decision-making process, the employers force them to embrace the decisions made by the management even if they affect their rights and interests. In the end, the employees end up resisting the decisions leading to conflicts. For the organisation to curb conflicts, it has to ensure that all stakeholders take part in the decision-making process. Hence, only the pluralist managerial perspective can address workplace conflict, which is an inevitable phenomenon. Conclusion Managers follow different reference points when executing their management exercises. Two of such reference points are the unitarist and the pluralist managerial perspectives. The two perspectives have different opinions regarding organisational management. Unitarist holds that workplace conflict is avoidable. Therefore, the unitarist perspective calls for the establishment of a single source of power and integration of organisational and employee interests. They believe that workplace conflicts come because of different employee interests. Moreover, unitarists believe that employees do not need having trade unions, as the unions add to workplace conflicts. On the other hand, pluralist managerial perspective holds that workplace conflicts are inevitable. According to pluralists, it is hard for organisations to curb workplace conflicts. Therefore, the organisational management team needs to look for the opportunities that might help it to use the emerging conflicts to boost organisational growth. Pluralists view workplace conflicts in a positive dimension. They believe that the conflicts help the management to unravel the underlying tensions, therefore, helping them to come up with measures to mitigate them. Between the two perspectives, pluralist managerial perspective is th e better. The perspective acknowledges that it is hard for an organisation to overcome workplace conflicts and it gives a method of embracing the conflict in a productive way. Reference List Abbott, K 2006, ‘A review of employment relations theories and their application’,  Problems and Perspectives in Management, vol. 1 no.1, pp. 187-198. Ackers, P 2002, ‘Reframing Employment Relations: The case for neo-pluralism’,  Industrial Relations Journal, vol. 33 no. 1, pp. 2–19. Bacon, N Blyton, P 2007, ‘Conflict for Mutual Gains?’ Journal of Management  Studies, vol. 44 no. 5, pp. 814-834. Bacon, N Storey, J 2000, ‘New employee relations strategies in Britain: Towards individualism or partnership?’ British Journal of Industrial Relations, vol. 38 no. 3, pp. 407-428. Dzimbiri, L 2008, Industrial relations in a developing society: The case of colonial,  independent one-party and multiparty Malawi, Cuvillier Verlag, Germany. 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Storey, J 2000, The Realities of Human Resou rce Management: Managing The  Employment Relationship, Open University Press, Buckingham. This case study on Unitarist and Pluralist Managerial Perspectives was written and submitted by user Aubrianna Mccarthy to help you with your own studies. You are free to use it for research and reference purposes in order to write your own paper; however, you must cite it accordingly. You can donate your paper here.