Grievance Filing Research Articles

Design and Implementation of Grievance Filing Application using Automatic Text Classification

This research aims to design a Grievance Filing System built using automatic text classification without any manual interruption. Various methodologies are followed to achieve it and are implemented. Performance of the different algorithms is discussed. People are less aware about the lengthy methods for lodging complaints. We propose a simplified process of enrolling grievances to ministries. The system accepts grievances in recorded voice form. The system is designed for Marathi language. Input in the form of speech will ease people’s comfort for lodging grievances. We present a model where voice is first preprocessed, followed by text classification using deep learning approaches such as CNN and LSTM, the grievances will be sent to respective ministry. This system can be used by government ministries to get grievances from common people through a simplified process. User will be notified on the progress of their lodged complaint and on its successful resolution by respective ministry.

Participation Versus Procedures in Non‐Union Dispute Resolution

This study examines the resolution of conflict in non‐union workplaces. Employee participation in workplace decision making and organizational dispute resolution procedures are two factors hypothesized to influence the outcomes of conflicts in the non‐union workplace. The adoption of high involvement work systems is found to produce an organizational context in which both triggering events for conflict, such as disciplinary and dismissal decisions, and dispute resolution activities, such as grievance filing and appeals, are reduced in frequency. Dispute resolution procedures have mixed impacts. Greater due process protections in dispute resolution procedures in non‐union workplaces are associated with increased grievance filing and higher appeal rates but do not have significant impacts on the precursors to conflict. This study provides evidence of substantial organizational‐level variation in non‐union conflict resolution, suggesting the importance of expanding the predominant individual and group‐level focus of current conflict management research to include more organizational‐level factors. It also supports the importance to non‐union employee representation of direct participation strategies involving employee involvement in the workplace, in addition to procedures that provide for off‐line representation.

The Determinants of Alternative Forms of Workplace Voice

Workplace voice has been the subject of much research over the past 30 years. Prior work has examined the precursors of a wide variety of voice types including prosocial voice, grievance filing, whistle-blowing, informal complaints, and participation in suggestion systems. However, research on each type of voice has largely been conducted in isolation from work examining alternate types of workplace voice. The goal of this article is to review and integrate the literature on the determinants of workplace voice. The authors’ review of the literature is organized around the major categories of determinants that have been observed in the separate literatures on workplace voice. Based on the review, the authors identify commonalities and differences across alternative forms of voice in the determinants observed. Following this, they explore how the nature and purpose of voice varies, with emphasis on three dimensions of voice: formality, focus, and identifiability. The authors then explore whether this variation is relevant for understanding the pattern of determinants observed across alternative forms of voice. They close by discussing the implications of an integrative perspective of scholars’ understanding of the processes that determine voice and for organizations as they strive to facilitate the productive use of workplace voice.

The Construction and Contributions of “Implications for Practice”: What's in Them and What Might They Offer?

“Most reviewers’ checklists of leading management journals list the criterion, “relevance for practice.” Authors comply with this criterion by pointing out what implications their results might have for practice. Evidence in the form of successful implementations of the results in practice is not required. Essentially, the authors are only supposed to point out what implications practitioners, as they socially construct them, can possibly draw from their results. If the reviewers’ construction of relevance is in accordance with the author’s, the criterion of relevance has been met . . .” (Kieser & Leiner, 2009: 522–523; italics in original).

High-Involvement Work Design and Job Satisfaction

Using data from the 1999–2002 Canadian Workplace and Employee Survey, the authors investigate the relationship between job satisfaction and high-involvement work practices such as quality circles, feedback, suggestion programs, and task teams. They consider the direction of causality, identifying both reasons that work practices might affect job satisfaction, and reasons that satisfaction might affect participation in high-involvement practices. They find that satisfaction was positively associated with high-involvement practices, a result that held across different specifications of the empirical model and different subsets of data. Conversely, worker outcomes that might signal dissatisfaction, like work-related stress or grievance filing, appear to have been unrelated to high-involvement jobs. However, the data suggest the presence of self-selection: satisfied workers were more likely to increase participation in high-involvement practices, but participation did not predict future increases in satisfaction.

Aversive Workplace Conditions and Employee Grievance Filing: The Moderating Effects of Gender and Ethnicity

Studies examining the direct effects of employee demographic differences on grievance filing have yielded mixed results. Moreover, little is known regarding the possible moderating effect that such differences might have on the link between workplace adversity and grievance filing. Using a sample of 866 blue‐collar workers drawn from four unions, we examine the potential moderating effects of gender and race/ethnicity. Our findings suggest that while gender and ethnicity are not significantly associated with perceptions of workplace adversity, grievance filing in response to certain forms of adversity is amplified among women (as compared to men) and among African Americans and Hispanics (as compared to whites). The meaning and implications of these findings are discussed.

