Introduction

As the time moves on, the proportion of union and non-union has been changed. According to the research in Workplace Employment Relations Survey (WERS), the proportion of non-union only voice increases from 16% to 40% between 1984 and 1998, instead, that union-only voice decrease from 24% to 9% (Millward et al., 2000).
Peter Boxall & John Purcell (2003) defined employee voice as “a term increasingly used to cover a whole variety of processes and structures which enable and sometimes empower employees directly and indirectly to contribute to the decision making in the firm.” Comparing with union representation, Non-union Employee Representation (NER) has been more and more crucial within the representation structure. Based on the research data, Charlwood and Terry (2007) indicate that the development of representation in non-union enterprise has been in a stable situation, with 10% of employees are situated in workplaces where representation is provided through non-union channel.
This essay is divided into two parts. Firstly, it will focus on the understanding of non-union enterprise including its differences with union enterprise, management structure and employee relationship in non-union enterprise. Latterly, The essay will conclude whether employee’s vocie can be effecitive in non-union enterprises by analysing different management system.

Mainbody
How can the growth of non-union enterprise be best explained?
Background of Non-union firms
In 1980s, profoundly change has been occurred within the economic, political and social area (Kessler & Bayliss,1992). Coopratism and Keynsian’s economic theory began to be rejected as market towards to be free (MacInnes, 1988), “privatized” and “individualist” structure has been extended since the change as the increasing number of working people (Phelps-Brown, 1990). These changes become a premise of the decline in trade unions membership. In US, only around 15% of organizations recognise trade union (Kochan et al. 1986).
In 1979, trade unions were considered as a “ hindrance to the proper working of the labour market” (Kessler & Bayliss, 1992), which caused the success to break the “trade union monopoly” including free employees from institutionalized constraints which force employees remain union members for reasons other than positive choice (Dunn, 1989). Figure 1 & 2 shows that the density and members of union have been through dramatically decreased almost with the same trend since 1979 especially the typical one-Britain, also, even recently, trade unions have been avoided in a relative low rate which has been maintaining only 30% overall in either developed countries or areas (Figure 3).
Following the historical trend, the development of non-unionism has been accepted by the current political, economic and social situations. Following the research data in 1990 WIRS, the rate of no regonized trade unions has increased from 34% to 47%, the members of non-union has increased from 27% to 36% from 1984 to 1990 (Figure 4).

The comparison between union and non-union According to research, Flood & Toner (1997) conclude the main disadvantage of union into five elements including work organization,comunications, wages, payment systems and conflicts. Within the work organisation, the union must be noticed to all parties affected and be offered assurance before any organisational change happen. According to the graph named Trade Union density and total membership 1900-2000 (Figure 6), from nearly 1980, the trend of decrease in density is obviously faster than the number of membership, which means that union firms are carrying excessive number off labour because of the Trade Union power. In addition, as employees who work in union firms are protected by the contract, Union finds out that it is really difficuclt to get rid of those employees that no longer have necessary skills. Unions also impose restriction on output, in the late 1990s, the main finance union BIFU (predesessor of British trade union) rejected some banks advice of Saturday morning working, also, in USA, the National Basketball Association (NBA) has been experienced a union lockout in 2011-2012 playoff because the union of NBA didn’t agree the new business policy issued by managers (BBC, 2011). Flood & Toner (1997) express that the presence of unions makes communication more difficult and impedes personal contact, and give rise to bureaucracy. The communication between managers and specific employee will be indirect, which might cause the misleading of communication because that stewards wloud add some personal interpretation on managers meanings which undemines the creation of unique culture.
Considering about the salary, Based on the Anderson’s research in Service Employees International Union research (SEIU), the average salary paid to non-union employees in 2010 is $717/week in US comparing with the paid to union employees which is $917/week. Comparing with union firms, non-union firms play a competitive advantage in saving labour cost.
Unions cause strikes and stoppages. Union workers are a collective that work under a contract. Anderson expresses that if a dispute occurs between a company and the labour union, the company may have to endure the cost and bad publicity of a strike. However, using employees in non-union firms, company concerns employees directly without costing company revenue.
Management Style & Employment Relationshio of Non-union firms
Being analysed by the conceptual map of factors affecting the employment relationship, Dundon T & Rollinson D (2004) indicates that there is two-way affected relationship between Management Attitudes to Trade Union Recognition and Management Style, which means that in the management field, when trade unions are excluded from a formal role in collective bargaining and/or consultation, a firm can transfer to be a non-union firm with re-recognising the trade union. In 1994, by reviewing management style of both Purcell & Sisson which is about strategy integration (1983) and Purcell & Ahlstrand which is about individualism & collectivism (1993), Mcloughlin and Gourlay (1994) issue a concluded management style in non-union situation (Figure 5). Within this framework, the management style of non-union situation is divided into four dimensions including Traditional HRM, Strategy HRM, Benevolent autocracy and opportunistic.
