My Comments...

Hi,

I completely agree with Sundeep’s statement that Darrel Hair was acting in his own self interest. But there is nothing wrong in it as long as one is able to act in such a way that fulfills his / her own interest. However, Darrel Hair, in my opinion, did not help himself make his case better. The subsequent events in Hair’s episode do confirm this.

However, I am wondering at his statement “Employment relations can be undermined by poor communication and if the employee and the employer interests are not in the same direction.” But why it should always be the case that the interests of the employer and that of the employee is not in the same direction? What makes you to think so? This is an important contribution to analysis.

Further he says, “It is obvious that there is an unequal bargaining power between employees and employee. This is due to the reason that an employer hires a lot of employees. The loss of a single employee to a big employer is only a slight loss. But for employee, his job is usually his only source of income. Losing his job is the biggest thing that can happen to him.”

Subhrajit, Soumya, Swati Garnai also make the same point.

“the employer is so abundant with available pool that it has an upper hand and hence it gives an impression that employee is always at the receiving end.”

“But in today's scenario I think the bargaining power mostly remains in favor of employer. This is due to the large pool of aspirant employees available for the employer and high competitive labour force, which makes the employer find the substitute of an employee very easy.”

“ This may be due to the fact that employer has option of replacing the employee with someone from outside or inside the organization.”

But my sentiments are in line with Renuka George’s statement, “Equal bargaining power works when there exists a free market (which is a myth of course).According to proponents of free market economics perfect competition makes sure that neither parties have power over the other and state is a neutral framework and interactions determine the norms of contract.” Does perfect competition exist?

I don’t know whether all of you made this point after reading is the description of “Power in Sociological Exchange Theories” (Page 12 in Reading Material) or not but it is an important contribution. To simplify, we could say that asymmetry in relationships between organizations and individuals is a precondition for the exercise of power.

But Soumendu Samal and Abhimanyu are optimistic, “…the bargaining power can also shift in the favour of the employee.” / “Though the Employer has a major role to play in the making of the employment contract, employee always has the option to negotiate the terms of the contract and leave or join the job depending on the availability of another offer.”

It is also interesting to consider the example of bargaining power between the employer and employees in SMEs as stated by Ankit Arora.

U109162 (???) also advocates for exercising power in a responsible manner.

Sundeep’s analogy related to M.Tech candidates leaving L&T at critical stage during the project is not appropriate to highlight “expert power”. Do you think the M.Tech candidates did not have expertise before they got the offer from the market? In a lighter note, the credit should go to the OB professors, although your inappropriate usage should be a cause of concern for them, and not to Ketan as he himself seems to be a confused lot and misquoting “legitimate power” (See my comments on his posting). But the important question is “if you were an employer what would you do to prevent yourself from yielding to pressure under such scenario? Or what organizations have been doing to address this problem as there is a flip side to giving pay increases or promotion to retain the employee? (See Gurbani Kaur’s posting)”

I am also concerned about the future of our participants if they were to make such a non-negotiable offer to your company if your organization makes false allegations against you which could not be proved. My words of advice to you is “it may backfire” as it seems you have not learned anything from Darrel Hair’s case. See the quote by Vinay, “Marketability of an employee banking on his rare skill could be affected if he/she was trying to be opportunistic. In such a case it could go against them”.

But I also have a question to Vinay. He says that there are three different options available to an employer when s/he is presented with such a non-negotiable offer by an employee. One of the options that he mentions is “Prove the charges against the employee”. Don’t you think, in Hair’s case, proving the charges against him by ICC may also make them liable for the past racial discrimination charges against Darrel Hair?. Debasis statement that “it was in ICC's best interests to retain him (might not be only because of his skills on the field but also the audience he might be managing to gather because of his association with endless controversies, a unique attribute not to be seen with other umpires in world cricket)” would also support this logic indirectly He also makes an important point “Employees also try to make use of information asymmetry to their advantage. Not sharing valuable information with others keeps the organization's dependency over the employee intact.”

Urv’s legal, financial and social approaches to handling of such “non-negotiable” offers are worth looking at.

Urv says “Also, in this case, the consideration of Labor market does not have a very major influence. The reason for this being that the ICC is an unparalleled body and does not have major competitors in the cricketing circuit.” (Good insight!)

I also liked Swati Garnaik’s example of hijackers offering non-negotiable offers, Abhijeet Shrivastava, “The importance of rules in a society”, Sundeep’s quote by Emerson, “Before we acquire great (bargaining)power, we must acquire wisdom to use it well.”

With Regards,

Ganesh