An Exploratory-formulative case study of employee retaliation in industrial relations

Abstract

A single incidence of retaliation, which resulted in shooting of a worker by the CEO of an organization and the subsequent lynching and torching of both the Personnel Manager and the CEO within the workplace premises, has been studied to gain an understanding of the role of employee retaliation in industrial relations in organizations. Given the sensitive and volatile nature of the phenomenon under study, an exploratory – formulate research design was adopted and the case study method of research was deployed. Earlier research on employee relation had focused on individual retaliatory behaviors of lesser intensity, and has not dealt with extreme interpersonal retaliatory behaviors. Previous studies have been predominantly correlation studies and do not explain the processes through which the retaliatory behavior manifests itself, nor identify the triggers that initiate the retaliatory behaviors. In this study, the retaliatory incident and the context in which it occurred has been reconstructed and profiled in order to understand the morphology and etiology of employee retaliation in industrial relations. The morphology of retaliation has been conceptualized in terms of agency and expression, while the etiologies of employee retaliation have been classified into remote, intermediate, proximate and trigger inducers. This incident has been envisaged as embedded into a context which has been conceptualized in terms of macro and micro inducers. The “remote” macro inducer is the socio-political environment in which the incident took place and this has been profiled from secondary sources. The “intermediate” macro inducers are delineated as located in the larger industrial relations structures, processes and stakeholder dynamics which combine together to create an “action choice” framework for the contending stakeholders. Micro inducers focus on firm level promoter, managerial, union and worker dynamics which constitute the setting in which “proximate” factor as well as “trigger” could potentially influence employee retaliatory behavior. The exploratory case study and the interpretation of the findings has led to the formulation of several propositions related to employee retaliation in industrial relations, with potential for further empirical investigations into the phenomenon.