Changing Workforce and Transforming Industrial ...

Article

Changing Workforce and Transforming Industrial Relations Scenario

Management and Labour Studies 39(2) 219–228 © 2014 XLRI Jamshedpur, School of Business Management & Human Resources SAGE Publications Sagepub.in/home.nav DOI: 10.1177/0258042X14558176 http://mls.sagepub.com

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A Commentary on the 6th National Industrial Relations Conference of XLRI, Xavier School of Management

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Anuratha Venkataraman1 Girish Balasubramanian2 Santanu Sarkar3

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Abstract India has witnessed rapid growth and development in the employment and industrial relations landscape post the liberalization of the Indian economy in the 1990s, which has had far reaching implications on Industrial Relations. These cumulative changes have implied that there is a lacuna in our understanding of the aspirations of the Indian workforce and the subsequent changes that the field of Indian Industrial Relations is undergoing. Forum for Industrial Relations at XLRI (FIRE@X) organised the 6th Bi-annual National Industrial Relations conference organized at XLRI, Xavier School of Management, Jamshedpur on 11–12 January 2014 on the theme “Changing workforce and transforming IR Scenario”. This conference served as the meeting point of leading industrialists, academics and trade union leaders to share their ideas and experiences and debate on the practices and policies. This article is a commentary on the conference that was organized.

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Keywords Conference proceedings, industrial relations, commentary

‘All classes of society are trade unionists at heart, and differ chiefly in the boldness, ability, and secrecy with which they pursue their respective interests’ (William Stanley Jevons in The State in Relations to Labour, 1882, p. vi).

PhD, Assistant Professor, XLRI, Xavier School of Management, C H Area (East), Jamshedpur, India. FPM Candidate, XLRI, Xavier School of Management, C H Area (East), Jamshedpur, India. 3 PhD, Professor, XLRI, Xavier School of Management, C H Area (East), Jamshedpur, India. 1 2

Corresponding author: Anuratha Venkataraman, PhD, Assistant Professor, XLRI, Xavier School of Management, C H Area (East), Jamshedpur, India. E-mail: [email protected]

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Though Jevons has not evoked the inter-generation variance in watching the ‘difference’, we tried to explore the differences between the generations in the 6th Bi-annual National Industrial Relations conference at XLRI. The broader argument form in the conference of the Forum for Industrial Relations (in short Fire@X) held on 11–12 January 2014 has two premises, namely: (i) how relevant is industrial relations in the dynamic Indian workplace and (ii) to what extent has the increasing emphasis on HR practices succeeded in rendering trade unions extraneous in organizations. When workplaces from both global north and south have been equally witnessing a decline in union density, some of the episodic industrial kerfuffle1 in recent times in India pointed out that collective is conceivably alive and cannot just be wished away. So, is it too early to assume that changing workforce and aspirations have kept collectivism at bay in the present time? How have Gen-X and Gen-Y employees from emerging economy sectors started seeing sudden joblessness alongside a solitary union activist who tends to equate every labour problem as an offshoot of age-old working class struggle? Are the recent incidences of industrial violence sheer reflections of excess casualization of workforce or do they resemble Luddism of 1970s? These pertinent questions were indeed most apposite for scholars and practitioners in the field, and therefore became the matters for the conference on ‘Changing Workforce and Transforming IR Scenario’, which witnessed participation from academics, practicing managers, trade unionists and researchers from different parts of the country.

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Introduction to the Conference Theme

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Before presenting an account of the two-day event, some of the contemporary perspectives that heralded the conference’s outline and subsequently formed an undercurrent of the speakers’ presentations are introduced in the ensuing section. Historically, conflict has remained an inherent part of employer–employee relationship and even today it cannot be totally eliminated from labour–management relation (see McGovern, 2014, for conflict and contradictions). We understand that collective action has been weakened due to rise in unitarist perspective. Globalization has reshaped the contours of knowledge-driven economies and belied the importance of industrial relations (henceforth as IR) to some extent. The characteristic features of the post-2008 crisis landscape are etched ever so poignantly by Richard Sennett. According to Sennett, the definitive features of this era are eponymous with uncertainty, labour flexibility and a loss of an employee’s long held personal identification in relation to his work, which was associated with the Fordist regime of accumulation. He argues that employees in the global economy are more vulnerable and easily dispensable than ever before because now their jobs are susceptible to abrupt migration to cheaper locations in the interlinked globalized value chain (see Sennett, 2011). This unpredictable era instead requires an intervening managerial practice that coalesce developmental vocabularies of mentoring, personal development with immediate imperatives of cost cutting in its discursive rhetoric and works at the individual level rather than with collective embodiments of employee voice. According to many, these features could best be attributed to evolving practice of human resource management (or HRM in short) (see Edwards, 2003: 337–359; Keenoy, 1999; Legge, 2003). At the structural level, the practice of HRM challenged the existence of IR and the role it has in framing the employment relationship. However, changing modes of work organization such as lean manufacturing and unitarism along with practices like quality circle and high performance work systems have characterized the emergence of HRM with two variants. The softer variation of HRM is characterized

