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Abstract

The central focus of this thesis is an analysis of the results of an attitude survey conducted amongst a weighted quota random sample of 406 staff in the Domestic Banking Division of a 'Big Five' London Clearing Bank between September 1979 and April 1980. The survey examines the attitudes of staff in four main areas. Firstly, in finding out what factors in the workplace environment positively and negatively influence employees to join, and play an active or non-active part in, a Staff Association or a Union, and in one representative body rather than the other, and what leads employees to be averse to collective representation and thus not to join either body. Secondly, investigating the social backgrounds of the staff and the particular educational and personal influences brought to bear on them, leading them to membership or non-membership of a representative body. Thirdly, discovering how members or non-members feel these representative bodies, the individual Bank's internal industrial relations system, and the industrial relations system in the Clearing Banks generally, might be improved to make them more effective and successful for collective bargaining, and other forms of representation, both within the individual Bank and amongst the Banks generally. Acquiring 'grass roots' reaction to the Johnston Enquiry proposals was seen as an essential part of this process. Fourthly, looking at the positions, attitudes, and motivation of staff who become office representatives. These attitudes are placed in the context of an historical analysis of the development of the ‘industrial relations system in the London Clearing Banks, and within the context of the findings of other industrial relations research, particularly concerning the major divide in academic theory between the 'sociological', Blackburn et al, and the ‘industrial relations’, Bain et al, theorists. The survey's main theoretical findings support the latter theorists but also identify an important group who combine both characteristics equally.

Publication Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor > HD28 Management. Industrial Management
Departments:	Bayes Business School > Bayes Business School Doctoral Theses Doctoral Theses

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