Australian managerial attitudes towards employee relations: A comparison with the British National Survey

Abstract

The paper reports the result of a survey of 521 managers affiliated with the Australian Institute of Management. The study investigated the managers’ attitudes towards trade unions, employee participation, and organisations’ stakeholders. The results showed that the managers held favourable attitudes towards trade unions and employee participation practices (including financial participation). Similarly, the managers tended to hold favourable attitudes towards promoting the interests of primary stakeholders, though the majority did not consider that trade unions act in organisations’ economic interests. However, an analysis of variance was undertaken between managers from the public and private sectors. For the most part, private and public sector managers differed significantly in their attitudes towards trade unions, employee participation and organisations’ stakeholders.

The paper also attempted to discern the similarities and differences between the views of Australian managers and British managers based on the results of the 2001 British National Survey. The analyses revealed that the British and Australian managers shared many attitudinal characteristics vis-à-vis trade unionism, employee participation and organisational stakeholders. However, differences were also observed between the two sets of managers. The findings of the study are consistent with earlier studies. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of the findings.