Midterm Exam Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words - 1

Midterm Exam - Essay Example The former employed more male, blue-collar, less-educated workers who needed trade unions (Warner, 2012). The latter employs increasingly more female, white-collar, more educated workers who have less need for unions. These trends impact significantly on the relevance of labour relations to managers. First, whereas declining unionization may appear to exert less pressure on managers, the trend toward workers outsourcing the custody of their labor rights to lawyers implies closer scrutiny for the managers. Now managers will have to be more careful in dealing with their employees, lest they fall victim to the watchful eye of a lawyer. Then, the trend toward employers to devise schemes for employee participation in the running of the organization means that managers will endure less opposition from trade unions. In the old industrial economy, the employee was viewed as a source of cheap labor (Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), 2011). Their only role was to help goods for sale in the market. There was very little contact with the management. This view, however, has changed with the emergence of the so-called post-industrial market economy. The rise of the knowledge worker, in particular, has been instrumental to the mental shift. Broadly defined, the knowledge worker is charged with generating new ideas as opposed to simply implementing policies adopted by the management. This shift in the way the employee is perceived has necessitated a change in the way the workplace is governed. The new approach to governance places more emphasis on the active involvement of the employee in the decision-making processes of the organization (Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), 2011). There are many rewards that accrue to the firm that engages its employees in its decision-making processes. The benefit that is most cited is increased employee productivity (Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), 2011). The employee