Venkataraman et al. 221

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by adoption of cooperative long-term and nurturing participative employee relations which is in deep contrast to an adversarial cost–benefit variant of the hard HRM (Truss et al., 1997). Equally important are the changes that are occurring globally where the Trans National Corporations (TNCs) are increasingly trying to keep knowledge and specialization for their cadres and managers. When multinational investments began concentrating in the global south (Asia and Latin America; UNCTAD, 2008), when Vietnam and not Oregon became the home of 10 Nike factories that annually manufactured 75 million pairs of running shoes, and when 70 per cent of the workers engaged by Nestle in their operations worldwide were not directly employed by the company (Rossman and Greenfield, 2006), many international labour unions received the first blow to their traditional means of achieving cross-border solidarity. Today, the multinationals through ‘externalization’ (Theron, 2005) created a value chain of numerous contractors and sub-contractors thereby linking to the informal economy. Large corporations set up their ‘Greenfield’ projects in heavily regulated countries and still succeeded in keeping unions at bay. These multinationals posed serious problems for local unions by creating pressure on the neoliberal state by threatening to shift location. Workers in global south increasingly turned out to be the ‘“missing voice” in the international trade unionism’ (Elliot and Freeman, 2003). People worldwide began questioning labour internationalism. At the local level too, there has been an increasing evidence of workforce needs getting changed. The ‘workforce psyche’, if ever existed, is getting transformed from being collectivistic to more individualistic in nature. Factors like unemployment, inflation, catastrophes such as wars have been the focus of the rhetoric of union decline (Ashenfelter and Pencavel, 1969; Bain and Elsheikh, 1976). The improved technology in manufacturing and increased sophistication in service industries have led to requirement of a well-educated, smarter and younger workforce. Goals and aspirations of individual worker are today more divergent than ever before and organizations too have started to recognize the same. Gone are the days when workers collectivized and demanded for a thousand rupees wage hike for the entire workforce. Today, a woman worker can be highly satisfied with a thousand rupees drop in salary when the company offers her reduced working hours to take care of her child at home. Structural changes to the workforce coupled with the emergence of the unitarist HRM practices that are tailored to cater to individual needs have contributed to the decline of unions. To survive, IR as a field needs to adapt and focus on the original paradigm centred on employment relations. Nevertheless, amidst these transformations something remained impervious. For example, strike is still the crudest form of collective action and the potent weapon in the twenty-first century workplace (Mcllroy, 2011). In addition, the modern IR paradigm2 [a term made up by Kaufman in his review work (2008)] argues in favour of the continued relevance of IR by primarily capturing the political economic dimension of the employment relationship. IR as a critical project of enquiry challenges the direct relationship and hence representational logic of happy employees leading to fun employment policies. Academics in the field such as Darren McCabe and David Knights adopting the framework of the French philosopher Michael Foucault instead view these discursive practices that ramify through the organization as the operation of organizational power within and across the organization to regulate and discipline the conduct of employee agency. Hence, the main argument for the continued relevance of IR is that it provides a critical and nuanced perspective to the Icarian surmises of mainstream management literature particularly corporate strategy and its embedded implicit linearity. Nevertheless, one vital question that still remains is whether the labour unions are relevant in putting forth individual workers’ needs or is it a time to think of IR beyond trade unions? Keeping this contextual background in mind, the 6th National IR Conference explored the changing repertoire of trade union mobilization and its relation with the constituents of labour.

