Institutional pressures, human resource strategies and the rise of nonunion dispute management procedures

The author investigates factors influencing the adoption of dispute resolu-tion procedures in the nonunion workplace. Various explanations are tested using data from a 1998 survey of dispute resolution procedures in the telecom-munications industry. The results suggest that both institutional pressures and human resource strategies are factors driving the adoption of nonunion proce-dures. Among institutional factors, rising individual employment rights litiga-tion and expanded court deferral to nonunion arbitration have led to increased adoption of mandatory arbitration procedures in the nonunion workplace. At the same time, an older institutional factor-union substitution by nonunion employers aimed at avoiding union organizing-continues to inspire the adop-tion of nonunion dispute resolution procedures, especially peer review. Finally, the results provide some support for a link between the use of high performance work systems and the adoption of nonunion dispute resolution procedures. Conflict is an inherent part of the em-ployment relationship. Given the com-bination of common and opposing inter-ests and the ongoing nature of the relation-ship between employers and employees, it is inevitable that disputes will arise in the workplace. The procedures through which such disputes are resolved provide a basic indicator of the nature of governance of employment relations in the workplace. I