The Irish Times carries an interesting report on the mediocre performance of Irish management. This is consistent with previous reports (available here). This also raises important questions about the increase in inequality during the boom and the increase in management pay over that of workers.
In general management in MNEs operating in Ireland is better than SMEs, and the countries with the best managers are the US, Germany, and Sweden. Given that our labour market has much more in common with Germany and Sweden than the US, Irish managers should look to these countries. Rather than seeking confrontation with unions, working with them is usually a more successful approach. The Luas is an excellent example of cooperation.
There are better ways to improve competitiveness than cutting wages. However, are Irish managers up to the task?
2 comments:
... our labour market has much more in common with Germany and Sweden than the US, Irish managers should look to these countries. Rather than seeking confrontation with unions, working with them is usually a more successful approach
Why should they bother trying to emulate that aspect of Swedish management technique when:
(a) union density in Ireland is less than half that of Sweden (so its much more likely than not that an Irish manager's subordinates are non-union, whereas the opposite holds in Sweden)
(b) what union membership there exists in Ireland is massively skewed towards the public and sheltered sectors, so that a typical MNC or SME manager is even less likely to ever come across a bearded one
(c) enterprise-level collective bargaining has been largely subverted by the social partnership charade, so even if there was a union in the manager's work-place its very unlikely they'd have had any substantive negotiations over the past two decades
The unions took the easy road over the last two decades, concentrating on accumulating perks for themselves and unsustainable gains for an ever-shrinking niche membership. The result is that they are now largely invisible in and irrelevant to the advanced sectors of our economy.
Regarding a) Irish union density is about half of Sweden's, but greater than Germany's. I don't see how this invalidates management techniques in Sweden. Regardless of union density, Irish management is mediocre.
Regarding point b), multinationals actually have higher than average union density. But the management report was dealing more with domestic firms anyway.
Regarding c) firm level bargaining doesn't dominate in Sweden or Germany, sectoral level bargaining does. Firm level bargaining mainly occurs in Britain and Eastern Europe.
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