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Conference Proceedings

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The conference commenced with a keynote address delivered by Mr Ramkumar, Executive Director of ICICI Bank Ltd. The inaugural session was presided and chaired by Prof. E. A. Ramaswamy, former professor of Sociology and IR at the Delhi School of Economics. The conference was inaugurated by Prof. Ramaswamy, Mr Ramkumar, Father E. Abraham, Director of XLRI, Prof. P.K. Padhi of XLRI and the student secretary of Fire@X. Prof. Santanu Sarkar in his introduction to the conference theme pointed out the role played by changing demographics, social media, education and globalization on the present-day workforce. Father Abraham touched upon the idiosyncratic nature of workforce issues. Prof. Ramaswamy stressed upon the relevance of the theme, at a time when firms were grappling with myriad issues of market competition, on one hand, and ensuring industrial accord, on the other hand. He explained how the aspirations of present-day employees had undergone a transition. According to him, India in 1960s was a fledgling democracy, taking baby steps towards industrialization. The concerns of workforce at that time pertained mostly to job security and unionization was still in a nascent stage where unions were primarily grappling with issues related to wage and working condition. But, by the late 1980s during the time of political and economic reforms, workers’ concerns shifted to a more secure future in terms of children’s education, superannuation benefits, etc., most of which were also effectively bargained by their unions in India. But, with time the trade union leadership in the country has become insensitive to workers’ real needs. According to him, an average worker today looks forward to job enrichment and greater technical knowhow. He added that structural changes such as increasing participation of women, which was an outcome of affirmative action and a younger workforce that stemmed from India’s demographic dividend have brought in a greater diversity and complexity in the work place. According to Prof. Ramaswamy, the present generation workers are aware of their rights and want merit rather than seniority to be acknowledged. They want to take ownership of their work and oppose the rigidity brought about by Taylorism, which tried to discipline and closely monitor the job routines. Mr Ramkumar delved into the aspects pertinent to what he saw were the duties of a manager both functionally as well as morally. He was critical of the exclusionist thinking across the industry whose primary focus is the organized sector that covers hardly 5 per cent of the total workforce. The real problem, he opined is that of socio-economic inequality and ideological and monetary prejudices of managers who did not want to let go of the control because they do not trust their employees. Mr Ramkumar in his speech opposed the terminologies of management and managers. Rather, he preferred to call the managers as intermediaries. He added that as responsible intermediaries, the managers’ role is to ensure well-being of their subordinates and capital productivity while at the same time overseeing the administration of equitable social justice. At the same time Mr Ramkumar was critical of the archaic Indian labour laws, the increasing use of contractual workforce leading to their exploitation and the use of arbitrary hire and fire policies. He urged the HR professionals not to bow down against extortionist and exploitative policies of both unions and management. While concluding his address Mr Ramkumar summarized that the present-day managers who as trustees and intermediaries of organizations had a delicate task of balancing shareholders’ interests as well as the interests of employees and simultaneously being fair and transparent in all their dealings.

Panel I Mr Alfred Osta an alumnus of XLRI and currently the Executive Vice President of Mahindra & Mahindra, Prof. Debi Saini of MDI Gurgaon, Prof. Ernesto Noronoha from IIM Ahmedabad, noted


