Abstract
This paper adopts a qualitative approach to describing the concepts of consensus building in labour and management relations in the industry. Labour management relations in Nigeria are often described as a soar relationship. This is because labour - management views are seen as diametrically opposed to each other. The relevant stakeholders have failed in their responsibility to ensure that industrial peace and harmony reigns. Rather, they prefer conflicts and strikes as the only veritable means to actualize their desired needs. Consequently in this soar relationship, there is disobedience, incessant breakdown of law and order, man – hour – loss, state of job insecurity and so on. So in order to reduce to the barest minimum these occurrences, there is the need for consensus building among relevant stakeholders in industries. This will help ensure long awaited industrial peace and harmony needed for industrial growth and economic development. Authors therefore used the, consensus theory, which is a sociological perspective model, by Thomas Kilmann (1974), a conflict – handling model to explain the tenets and managerial implications of consensus building. The fifteen step decision making process credited to Barbara Gray was recommended for implementation of consensus building. Finally, the paper concludes that in spite of the conflictual nature of people in industry, conflict accommodation, collaboration, problem – solving mode remain best and effective consensus building strategies when fully implemented. The methods of data collection include textbooks, journal articles, newspapers, and internet source.
Highlights
There is an increasing need for consensus building in our today’s ‘mechanical Newtonian world’ that is characterized by political fragmentation, shared power and conflicting values
To eradicate conflicts and strikes completely is a mission impossible. It is for this genuine reason that a new modeling approach that tends to blend accommodation, collaborating, and compromising is adapted from the works of (Thomas Kilmann, 1974, Walton & Mekersie,1991; Mitchell, 2002 & Akanji, 2010) towards insitutionalising consensus building behaviour that will help result to industrial peace and harmony
The model which is a schematic representation of three parts of consensus building behaviour namely, the work environment as the input which consist of labour and management, the second part, as the process consist of conflict and the conflict handling approaches, accommodating, collaborating and compromising and the output/outcome, which include consensus agreement, industrial peace and harmony, high productivity level, motivation, job satisfaction etc
Summary
There is an increasing need for consensus building in our today’s ‘mechanical Newtonian world’ that is characterized by political fragmentation, shared power and conflicting values. Collective bargaining has not resulted in productive outcome either because the process is defaulted or agreements reached are not implemented This is the reason why it has become absolutely necessary for industries to truly develop consensus building strategies that enhance stable labour management relations so that these interventions may be minimized if not completely eradicated. The aim and objective of this paper is to examine theoretically the need for consensus building as a tool or strategy for quality labour and management relations and to exemplify the willingness of both the labour and management to resolve conflicting issues that relate to casual and economic factors which often times disrupt industrial peace and harmony To achieve these objectives authors employed desk research method that made great use of literature materials from text books, relevant journal articles, newspaper publications, excerpts from papers, internet source among others.
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