The management style of organisation within traditonal HRM means high strategy integration and close to individualism, which means that in this kind of organisation, considerd as “hard” version in Storey’s term of which is described by Legge (1995) that HRM of organisation focuses on the “resource” or “utilitarian instrumentalism”, which means that management is considered as a passive element provided and deployed as a high skill to recognise whether employees in non-union firms have a say in decision-making by building non-union voice channels. Employees in this version are viewed as central to achieve the golds and objectives of the firm. Managers consider traditional HRM as a union avoidance using proactive HR strategy in unilateral approach with some tendency towards “them and us” in the relationship (Dundon, T & Rollinson, D. 2004).
The Merchant Co, which has long history in builders’ merchant market, is a national organisation supplying materials to the building trade across the UK. As one of the personnel managers said "This company will not go into dealing with a union, not ever I'd say. Staff were told they'd be better off under [Merchant Co.] which is a non-union based company…." In addition, Merchant Co is a company which considers non-unionism as a downstream inside the company. "[employees] probably trust their own branch manager, but they certainly don't trust head office management is the feeling I get very much" Clerical Employee, Internal Audits (to branches) (Dundon, T & Rollinson, D. 2004:118-126). Merchant Co is a traditional HRM approaching firm which has highly centralised by the head managers but also has a range of individualised HR policies based on the highly integration including devolved managerial decision in order to motivate branch managers and employees to have effective work attitude.
Comparing with Traditional HRM, Strategic HRM combines high strategic integration with high collectivism, considered as a “soft” version in Storey’s term which is focus on “human” of HRM, organisation believes that people is the good business, organisation focus on employees commitment generated by training development and their controll over work (Legge, K. 1995).
In current management world, both “soft” and “hard” are necessary to manage organisation, employees internal need to be known the management attitude through using organizational rhetoric or “soft” HRM, also, “hard” HRM or reality approach can help organisation train employees in order to improve organisational performance. This compact relationship percisely reflects the major disadvantage in Mcloughlin & Gourlay’s model of this model is that misleading to express that there is mutually exclusive position in individualism and collectivism. Following the global trend of being moore complicated, the non-union managerial style has also been more specific.
In 1993, Purcell & Ahlstrand assumed a either/or secnario anaylyse that they considered only traditionlist and sophisticated human relations style were assumed to be non-union firms. Also, Guset & Hoque (1994) indicates the extreme two way of non-unions that traditionalist with bad/ugly employers and sophisticated human relations with good employers. The problem of these two theories is that there are not only these two simple ognisational management style in the world so that these simplistic models cause that some of smaller non-union firms that can not satisfy these two conditions neither would be ignored (Dundon, & Rollinson, 2011). Some other experts began to discover new model in order to fix this simplistic framework. For instance, beside those two original elements, Dundon & Rollinson (2004) extend this simple model to three more exploitative relationship including Rstrained autocracy, manipulative and Benevolent autocracy (see Figure 6). Also, in Mcloughlin and Gourlay’s model (1994), benevolent autocracy is analysed as a managerial style in order to break the simplistic past framework, with high level of individualism and low level of strategy integration, within the benevolent autocracy managerial non-union firms, employees are able to be treated as closely, fridendly, benevolently and even informally controlled by managers. Those employees who have high skills can also be indepent from the employer, which is similar with organic management structure that employees, especially high techinical employees, have rights to make dicision without managers’ perimission in order to avoid emergent or technical mistake happen. The last management style of non-union firms is opportunist which is mostly located in small-medium size fims (SMEs). During this management style, employees are reviewed as a “ cost that must be contained” under the minimalist HR strategy, which means that people in opportunism management style are given low priority and the training and development is minimal (Mcloughlin, I & Gourlay, S. 1994).
Combining with employment relationship model and management style, the connections of these two models using in non-union firms have been found. For example, except the benevolent autocracy employment relationship is as same as the management also named benevolent autocracy, the non-union firms which has sophisticated human relations with good employers often belong to strategic HRM management style that employees are cinsidered as a value asset with high trust and joint regulation using a range of management initiated employee voice mechanism. Also, that non-union has manipulative regulation usually is regulated under the traditional HRM management style, which unlikely to opportunitism management style that treat employees as cost, it considers employees as a factor of production with persuation but not compulsory (Dundon, T & Rollinson, D. 2004). For example, by explaining case of the MerchantCo mentioned above Dundon & Rollinson (2004) express that the firm has controlled employment regulation managerially and employees’ voice has been arranged directly but not initiatly. However, not all of management style has exactly matched one specific employment relationship in the non-union firm such as opportunism. According to Dundon & Rollinson’s opinion (2004), some of management style can not be dimensioned typically as it will be influenced by other elements such as trust, fairness and management’s ability to deliver the deal. Such as opportunism style, both Exploitative & Restrained autocracy has some common elements fixed opportunism characters including low trust between parties, strong them and us, treatment of employees, the way to indentify which employment relationshio that a specific non-union firm belongs should consider about the way of reliance and role what management plays in the regulatory.
