Supervisor and manager approaches to handling discipline and grievance: a follow-up study

This paper reports the results of a follow-up study to two linked articles appearing in earlier issues of this journal. It examines the relative influence of factors affecting the approach of supervisors or managers to dealing with disciplinary or grievance incidents. For discipline the most influential factors are identified as: the inconvenience of the employee rule transgression and the length of an employee’s service, with comparatively minor effects for employee gender, manager gender, prior training and experience in handling issues, and whether an organization is unionised. With grievance the most influential factors are: the challenge to management authority of an issue, length of employee service, employee gender and to a lesser extent the age and gender of the manager, and whether the organization is unionised. Implications for future research and the training of supervisors and managers are then outlined.