Learning to navigate enterprise bargaining: the process of innovation and adaptation in the union movement

Abstract

Recent literature relating to trade union renewal is devoted to how union organisations build the capacity to respond and adapt to external threats and opportunities in a turbulent and hostile environment. This paper is concerned with the specific situation where the regulatory framework suddenly, fundamentally changes, requiring major change in a union’s strategic direction. What processes are involved in driving major change within union organisations to enable them to adapt to changes in their environment? Enlisting research from the field of knowledge management enables an analysis of the process of learning and adaptation within organisations that provides new answers to this important question. Studying major change in the trade union movement also raises issues of path dependency, strategic inertia and ‘group think’. Using the case of the National Tertiary Education Industry Union (NTEU) in Australia as it changed its strategic direction to cope with the implementation of full enterprise bargaining following the election of the coalition government in 1996, it is clear that adaptation to changes in the external environment is not necessarily a uniform or linear process but will likely be accompanied by clashes of opinion and battles for influence as new ideas confront the collective learning of the past.