Applying Work and Organizational Psychology in the Field of Labor Relations: Exploratory Study in Trade Unions in the Basque Country
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
· · The paper is interesting as it attempts to investigate the relationship between the social representation of psychology in the workplace and the representation of trade union activity.
· More specifically, this paper is scientifically sound, and the research design is valid.
· The method should be clarified in several points. More specifically, the author(s) have to clarify whether they have collected the evaluation protocols via the electronic survey or if the coordinators have had any involvement in the collection procedure. This point must be reported clearly, in order to enhance the reliability of the research project.
· The conclusions have been built on the findings but the argument may be improved.
· The ethics statements are adequate.
· The references are relevant but can be enriched. Furthermore, many references, are not recent, and some of them are too old. Thus, author(s) should update their literature review with more recent references.
· A similar review has not been noticed in the WWW.
· Novelty: The manuscript is novel, and advances adequately the knowledge
· The paper fits the scope of the journal.
· The significance of the paper is high enough.
· The quality of the paper is good enough, as it has been written appropriately
· Scientific soundness is also adequate.
· That manuscript will be interesting for the readers, especially the conclusions section.
· The overall merit is positive, the publication will bring about benefits in knowledge.
· They can take into consideration Godard’s thought on “psychologization of employee relations”.
· It is not surprising that a majority of the participants have been left-wing or extreme-left etc. Although, that fact could be useful in assessing the evidence as most of the left-wing worker representatives do -more or less- are skeptical regarding concepts like social dialogue etc.
· Some more references would be essential to support the methodology section, in order to justify better the research tools that have been used.
· It would be better, if the comparisons using Chi-square (χ2) were presented in a pertinent table (pp. 9-10).
· In the discussion section some comments, regarding the interpretation of the results, can be useful. The author(s) could take into consideration the historical dimensions of the relations between (organizational) psychology and the unions.
· First of all, psychologists have mainly been recruited to apply business policies in the field of Human Resource Management. That choice may usually put them in a partial contradiction with the workers’ interests, as they are perceived within unions.
· Moreover, the shift of labor relations, which has been called “psychologization”, was a turning point towards an individualization of employment relationship in a different way from the desirable one according to the trade unions that are collective actors.
· Arguably, the workers who have chosen to be organized have probably decided to adopt the collective action in order to pursue their goals in terms of working conditions. That fact could face the individualized employee relations approach that has been adopted by the psychologists of an HRM department.
· On page 11, 5th paragraph (“Meanwhile…trade unions”), the author(s) have to clarify if those participatory management needs include direct (which Management favors) or indirect (which unions usually support) employees’ involvement.
· Psychology can cooperate with HRM in promoting business policies on personnel issues. A mutual effort can be started, if they wish to also collaborate with the unions.
Author Response
Point 1: The method should be clarified in several points. More specifically, the author(s) have to clarify whether they have collected the evaluation protocols via the electronic survey or if the coordinators have had any involvement in the collection procedure. This point must be reported clearly, in order to enhance the reliability of the research project.
Response 1: This has been reported more clearly between lines 151-159 in the procedure section. Specifically, the role played by union coordinators in the data collection and how the data collection procedure were achieved have been described in more detail.
Point 2: The conclusions have been built on the findings but the argument may be improved.
Response 2: The conclusions have been improved (lines 344-366).
Point 3: The references are relevant but can be enriched. Furthermore, many references, are not recent, and some of them are too old. Thus, author(s) should update their literature review with more recent references.
Response 3: The references have been enriched.
Point 4: They can take into consideration Godard’s thought on “psychologization of employee relations”.
Response 4: Godard's thoughts on psychologization of employee relations have been taken into consideration (lines 309-312 in the discussion section).
Point 5: Some more references would be essential to support the methodology section, in order to justify better the research tools that have been used.
Response 5: Between the lines 130-138 (Instruments section), we have included three new references (Abric, 2003; Flament and Rouquette, 2003; and Lionel, Urdapilleta and Lo Monaco, 2015) that justify the methodological choice of free association technique.
Point 6: It would be better, if the comparisons using Chi-square (χ2) were presented in a pertinent table (pp. 9-10).
Response 6: Even if this may result in a clearer and more summarized way of presenting our results, it is not feasible to present all our results in a unique table, given that we have obtained multiple categories, which would lead us to present Chi square comparisons through multiple tables.
Point 7: In the discussion section some comments, regarding the interpretation of the results, can be useful. The author(s) could take into consideration the historical dimensions of the relations between (organizational) psychology and the unions. First of all, psychologists have mainly been recruited to apply business policies in the field of Human Resource Management. That choice may usually put them in a partial contradiction with the workers’ interests, as they are perceived within unions. Moreover, the shift of labor relations, which has been called “psychologization”, was a turning point towards an individualization of employment relationship in a different way from the desirable one according to the trade unions that are collective actors. Arguably, the workers who have chosen to be organized have probably decided to adopt the collective action in order to pursue their goals in terms of working conditions. That fact could face the individualized employee relations approach that has been adopted by the psychologists of an HRM department.
Response 7: In the discussion the historical dimensions of the relations between organizational psychology and the unions are already taken into consideration, as it can be seen in the first paragraph of the discussion.
Point 8: On page 11, 5th paragraph (“Meanwhile…trade unions”), the author(s) have to clarify if those participatory management needs include direct (which Management favors) or indirect (which unions usually support) employees’ involvement.
Response 8: The 5th paragraph on page 11 has been clarified.
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear authors,
This is a relevant and coherent study. Just some comments:
1. I have not been able to tell if it is a paper or a review. It has not been specified at the beginning, before the title.
2. When in the abstract it says that:
"The aim of this study is to explore 7 whether trade union members’ social representations of organizational psychology act against their 8 organizations’ engagement with this discipline, and thus undermine their ability to derive benefit 9 from its findings"
It seems that rather than a hypothesis or research question you were already giving the answer, that is, with a certain bias to the interest d study of your work. It may be advisable to reformulate this question in a more objective way.
3. I think it would be convenient to develop a little why free association is chosen as a methodology, what is its suitability for this particular study, how it is determined and what is the intended scope of this methodology.
4. The conclusions should be longer. They should have a paragraph summarizing the results obtained and also offer proposals for the future (studies that should go along these or other lines to complement the proposal).
Kind regards
Author Response
Point 1: I have not been able to tell if it is a paper or a review. It has not been specified at the beginning, before the title.
Response 1: It has been specified that this is an article.
Point 2: When in the abstract it says that:
"The aim of this study is to explore 7 whether trade union members’ social representations of organizational psychology act against their 8 organizations’ engagement with this discipline, and thus undermine their ability to derive benefit 9 from its findings".
It seems that rather than a hypothesis or research question you were already giving the answer, that is, with a certain bias to the interest d study of your work. It may be advisable to reformulate this question in a more objective way.
Response 2: The question has been reformulated in a more objective way, in the abstract.
Point 3: I think it would be convenient to develop a little why free association is chosen as a methodology, what is its suitability for this particular study, how it is determined and what is the intended scope of this methodology.
Response 3: We have provided further information including three new references (Abric, 2003; Flament and Rouquette, 2003; and Lionel, Urdapilleta and Lo Monaco, 2015) that justify the methodological choice of free association technique.
Point 4: The conclusions should be longer. They should have a paragraph summarizing the results obtained and also offer proposals for the future (studies that should go along these or other lines to complement the proposal).
Response 4: The results obtained have been summarized and proposals for the future have been made.
