The Research About Management Mechanism For Collective Labor Conflicts In State-Owned Enterprises

The “supply-side structural reform” and the policy to cut overcapacity made resource-based SOEs confronted challenges in labor relations and many collective labor conflicts broke out.Opinions of the State Council of the CPC Central Committee on Building Harmonious Labor Relations(the No.10 file in 2015)pointed out that all actors should manage and control collective labor conflicts together.While how should administrator,Party organization and union manage and control collective labor conflicts cooperatively at enterprise level? This question in practice needs theoretical instructions.Though existing studies,for example,studies about industrial relations system,corporate governance and Party organizations' management,are related to this question,they cannot answer this question comprehensively because of their limitations about research contents,method and objects.In order to response to the tough condition of labor relations,and to give instructions for enterprises,this research explored the behaviors,process,performance and context about management and control to collective labor conflicts conducted by administrator,Party organization and union in resource-based SOEs.This research put forward 3 research questions.Specifically,the first question(about the existence of behaviors)is what are the actors' behaviors in labor relations management in resource-based SOEs? The second question(about the process)is how can actors manage and control collective labor conflicts through their behaviors in resource-based SOEs? The third question(about the context)is how can context influence the management and control to collective labor conflicts?To answer these questions,researchers spent 4 years on field study in two resource-based SOEs(who had similar background but totally different effects of management and control to collective labor conflicts),including 1 month firsthand practices,and interviews to 50 people totally.Based on lens of boundary-spanning theory,labor process theory,social exchange theory,organizational learning theory and embeddedness theory,this paper got following findings.First,in resource-based SOEs,administrator,Party organization and union have human resource practices(HR practices),boundary-spanning behaviors(PBSB)and union practices respectively in labor relations management.Second,administrator and Party organization manage and control collective labor conflicts through HR practices and PBSB respectively.Foreman at individual level and union at organizational level,can have mediating effects.During the direct process,there is no definitely good or bad for various kinds of HR practices and PBSBs.While during the mediating process,the HR practices mixed with high performance HR practices(HPHRP)mainly,and the PBSB close to business operation,are more beneficial to the mediating effects.Third,the management and control to collective labor conflicts will be influenced by the context “new danwei system”.The transformation of “new danwei system”may provocate collective labor conflicts.If collective labor conflicts break out,the immediate causes are the inner system's stagnation inside and terrible external embedding outside,while the primary causes are the paternalistic HR practices and PBSB far away from business operation.Fourth,“guanxi” plays an important role in the management and control upon labor conflicts in resource-based SOEs in China.This research had some academic contributions.First,this research contextualized the labor conflicts studies in China.On one hand,this research brought Party organizations at enterprise level,being full of China's characteristic,into insight,got the new construct——Party organization's boundary-spanning behaviors(PBSB),and revealed the process,performance and context of PBSB's management and control over collective labor conflicts,so that broadened China's range of actors in management and control upon labor conflicts.On the other hand,researchers in Western countries used to focus on how production practices in labor process influence the management and control about labor conflicts.This research,however,found that production relations turn to be more important in China,so that contextualized the labor process theory in the application of studies about management and control upon labor conflicts in China.Second,this research enriched and enlarged the boundary-spanning theory.Existing studies about boundary-spanning theory classifies the boundary-spanning behaviors into 3 dimensions,which are the activity of coordination,the activity of ambassador,and the activity of supervision.A new dimension,which is the activity of exemplification,emerged from the data coding in this study.Then this study explored how the activity of exemplification manage and control collective labor conflicts.As a result,this study enriched and enlarged the boundary-spanning theory.Third,this research deepen understandings about studies in the area of HR practices.In terms of how HR practices influence employees' attitudes and behaviors,today's studies' conclusions have many disputes and contradictions so that the process and performance about how HR practices manage and control collective labor conflicts,turn out to be unclear.This study found that the interaction of different HR practices,the mediating effects conducted by other actors(such as unions),and the change of context,can all impact the effects of HR practices.As a result,this study cleared up the disputes and contradictions so that deepen understandings about HR practices.This research may had following implications in practice: The administrator and Party organization should make their management and control more substantive.Besides,they should also take full advantage of the union and foreman as a link to the grass-roots level.At the same time,they should also keep abreast of changes outside,so that they can make their management and control system of collective labor conflicts embedded into the external context perfectly.In the end,this paper pointed out some limitations and some possible research directions in the future.