Although collective voice provides an explanation of how mutual gains can be
achieved by employers and employees, this may not happen in practice. Especially,
employers (or management) may prefer to ignore collective voice or to suppress it. In
a recent reworking of Freeman and Medoff’s argument, Bryson
et al.
(2004) conclude
that employers’ choice plays the primary role in whether collective voice is implemented.
Hyman (1997) is another who stresses the primacy of management in deciding
what unions can do. In the USA, some attention has been devoted to specifying
the managerial policies that can deliberately engender cooperative unions and lead to
mutual gains (e.g. Kochan and Osterman, 1994). These authors have argued that the
implementation of innovative and performance-enhancing human resource (HR)
practices will generally be more effective where unions are involved and employees
can see direct advantages for themselves. Nonetheless, others have concluded that in
practice management has tended to pursue innovation in HR with the aim of increasing
performance, while offering few or no gains to employees (Osterman, 2000; Ramsey
et al.
, 2000).