Perspectives on the Employment Relationship & the Implications for Human Resource Management

What is it about?

The employment relationship is the connection between employees and employers through which people sell their labor. Irrespective of situation, all employees and employers have fundamental interests they pursue through the employment relationship, all forms of this relationship are mediated by labor markets and states, and each instance of this relationship is governed by some form of a contract ranging from explicit union contracts and civil service rules to implicit expectations and understandings. These common building blocks of the employment relationship—employees, employers, states, markets, and contracts—are the first topic of this chapter. However, scholars and practitioners from different schools of thought see the employment relationship quite differently—as a mutually-advantageous trade among self-interested agents in a free market, a long-term partnership between employees and employers with common interests, a bargain between stakeholders with some competing economic interests, or an unequal power relation embedded in complex social hierarchies. The second part of this chapter therefore develops four models of the employment relationship based on different conceptualizations of the common building blocks. The third and final major section of this chapter demonstrates that these four models of the employment relationship, in turn, provide very different perspectives on key issues in human resource management.

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Why is it important?

Depending on one’s frame of reference, human resource management practices, for example, can be seen as administrative mechanisms for implementing the dictates of the free market, essential strategies for creating productive employment relationships by aligning the interests of employees and employers, employer-driven initiatives that inadequately represent workers’ interests when they clash with employers’ interests, or manipulative managerial tools for shaping the ideology and structure of the workplace to favor employers over employees. Similarly powerful contrasts can be developed for other issues in human resource management, such as equality and diversity, labor unions, and the globalizing employment relationship. In sum, a deep understanding of the field and practice of human resource management is impossible without fully appreciating the elements of the employment relationship, their conceptualizations, and the resulting four frames of reference for human resource management.

Perspectives