Twiname Article Review

Published in 2008 in the Journal of Workplace Rights, the article describes a field study focusing on employment law, action research, and workplace culture, in reaction to the passage of recent legislation encouraging employee empowerment called the Employee Empowerment Act. The study focuses on the changing viewpoints over a two year period of time of the subordinates at a small New Zealand company, owned by an international parent company, as a result of this legislation. The article reports on the employee’s interpretations of their participation in management decisions as documented through an action research study. The purpose of the research was to examine the relationships between management and their employees and to offer solutions to improve these relationships and the working environment.
The study was intended to be presented to staff, a steering committee, and the management of the company to discover the reasons behind a recent high attrition rate and noticeable employee dissatisfaction in the workplace.

The overall tenor of this article is somewhat accusatory in nature and not objectively presented. The author continually inserts subjective conclusions and opinions concerning her negative viewpoints on worker exploitation and capitalism to such an extent that some valuable conclusions reached by the study are difficult for the reader to absorb. Overt criticism of past indiscretions by the company should have been presented in a temporal context to avoid making the primary audience of the report, the management of the company, defensive. The study should have been reported more objectively, focusing on the changing employment environment in New Zealand as a result of the legislation, and the company’s willingness to investigate the change through their endorsement of the action research project. Another major defect is that a certain amount of anonymity on the part of the management’s reaction to the study is lost by direct quoting of the firm’s financial controller repeatedly. As the audience of the report was in a large part the management of the company, and approved by management with the specific purpose to “reduce costs, enhance staff satisfaction, and enable the organization to benefit more fully from staff skills”, (p. 153), the authors notable bias against the company’s management is indefensible.

The report reads easily otherwise, it flows smoothly due to the author’s intimate writing style. There is an unmarked introduction and a substantial literature review separated into two distinct parts: “Action Research” and “Employee Participation”, however the hypothesis is contained within the literature and not clearly defined. Additionally, the report is organized adequately into parts including; a Results section, a Discussion section, a Conclusion, References, and two appendices, one documenting the survey questions and one documenting projects that resulted from the survey responses. Significantly omitted from the report are tables or graphs representing either descriptive or inferential data analysis. Therefore, the author anecdotally presented positive hypothesis substantiation at the end of the results section.

A steering committee was established to supervise, provide guidance, and assist in the administration of the action research project. Research was reported through annual reports over the two year period to the steering committee, and presented to the managers of the company and to the staff. Information for these reports was taken from the analysis of staff interviews and focus groups. Twiname writes that she intentionally “strove to maintain the participants’ voice and to serve them in their efforts to address their concerns and aspirations”, (p. 154). The purpose of the intermittent reporting was to synthesize the interview and focus group responses to further develop the action research project and to solicit feedback from management and staff. The intermittent analysis reporting resulted in the steering committee coordinating projects with managers and staff to implement projects on an ongoing basis. The cumulative effect in this type of presentation was that a significant number of projects had been completed by the end of the study.

Documented in the report are a significant number of quoted conversations that the researcher had with management and staff of the company, indicating that oral presentations were very much an ongoing part of the field study. The researcher was clearly adept at handling questions from the employees on an ongoing basis and questions and feedback were encouraged throughout the process. The author continually expresses her concerns for the organizations employees throughout the report. Through the inclusion of the quoted material it is apparent that the researcher maintained a comfort level with the employees of the organization indicative of good presentation skills. Although there are significant excerpts from discussions with management, specifically the controller, no reference is made to a final oral or written report being presented to the organization. Sekaran explicitly states that problems, results, conclusions, recommendations, and implementation, “are of vital interest to the organizational members and need to be emphasized during the presentation”, (p. 353). The complete omission of details regarding a final oral or written report leads the reader to suspect that none was given, and more importantly perhaps that none was requested.

The managerial implications of the research are described in the “Conclusion” section of the article. The field study was a qualitative analysis that took place over a two year period with the cooperation of management. Although a descriptive study was indicated by management’s needs to understand the phenomena of employee dissatisfaction and the attrition rates, a qualitative study appears to have been delivered, leaving management with the difficult decision “to judge if the recommendations made would solve the problems, and to what extent changes would be worthwhile”, (Sekaran, p. 374). Despite the fact that the author of the research was familiar and comfortable with the cultural environment, and her observations may have been appropriate, it appears that there was considerable reluctance on the part of management to accept the results or implement the action research process beyond the two year period. Additionally as managements concerns regarding improved communication, reduced costs, and enhanced staff satisfaction, (Twiname, p. 153), and therefore a more productive organization, were not adequately addressed by the author, management reluctance to accept the findings of the study was justified.

It should be noted that as a result of her familiarity with the environment she was well able to originate the change management program and the second appendix lists numerous participatory projects that were concluded during and, more specifically, as a result of the study, indicating some level of success. Within the organization the initial employee resistance was replaced by a gain in employee empowerment that the researcher describes as threatening management. Notably, managerial resistance could possibly have been a result of the lack of objectivity expressed by the researcher as well as the researcher’s failure to account for management goals in implementing empowerment programs, namely increased productivity. The perception left with the reader is that perhaps the researcher may have lacked tact and objectivity in her approach to management, significant variables when researchers enter an organizational setting with the expectation that their solutions will be adopted. Compelling is the potential managerial implication of this project in another setting. If administered appropriately, balancing the needs of staff as well as managers, action research could potentially be a valuable change management tool in organizations where there is a high level of attrition. Perhaps success could be achieved in an organization where there is a higher level of trust between managers and subordinates. The study and research report effectively describes the potential benefits that another organization could potentially reap from a similar endeavor however the author does not seem to conclude with this.

Although the author outlines the results of the action research by describing projects that were accomplished, ultimately the research fails in that it does not suggest appropriate changes to management going forward. In lieu of positive suggestions and solutions the author suggests the failure lies within the organization that was studied, and postulates that additional legislation is required to implement permanent change for all organizations. The negative managerial implications the author suggests should probably be dismissed by the reader in the absence of a final report to management. While the author demonstrates an appropriate level of concern for the empowerment of the subordinates, when noting the projects accomplished gives little or no thought to an increase in productivity for the organization, management’s primary concern in implementing empowerment programs.

 
References

Sekaran, U. (2003). Research methods for business, a skills building approach (4th ed.). Danvers: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Twiname, L. (2008). Could Action Research Provide the Key to True Workplace Collaboration?. Journal of Workplace Rights, 13(2), 147-166. doi:10.2190/WR.13.2.d.