Changing Patterns of HRM and Employment Relations in New Zealand: The Large Hotel Industry

Abstract

Relatively little is known about the overall extent to which New Zealand employers have taken up the opportunities afforded by the Employment Contracts Act 1991 to innovate with high commitment employee management strategies. This study investigates changes in patterns of employee manage ment in the large hotel industry in Auckland in order to illuminate develop ments in employee management at the enterprise level within an industry. Semi-structured interviews with managers, union officials and industry association officials, as well as management and union archives provided the principal sources of data. The research suggests that, notwithstanding consid erable variation of approach underlying the maintenance of collective bar gaining and management-union relations in the large hotel industry, there has not been a complete displacement of the traditional New Zealand pattern of collectivist relations. Rather, there has been some move to improve com munication with the workforce, but without ceding the level of management control typical of the industry. Human resource management practices have not changed in ways that indicate a desire to secure the commitment of the workforce on a long-term basis.