Do employees in such organizations have access to effective systems of collective voice?
McCabe and Lewin (Dundon et al., 2004) defined employee voice as the expression of complaints or grievances and the participation of employees in decision making process of organization. Freeman & Medoff (1979) also indicates that it makes good sense for both company and workforce to have a voice system…..between employee and employers.
Freeman & Medoff (1984) have expressed that with motivation from employers to provide some alternative voce mechanism where workplace union organiation is weak or absent, unions can provide effective method of collective employee “voice”. However, union structure might cause a comminication gap between employees and managers as unions need to translate their thought through stewards (Addison & Belfield, 2004). Because of this problem, employers began to choose non-unionised forms of employee representation as an alternative to unionisation (Lloyd, 2001).
In 1998, 22% of non-union workplaces reported the presence of Non-union employee representations (NERs) (Cully et al,1999). Terry (1999) analysies his opinion that the rate of Cully’s research represents a lot of workplaces and a large number of employees. Gollan (2001) conclude the impact of NER that NER structures are used as devices for consultation and communication rather than as bargainining agents, also, According to Boxall and Purcell (2003) in the industrial relations, the main focus for representation of employee voice has been on the collective bargaining and consultation.
As there are four different management styles existing in non-union firms (Dundon & Rollinson’s, 2004), the situation of effectiveness of employees’ voice collective is different among these management situation. For example, the research of company named Water Co, which belongd to exploitative autocracy of employment relationship that employees are located in low trust situation, shows that 63% of employees don’t speak to management about their job and 59% of disagree that employees are not involved in decision-making, which means that their voice can not be collected by managers (Dundon & Rollinson’s, 2004: 83). With benevolent autocracy employment relationship, Chem Co is one of the non-union firms which use low integration but high individual management style. According to the research, 82% of employees are not involved into decision making and only 10% of employees believe that their advice will work for management. On the other hand, The case study of Merchant Co above indicates that as an traditional HRM management style non-union firm with high individualism and integration, the employees’ voice mechanism is limited to use in a selected range. Based on the internal research (Dundon & Rollinson’s, 2004: 121), 80% of employees are not involved in decision-making and 0% employees admit that they talk to management about their jobs. Besides, only 6% employees consider that managers will consider about their suggestions before making decisions. Delivery Co located in high trust and high value of employees relationship has 33% of employees involved in management decision making and 38% of employees’ agreement that their opinion will be considered if any change affect their works, which has a comparative extensive range of voice mechanism (Dundon & Rollinson’s, 2004: 141). According to the research upon, non-union firms with high individualism and low strategy integration are disable to have effective voice system, in addition, low trust between employees and managers, limited regulation and strong attitude of “them and us” will also have bad influence on the development of employees’ voice mechanism. Within the high strategic integration and collectivism management style with high trust from up tp down, employees’ voice collective is much more affective than the others’, which means that ascertaining the impact of correct voice collective channel is designed and controlled by the management (Dundon & Rollinson’s, 2004: 157). Employees who work in the non-union firm which has high techonical strategy integration and high collectivism, are able to have access to effective mechanism of collective voice.

Conclusion
Since the number of union firms was decreasing, non-union has gradually become a mature management structure. Through using theories in principle area, this essay has been divided into two dimensions including the understanding of how non-union has been growing and the question that whether employees have access to effective voice mechanism.
During the first dimension, this essay explains different management style within non-union firms and their different chacters, also, combine the management style with employment relationship in order to figure out the real matching between these two elements, discover that whether they are really simple one-to-one way connection among them, for example, the opportunism might can be has both exploitatve and restrained autocracy where depends on the different speicific environment. In addition, by understanding the background of transformation from union to non-union and comparing with union firms about the features that this essay tries to analyse the advantage of non-union firms in managing organisation and employees.
Latterly, The question that do employees in such organizations have access to effective systems of collective voice can not be expressed as a yes/no simple framework. It is important to analyse that different management style will cause different voice mechanism, moreover, the management will profoundly control and design the voice mechanism within every management structure and employment relationship.