Employment Ideology and Grievance Adjudication: An Empirical Examination of Adjudicators' Ideological Predispositions, Other Characteristics, and Personal Grievance Case Determinations

Abstract

Employment adjudicators are charged with the task of determining personal grievance cases on the merits of each case and with regard to both statute and common law. Scholarly interest in their decision making is widespread in New Zealand and internationally, and has largely focused on the plethora of variables that combine to constitute a determination.

Because grievance determinations are made within the broader context of the employment relations framework–that has at its centre the notion of employment ideology–the primary purpose of the present study is to explore the relationship between the ideological predispositions of employment adjudicators and the determinations that they make. A secondary purpose is to explore the relationship between adjudicator characteristics, other than ideology, and those same grievance determinations.

A quantitative research design that employs the use of both electronic and paper questionnaires is developed. Participants are asked to read four short personal grievance case descriptions and make a determination on each as if they were the adjudicator acting in the case. The research sample consists of 66 senior undergraduate and postgraduate students of employment relations and employment law drawn from Dunedin, Christchurch, Wellington, Waikato, and Auckland.

The ideological leanings of participants are measured through the application of an ideology questionnaire developed by Geare (1986) and later refined and applied by Geare, Edgar, and McAndrew (2006, 2009). The strength of participants’ ideological leanings are well distributed. Seventy-five percent are pluralist and 25% unitarist.

Preliminary data analysis is conducted by way of descriptive statistics. Further analysis is conducted through the use of Pearson correlation, chi-square tests for independence, one-way between-groups analysis of variance, multiple regression, and binary logistic regressions. All statistical analyses are performed using the statistical package SPSS 15.0.

The study finds that the influence of adjudicators’ ideological predispositions on case outcomes extends only so far as the amounts of compensation awarded to grievants over a range of cases–an area of adjudicator decision making afforded the most room for legitimate discretion–prior to the reduction of remedies. Unitarist leaning adjudicators are found to be more likely to award less amounts of compensation than pluralist adjudicators. Adjudicators’ ideological predispositions are found to have no influence on the decision to find justification for employer actions, or any of the other remedies examined. In a number of cases, adjudicator characteristics, other than ideology, are found to be influential upon adjudication outcomes. Adjudicators’ views on specific components of ideology are also found to be associated with a range of different outcomes and remedies.

The findings come as a welcome addition to the largely disparate conclusions of earlier research and partially affirm those earlier studies that find adjudicators’beliefs, attitudes and values, may hold a subtle influence over adjudicator decision making. Future research will benefit from more in depth exploration of the relationship between specific components of ideology and particular types of case. The opportunity also exists for research to explore other aspects of adjudication hearings, and for a wider global collaborative approach to research in the field.