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political activist and economist Dr Prasenjit Bose and Mr Gautam Mody, General Secretary of NTUI, took part in the first panel discussion on ‘Changing workforce and their aspirations and expectations’ on 11 January. The discussion was moderated by Prof. Santanu Sarkar from XLRI, who at the onset after introducing the discussants, highlighted the increasing economic inequality and pointed out the two interesting findings on workplace. According to Prof. Sarkar, the local workers have grown in confidence and there is a feeling of injustice amongst the workers from small towns in the present situation. He added that several satellite towns like Baddi and Manesar are evolving and there is a growing resentment amongst workers on a number of fronts including the increasing wage gap, work intensification and contractualization of labour and management should be cognizant of these shifts. This contextual backdrop framed the theme for the first panel discussion. Mr Osta while initiating the discussion pointed out that the businesses, especially the Indian automotive industry, which he to some extent was representing in the panel, for years were in a state of flux and were mostly operating in amalgam environment of volatility and uncertainty. According to him, at that time, on one hand, there was an increase in employee sustenance cost owing to rising inflation, which had raised the overall labour cost and, on the other hand, employers tried to shift their focus to effective utilization of time, manpower and quality to recover from the crisis. Mr Osta explained that the reasons for a sudden rise in labour militancy were recriminations prevalent between permanent and contract workers. While the regular workers perceived that contract workers were a threat to their employment, the contract workers too felt that they were being treated unfairly, particularly when they were performing the same job routines of the former. Talking about the present generation of management graduates, Mr. Osta opined that the cohort of present-day managers had an inherent proclivity towards corporate desk jobs and were reluctant to go to shop floor. As a result, there was shortage of well-trained professionals who could listen, empathize and resolve the needs of workers and management. Consequently, for workers, the alternative space to air their grievances was increasingly permeated by politicized trade unions and dealing with unions was no easy job. He explained some of the proactive steps taken by his company to cater to the changing expectations of workforce. Prof. Saini to start with focused upon the concept of ‘Mcdonaldization’3 and the emergence of ‘generation Z’ in India, a new work force whose expectations were framed by expanding consumerism and rising aspirations brought about by globalized Indian economy. According to Prof. Saini, while unionization in India is on the decline, the workplace violence is on the rise and as a result he urged the audience not to conclude by considering one side of the data. In this regard, he pointed out an interesting taxonomy that comprises eight different forms of IR4 which he believes has grown in the past decades in India. He lamented the depravity in emotional quotient and paucity of conceptual skills amongst the current crop of Indian professionals, which brought about poor understanding of their workforce. According to him, the fulfilment of psychological contract of fairness and mutual well-being is the key to success for both the employees and their employers in the present day. Mr Gautam Mody, however, contradicted Prof. Saini’s claim that the aspirations of Indian workforce had undergone a change. While new aspirations have arisen, the old grievances remained firmly tethered to workforce, claimed Mr Mody. He was of the view that the fundamental grievances of the blue and white collared workers are still related to ‘living’ wages and decent working conditions. Although literacy and urbanization have not increased at a desirable pace, the neglect of agriculture and the expansion of informal economy have led to surplus labour, which looks at migration to cities. He lamented the lack of innovation and indigenous adaptation of technology and was critical of the country’s excessive dependence on transnational capital and technology. According to Mr Mody, India as an economy is facing huge demand constraints today. He was concerned of the fraudulent use

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of contract labour and the malpractices associated with its deployment by Indian firms. In order to promote consumption and economic growth, wages of workers had to grow, he added. The capitalistic firms were deeply embedded in Indian society and markets that were necessary for these firms to survive provided a ready context for their unethical conduct, said Mr Mody. Indian corporations have intensified their corporate malfeasance and have made the sustenance of workers even more difficult. This viewpoint is of the same erudition of commentators on Indian labour such as Rohini Hensman’s (2010) who views globalization as having positively worked in favour of Indian firms but leaving behind pernicious impact on Indian workers. Building upon Mr Mody’s arguments, Dr Prasenjit Bose advocated for the continued relevance of labour unions in India. According to him, the asymmetrical power structure and the conflicting views of employees and employers necessitate the use of collective action. He highlighted the growing disparity between the firms’ profits and wage share of employees and also the growing disparity between the wages of managers and workers. Dr Bose opined that the hire and fire policies had deleterious consequences for workers. Prof. Noronha, who has extensively researched the mindset of knowledge workers, preferred to draw audiences’ attention to the perspective of changing workforce composition rather than getting into the nitty-gritty of the effects of the changes on IR. He explained how the workers in new knowledge process outsourcing industry performed non-routine work requiring a fair amount of discretion and how the appeal of new corporate culture lays in concepts like flat structures, meritocracy and career growth. Contrary to these new concepts, the modern day work place had numerous bureaucratic controls and work life issues increased in their preponderance. While concluding his presentation, Prof. Noronha advocated a multi-employer bargaining model instead of the current single employer bargaining model and challenged contemporary negative connotations of unions and contradicted the popular assumption that trade union membership was in decline in India.

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Panel II

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On 12 January, in the second panel, Mr Dharam Rakshit, Assistant Vice President Employee Relations of Mondelez International, Mr Karthik Shekhar, General Secretary of UNITES, Mr N. Vasudevan, President NTUI, Prof. Ratna Sen former professor of IISWBM Kolkata, Mr Salil Lal, Head ER of Maruti Suzuki India Limited, Mr P.N. Prasad, Chief HRM-Group IR of Tata Steel and Prof. Jerome Joseph from IIM Ahmedabad joined in the discussion on the theme—‘management in the era of globalization’, which was moderated by Prof. A. Venkataraman from XLRI. Prof. Venkataraman set the stage for the discussion by briefly defining management and the considerations of management in terms of efficiency and optimization of resources. The focus of IR was job regulation, collective bargaining and studying the clear and sometimes nebulous spectrum of managerial agency and worker response that lay between control and responsible autonomy (Friedman, 1977). He dwelt on managing and management strategies and their repercussions on employee relations dynamics. Mr Rakshit initiated the discussion by first presenting four factors that had impacted businesses around the world. These are the quality of product and service, cost, innovations and consumer sensitization through various media. According to him, the unique feature of the present-day workplace is that both the millennial and the Generation X are working together and as a result, the challenge for the management is to cater to the vastly different needs and aspirations of diverse generations. An ecosystem of cooperation with workers was particularly important in the interdependent process industry, he added. He outlined the slow but steady permeation of these changes in the current Indian