The Power of Labor to Grieve: The Impact of the Workplace, Labor Market, and Power-Dependence on Employee Grievance Filing

The authors examine a model of employee grievance activity that encompasses both workplace and labor market determinants and attempts to reconcile inconsistent findings in the literature by taking into account the possible moderating effects of labor power. A multi-level analysis of data from 1996-97 on 1,383 blue-collar workers suggests that labor market factors influenced grievance activity much less directly than workplace characteristics did, and that the nature of these influences was more complex than has previously been hypothesized. Specifically, consistent with power-dependence theory, the authors find that the direct effects of at least one labor market factor, the wage premium, were likely to be contingent on labor power, and that the labor market itself may have moderated the effects of certain workplace factors on employee grievance filing in a manner consistent with efficiency wage theory.

The Power of Labor to Grieve: The Impact of the Workplace, Labor Market, and Power-Dependence on Employee Grievance Filing

The authors examine a model of employee grievance activity that encompasses both workplace and labor market determinants and attempts to reconcile inconsistent findings in the literature by taking into account the possible moderating effects of labor power. A multi-level analysis of data from 1996–97 on 1,383 blue-collar workers suggests that labor market factors influenced grievance activity much less directly than workplace characteristics did, and that the nature of these influences was more complex than has previously been hypothesized. Specifically, consistent with power-dependence theory, the authors find that the direct effects of at least one labor market factor, the wage premium, were likely to be contingent on labor power, and that the labor market itself may have moderated the effects of certain workplace factors on employee grievance filing in a manner consistent with efficiency wage theory.

EXPERIENCING MISTREATMENT AT WORK: THE ROLE OF GRIEVANCE FILING, NATURE OF MISTREATMENT, AND EMPLOYEE WITHDRAWAL.

Examining a neglected issue, we investigated the relationships between employees' feeling mistreated, grievance filing, the nature of the perceived mistreatment, and employee withdrawal. Results in...

Experiencing Mistreatment at Work: the Role of Grievance Filing, Nature of Mistreatment, and Employee Withdrawal

Experiencing Mistreatment at Work: the Role of Grievance Filing, Nature of Mistreatment, and Employee Withdrawal

Therapeutic communities and prison management: an examination of the effects of operating an in-prison therapeutic community on levels of institutional disorder.

There is a growing emphasis in corrections on the treatment of inmates with drug problems. The typical method of evaluating drug treatment programs is to examine how the treatment affects the inmate in terms of relapse and recidivism. This study examines the institutional consequences of operating a therapeutic community located in a medium/high-security male institution. The effect on management is examined from a perspective of institutional disorder. Disorders, from less severe inmate rule violations to more serious assaults, and rates of grievance filing are examined within the treatment unit and compared with rates in the general population. The inmate's perception of the environment, whether in treatment or non-treatment, is also examined. Findings indicate that in-prison therapeutic communities have lower levels of disorder than nontreatment housing units and tend to produce more positive perceptions of the living environment among the inmates living there. The impact of these findings for prison management is discussed.

Problem Creation and Resolution in Unionized Workplaces

In this paper, grievance filing and handling is placed in the broader context of problem creation and resolution. Management actions lead to problems when the action is severe enough or has a large scope. Worker reaction is based on both a desire and a reason to overturn the action. Problems become grievances when contrac tual, precedential, or past practice rights apply to the situation. The existence and applicability of rights usually leads to the griev ance procedure being used to resolve problems. When rights are unclear, the pursuit of interests leads to other channels being used. There are four problem resolution channels examined: (1) eco nomic power against high-level management, (2) economic power against low-level management, (3) informal negotiations between the union and management, and (4) the grievance procedure. The paper examines the various aspects of problems, conditions, and behaviors that determine which channel is selected for resolution and the outcome of that resolution.

Local union leaders’ satisfaction with grievance procedures

We develop a model of local union leaders’ satisfaction with their grievance proce-dures drawing from the job characteristics model and agency theory. The model is tested with OLS regression and LISREL estimates based on a survey of local union leaders in British Columbia. Results show that local union leaders are more satisfied with their grievance procedures when local officials have more autonomy in decision making; their local size is smaller; the grievance filing rate is low; grievance issues are perceived as important; the grievance resolution rate is high; a greater propor-tion of grievances are settled in the early steps; and the union success rate is high. In addition, grievance procedure satisfaction is multifaceted and each facet has its own unique variance and a different combination of significant predictors.

