Research on unionized grievance procedures: Management issues and recommendations

This paper critically reviews research on unionized grievance procedures to identify key issues for human resource/labor relations executives and to p rovide recommendations for dealing with these issues. The review covers psy chological, sociological, economics, and industrial relations-based researc h. Specifically, the authors recommend that senior human resource/labor rel ations executives and their staffs conceptualize the grievance procedure as a high involvement human resource practice, distinguish between the presen ce and use of grievance procedures, use grievance data to determine whether grievants or their supervisors suffer management reprisals, assess supervi sors' dominant orientation toward employees, determine employee perceptions of grievance procedure fairness, and monitor the effects of work force com position and supervisor selection on grievance activity. (C) 2000 John Wile y & Sons, Inc.