Strategic Human Resource Management Questions and Answers

Answer: C

A Labour Welfare Officer is required when employees number 500 or more.

Section 49 of the Factories Act, 1948 (called Schedule 49 in the paper) requires every factory in which five hundred or more workers are ordinarily employed to appoint the prescribed number of welfare officers, whose duties and qualifications are laid down by the state government.

The other thresholds belong to different provisions or none: for example, a canteen is required where more than 250 workers are employed (Section 46), and a safety officer where 1,000 or more are employed (Section 40B).

Answer: D

The one that is not a forum of workers' participation is Trade Union Councils.

Workers' participation in management in India has worked through bodies on which management and workers sit together: works committees under the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947, joint management councils (1958), and the shop councils and joint (plant) councils of the 1975 scheme.

A trade union council is a body of unions alone, a federation of labour organisations, not a joint forum through which workers participate in the management of an enterprise.

Answer: B

The one that is not tripartite is the Works Committees.

Works committees, set up under Section 3 of the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947 in establishments of 100 or more workers, are bipartite: equal numbers of representatives of the employer and the workmen, with no government member.

The others bring together the three parties of the industrial relations system, government, employers and workers: the National Productivity Council, the Central Board for Workers' Education and the wage committees are all tripartite bodies, in the tradition of the Indian Labour Conference.

Answer: C

The answer is distributive bargaining.

In Walton and McKersie's framework, distributive bargaining is the win-lose kind, over dividing a fixed pie such as wages. Each side tries to shift the other's resistance point, and a central tactic is to convince the opponent that the cost of disagreeing (a strike, a lockout) would be very high for them, so that they settle on one's own terms.

Integrative bargaining is the problem-solving, win-win kind, aimed at enlarging the gains for both sides. 'Easy' and 'tough' bargaining are descriptions of style, not the recognised name of this process.

Answer: A

They are extra-mural facilities.

Labour welfare facilities are divided by where they are provided. Intra-mural facilities are provided inside the factory premises: drinking water, toilets, canteens, rest rooms, first aid, creches and safety measures. Extra-mural facilities are provided outside the workplace: housing, recreation, sports, adult education and schools for workers' children, and transport.

Housing, amusement, sports and education all fall outside the factory walls, so they are extra-mural. 'Inclusive' and 'exclusive' mural facilities are not recognised categories.

Answer: D

This is the pluralistic approach.

The pluralist view of industrial relations (associated with Alan Fox, Clegg and Flanders) sees an organisation as a coalition of groups with different and partly competing interests, mainly management and trade unions. Conflict is natural, and management's role is to mediate and reconcile those interests through collective bargaining and agreed procedures.

The unitary approach treats the organisation as one team with a common goal, so conflict is abnormal. The Marxist approach sees conflict as class struggle that management cannot mediate away. 'Dualistic approach' is not one of the standard perspectives.

Answer: A

The primary method is the wage survey.

External equity means that an organisation pays its employees fairly compared with what other employers pay for similar jobs in the labour market. The way to find out is a wage and salary survey of the rates paid by comparable organisations, which the firm then uses to set its pay levels.

Internal equity, fairness between jobs within the organisation, is established by job evaluation instead. 'Wage rate analysis', 'money survey' and 'items survey' are not the standard tool for comparing pay with the external market.

Answer: C

The method is job rotation.

Job rotation moves a trainee through a series of jobs or departments, such as production, sales and finance, for set periods. It gives cross-functional knowledge and a view of how the parts of the organisation fit together, which is why it is widely used for management trainees.

Apprenticeship trains a person in one trade under a skilled worker. Simulation reproduces real conditions artificially, such as a flight simulator or a business game, and job enlargement adds more tasks at the same level to one job. None of these takes the trainee across functions.

Answer: A

They are principles of trade unionism.

'Unity is strength' is the founding idea of trade unions: workers who bargain individually are weak, but combined they can match the employer. Unions also campaign for equal pay for equal work and security of service (protection against arbitrary dismissal), which are central union demands.

Compensation management and job evaluation are management functions for setting pay, and social security and welfare cover benefits such as insurance and pensions. 'Unity is strength' belongs to none of them.

Answer: C

The psychological approach holds that the problems of industrial relations are deeply rooted in the perception and attitudes of the focal participants.

On this view, conflict between management and labour arises because each side perceives the other, the issues and the situation differently, through its own attitudes, motives and frustrations, as Mason Haire showed in studies of how managers and union leaders perceived each other.

Seeing industry as a social world describes the sociological approach, stressing human relations among participants is the human relations approach, and basing relations on ethical and moral principles is the Gandhian approach.