Human Relation

According to Purcell, collectivism can be defined as the "extent to which the organization recognizes the right of employees to have a say in those aspects of management decision making which concern them". (Clark, 1993, 178) The trade union organizations and various other types of employee representative bodies operate as main machinery for collectivism. The collectivism process actually empowers the employees to participate actively in organization decision making process. Collectivism is classified into two categories, participation level of the employees, whether it is high or low and the 'degree of legitimacy given to the collective organization by management. In case of employee participation the level of participation can be classified in two ways, a) high level and b) low level. High level employee participation is observed in case of corporate houses. It has been observed that employees participate in high level decision making process when it comes to solving doubts related to factors, including, 'co-determination', "pension fund trustees,' and employer-wide collective bargaining." (Farnham, 2000, 38) On the other hand the low employee participation occur at departmental and workplace levels or among the workgroups. There are various degrees of management to tolerate "collectivism ranges from willing co-operation at one extreme, to grudging acceptance at the other." (Farnham, 2000, 38)
The modern business and its management have sorted out various connections between collectivism and employee relations. In case of US owned companies deal with factors like collectivism and employee relationship from individualist management perspective. On the other hand a common tendency has been observed among UK companies that they deal with the same issues from collectivist approach. Study of business management shows that individualism and collectivism contradict each other. Purcell has observed this incidence in some of the Japanese owned and British companies and... [continues]

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