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workplace. In his words, Indian firms are increasingly using collaborative management practices instead of participative practices. He suspects that in due course of time, the trade unions might be rendered redundant particularly when the employees want to be empowered at all levels, and contributes meaningfully towards the business. As a result of which the traditional methods of managing workforce would not be of use. Talking about the traditional method of collective bargaining to settle disputes, Mr Rakshit argued that collective agreement has both positive and negative effects. While it brings in industrial peace, the agreement also causes the danger of locking of resources over a sustained period of time constraining management’s decision on production and human resource mobilization. Nonetheless, like most of other speakers, he too was critical of the increasing use of contract labour. Mr Vasudevan, the second speaker from panel, however, made a conflicting interpretation. The trade unionist was of the opinion that HR professionals owed their existence to union movement, so much so that questioning the relevance of union according to him may lead to doubting the legitimacy of personnel management function itself. He clarified that the unions in India were not against all forms of economic development but has been opposing initiatives that were exploitive, detrimental and inimical to workers’ livelihood. While advocating for the continuing relevance and growing success of labour unions in the field, he highlighted the plight of workers in hospitality industry in Mumbai, where the efforts by various unions to organize the workforce in the recent past have proven the strength of collective mobilization and trade union representation in the country. Mr Shekhar, another advocate of trade unions in the emerging IT/ITeS sector, referred to employees in IT/ITeS sector as diamond collared workers. He advocated the need for collective representation in the industry, which was perceived as inessential about a decade back. His view on the challenging working conditions of ITeS employees in India mirrored conclusions arrived through work place ethnographies of the ITeS industry by writers such as Shezad Nadeem (2011). Both his explication and Nadeem’s viewpoint concurred about employees in the industry enduring an array of work-related pressures and subtle disciplining mechanisms, yet needing the relatively high wages offered by the industry to countervail their rising consumerist aspirations that would have otherwise been monetarily inaccessible to them. Going a little further on the theme of liberalization and management in the era of growing internationalization of trade and commerce, Mr Shekhar was particularly critical of the government policies on FDI as he believes that FDIs in India would come with their own set of challenges. He believed that the growth story of India was scripted by the service sector due to availability of cheap labour and to sustain growth, the subsequent focus had to be the retail industry. He was of the opinion that all the relevant stakeholders needed to be consulted in matters of FDI in any new industry such as retail and commerce. Talking about the management in the era of globalization, Mr Lal from Maruti Suzuki, however, was of the view that the rudiments of personnel management had not changed albeit that the typology had changed from IR to ER. He stressed upon the need to shift the focus from three ‘Ps’ which in the past were conceived as people, productivity and profit to a new set of three ‘Ps’—namely, people, productivity and peace. By setting forth a case in point from his own firm, he explained the importance of effective communication with all the stakeholders. In this regard, he briefly described a unique initiative taken up by his organization for the employees called ‘Samadhan’, where the employees would air their grievances. He believes that such initiative can help an organization to set up a platform for unique leadership, mentoring and training initiatives. In his own organization, the initiative had made a tangible difference in setting up a direct channel of communication between workers and shop floor managers, he added. According to Mr Lal, the external factors which affect the business are mostly the state policies, labour laws, the political climate and the changing demographics. He urged the unions to

