Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research - Research Publications
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ItemIndustrial relations reform: who are the pro-reformers( 2003-04)There have been considerable changes in the industrial relations landscape in Australia over the past 15 years. This paper utilises a recent survey of large Australian organisations to investigate the characteristics of the organisations that have embraced the industrial relations reform agenda. We find evidence that certain industries, such as Mining, have embraced the reform agenda. We also find that organisations who have embraced the reform agenda tend to have rather different human resource management practices to those who have not
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ItemIndustrial relations reform at the enterprise and workplace( 2003-03)This paper compares attitudes and perceptions to industrial relations reform between senior management at large Australian organisations on the one hand, and their associated workplace managers on the other. We find that significant differences exist in the opinions and policies of workplaces and enterprises. In particular, marked differences exist in the attitudes towards human resource management and industrial relations reform. These results suggest that we may conclude that in terms of human resource management and industrial relations it appears there is no corporate culture that is carried over from head office to the workplace
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ItemAre pro-reformers better performers?( 2002-09)There appears to be widespread consensus in industry and government that a switch from centralized bargaining to an enterprise based system benefits productivity. However, research suggests that the link between bargaining structures and worker productivity is dubious and that empirical research has been unable to discover a relationship between them. In this paper we use data from Australian companies at the enterprise level and examine the links between performance and a range of human resources, industrial relations and management variables to determine whether bargaining structures do impact on performance. In particular, we investigate whether organisations that have incorporated aspects of the industrial relations reform agenda have outperformed organisations that have not. The results from the application of a treatment effects regression model show evidence that organisations adopting the industrial relations reform agenda report significantly higher levels of self-assessed labour productivity relative to their competitors, even after controlling for a number of different factor