Behavioral Outcomes of Grievance Activity

Using individual employee data from four unionized organizations over two 3‐year periods, this study analyzes the effects of grievance filing and settlement activity on post‐grievance settlement outcomes. The results show that performance ratings, work attendance rates, and promotion rates declined and turnover rates increased for grievance filers compared with nonfilers following grievance settlement, in contrast to the absence of significant differences between the two employee groups on any of these measures before or during grievance filing and settlement. Similar findings emerged for the supervisors of grievance filers relative to the supervisors of nonfilers. The evidence suggests that employers exercise retribution against grievance filers and their supervisors, although a “true performance” explanation of these findings cannot be ruled out.

Loyalty, Voice, and Intent to Exit a Union Firm: A Conceptual and Empirical Analysis

Drawing on economics and organizational behavior concepts, the authors develop a model of employee (defined in terms of the frequency of grievance filing) and employee intent to exit the firm. They test the model using data on a sample of non-management employees of a large multinational telecommunications firm in 1991. Employees' loyalty to the firm and their perception of the grievance procedure's effectiveness are the main independent variables. In tests that focus exclusively on employees who reported having been treated unfairly by the employer at some time, loyalty is found to have had a consistently strong negative association with both the exercise of voice and intent to exit the firm. One implication of these findings is that loyal employees who experienced unfair workplace treatment primarily responded by suffering in silence.

Loyalty, Voice, and Intent to Exit a Union Firm: A Conceptual and Empirical Analysis

Drawing on economics and organizational behavior concepts, the authors develop a model of employee “voice” (defined in terms of the frequency of grievance filing) and employee intent to exit the firm. They test the model using data on a sample of nonmanagement employees of a large multinational telecommunications firm in 1991. Employees' loyalty to the firm and their perception of the grievance procedure's effectiveness are the main independent variables. In tests that focus exclusively on employees who reported having been treated unfairly by the employer at some time, loyalty is found to have had a consistently strong negative association with both the exercise of voice and intent to exit the firm. One implication of these findings is that loyal employees who experienced unfair workplace treatment primarily responded by suffering in silence.

Shop Stewards' Satisfaction with Grievance Procedures

A model of shop stewards' satisfaction with grievance procedures, focusing on procedure characteristics and procedure outcomes is estimated for 831 shop stewards. The results indicate that stewards are more satisfied with procedures that permit oral presentation of grievances at the first step and include screening by grievance committees or other union officials. Stewards' satisfaction is negatively related to grievance filing rates and the size of the stewards' work groups, but is positively related to the proportion of grievances resolved at year end and the unions' success rate. The implications for designing more effective grievance procedures are discussed.

EMPLOYEE GRIEVANCES: AN APPLICATION OF THE LEADER‐MEMBER EXCHANGE MODEL

Using the Leader‐Member Exchange (LMX) model as a guide, this study examined the relationship between the quality of information exchange between an employee and his or her immediate supervisor and the intention to file grievances. One hundred twenty‐five unionized automotive employees completed a measure of quality of information exchange and responded to eight vignettes representing hypothetical work situations. Employees rated each vignette in terms of their intention to file a grievance if faced with that situation. It was hypothesized that employees who perceived a high quality information exchange relationship with their supervisors would be less likely to file grievances than employees who perceived a low quality information exchange relationship. When the intent to file measure was aggregated across all vignettes, the hypothesis was supported When the vignettes were categorized into three different types of grievance situations through a principal components analysis, quality of information exchange was related only to grievance filing over issues pertaining to time at work. Implications of these findings for both employee grievance research and grievance prevention are discussed.

A Simultaneous Analysis of Grievance Activity and Outcome Decisions

The authors develop an approach for simultaneously analyzing the determinants of grievance filing activity and grievance outcomes at each stage of the grievance process. The value of this approach is demonstrated by an analysis of grievance data from a Canadian private sector firm for the years 1980–81, which shows that the determinants of the propensity to file a grievance (such as the subject matter of the grievance and past grievance filing activity) and the determinants of decision outcomes (particularly personal characteristics of the grievant) both varied across stages of the grievance process.

The Effects of Grievance Activity on Productivity

This study develops and tests a production function that includes a plant's grievance filing rate as a determinant of productivity. Application of that function to data on nine unionized paper mills for 1976–82 shows that the more grievances that were filed in a mill, the lower that mill's productivity. Although this effect produced only small percentage changes in the productivity of these mills, the author argues that these changes could result in much larger percentage changes in the mills' operating profits. Finally, a comparison between the productivity of the nine union mills and that of a nonunion mill that has no grievance procedure shows that the nonunion mill has significantly lower productivity.