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be partners and accept the tough love of management. Mr Prasad from the same panel flagged out the attributes of communication, honesty and sincerity as the three fundamental requirements between the present generation employees and employers for smooth conduct of business and harmonious IR. From his rich experience of working in the TATA group, he highlighted certain critical issues in his term and explained how little but periodical interventions such as ensuring better and safe working conditions by his team of managers could translate into big dividends of industrial peace in his organization. Nevertheless, talking about the external environment and its role, he was critical of the archaic labour laws and a lack of skilled union leadership. Prof. Sen, the first academician in the panel to join the discussion, preferred to go straight to the theme and started discussing the problems of globalization, which led to reduction in permanent employment, increasing challenges for managers and disparity amongst sections of society. She told the audience that before discussing the consequences, it is important to gain clarity about the workforce that consisted of about 25 million macro enterprises, of which 50 per cent were selfemployed, and more than 2 million small and medium enterprises and their aspirations in terms of a job and social security and decent working conditions plus benefits. The root cause for the recent industrial unrest, according to Prof. Sen, is the denial of the right to collectivize. She also stressed upon the relevance of labour unions by pointing to the increasing pattern of registration of unions in informal sector across states. Prof. Joseph added to the discussion by raising certain interesting questions on fairness of management practices, and he chose the performance appraisal system prevalent in organizations in the former times to build his argument and make his point. He quoted an example of a middle level manager in a firm who was denied promotion in spite of good performance. The afflicted employee, in his example, resorted to lengthy legal recourse to get his due. However, such event raised questions on the fairness of a process in appraisal often leading to discontentment and dislike for HR, said Prof. Joesph. He was critical of the new age managers who were designing policies from the comforts of their air conditioned cubicles remained severed from ground realities. Prof. Joseph who has been teaching and researching in the field of IR for several decades called upon HRM professionals and researchers to rethink on HR policies and practices that ensure diligence, fairness and equity especially in administering timely delivery of employee appraisal and compensation.

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Valedictory Address Prof. Ramaswamy in the valedictory address provided a comprehensive overview of the changing aspirations of the workforce and the remedies in terms of inclusive growth and effective implementation of participative management practices. Using vignettes from firms such as Asian Paints and Cadbury, he explained that the workers demanded more autonomy, empowerment, training and career growth, job enrichment and looked for meaningful contribution to the process improvements. He opined that the trade unions had an important part to play in representing the aspirations of the modern day workforce. However, he lamented about the archaic ideologies of Indian trade unions rendering them ineffective representatives of the modern day workers’ aspirations. This has led to a lack of trust in the unions, both by the managers and by the workers. He was equally critical of the patriarchal philosophy of the management that treats the workers as a class, and wants maximum possible control. He was critical of the discourses on participative management and its advantages but lack of proactive steps on the part of managers to implement them for fear of dilution of control at workplaces. In conclusion, he opined that

Venkataraman et al. 227 distrust on unions has led to a situation of monocracy and anarchy. He pointed out that things can never be straight jacketed into either black or white. There is always a grey area and both the managers and workers need to be comfortable in operating in the grey area called the practice of IR, which entailed quid pro quo. According to him, the expectations of the workforce would have to be taken into account and the best remedy is to offer inclusive growth and inclusive participation. The unions need to evolve and discuss beyond bread and butter issues to gain trust of management and workers for overall industrial development and peace, he added. Acknowledgements

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The views and opinions expressed in this article on the proceeding of 6th Bi-annual IR conference are solely of the presenters in their private and individual capacity and do not in any way represent the views of the authors of the article, or of the journal, or the institute which held the conference. It should be quite obvious that the authors, MLS and XLRI have not approved, endorsed, embraced, liked or authorized these views and opinions. Authors’ names are listed in alphabetical order and all authors have contributed equally.

Notes

References

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1. By episodic industrial kerfuffle we meant the reported incidences of workplace violence/homicides during the last one decade or so, though the unreported and growing incidences of unrest which need not necessarily always turned into extreme militancy resulting in killings and mobbing are equally highly indicative. 2. Collective Bargaining and trade unions which form the institutional bedrock for protection and defense of employees have been its conventional focus of enquiry. 3. Mcdonaldization was a term that was originally coined by the sociologist George Ritzier and is associated with standardization and breaking up of job routines in accordance with task efficiency. This term is often used in the same predilection as ‘liquid modernity’ a term coined by Zygmunt Baumann (2007: 5–27) that poignantly captures the uncertain and vulnerable state of contemporary capitalism retrieved from http://www. mcdonaldization.com/whatisit.shtml (accessed on 8 April 2014). 4. The eight different forms of IR are traditional pluralism—which deals with dual commitment; ambivalent pluralism—in which there is some confusion about the dual commitment; paternalist pluralism—which focuses on the employer taking care of the employees; repressive pluralism—which posits ruling with an iron hand; coercive unitarism—which is strictly against all forms of unionization and collectivization; ambivalent unitarism—unions cannot be avoided totally; paternalist unitarism—a combination of strategic human resource management practices and the traditional human resource management practices and the IBM type of unitarism.

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