Book urges partnership approach

Companies and trade unions will have to deal with change by adopting a partnership approach to management or risk going out of business, according to a new book.

This means managers, union representatives and employees joining together to achieve common objectives such as lower costs or higher productivity, according to Employee Partnership in Ireland: A Guide for Managers.

The book, written by Mr John O'Dowd, the former general secretary of the Civil and Public Service Union and now one of two directors of the Department of the Taoiseach-based National Centre for Partnership, points to the series of agreements between the Government and the social partners as a key source of the Republic's economic growth. Such an approach must now be extended from the top level down, it says.

"Many organisations spend too much time bickering and arguing over change because of low levels of trust and because of the tradition of management and unions automatically having separate interests," Mr O'Dowd said at the publication of the book yesterday.

Partnership was about getting away from old attitudes such as these, he added, and instead identifying common ground between managers, employees and unions. A good starting point was the idea of trying to make the "cake" bigger, so that everyone got a bigger slice, rather than spending time fighting over the share of the cake as it stood. Mr O'Dowd said that while partnership was easier during good economic times, it would also help companies during recession.

"That's when the real test comes. When things are in decline, it makes the challenge that much greater, but the argument must be that if, during the good times, people have developed relationships, that stands to them in bad times," he said.

Mr O'Dowd stressed that having an employee share ownership programme was not in itself enough to bring about a better-run company. "Organisations must heighten employee involvement and not limit this to just the financial end of things," Mr O'Dowd added.