Exploring labour-management partnership in NHS Scotland

The past few decades have witnessed a change from traditionally adversarial labour-management relations to a new type of partnership arrangement in British industrial relations in some organisations. It is expected that such arrangement may provide an opportunity for Britain unions to return from political and economic exile, and secure mutual gains for the primary parties to the employment relationship. This thesis is concerned with partnership arrangements in NHS Scotland which were developed against the background of a post-devolution consensus on how health services should be organised. Based on a longitudinal research method, this study has assessed the partnership arrangements in three health boards of NHS Scotland. Each of these case studies includes a programme of interviews with senior managers, human resource managers, Employee Directors and other trade union representatives, and analysis of minutes of partnership consultation meetings and board archives. The main objectives of the research were outlined as follows: - to describe the general context in which partnership arrangements play out in three cases, - to describe how partnership operates in the three cases, - to explore the evolution of partnership in the three cases, - to compare and analyse the outcomes of partnership in the three cases. A key conclusion of the research is that mutual gains can be successfully secured through a partnership approach. However, the extent to which mutual gains can be obtained by both management and trade unions is greatly shaped by the external and internal contexts surrounding the organisation and the way partnership is implemented