MANY foreign investors developing "greenfield companies" in Ireland come here to establish a working environment, according to a study by three leading specialists in industrial relations.
However, the study found that ownership of the parent company is the most critical factor in determining attitudes towards unions, with US investors likely to be much more hostile to unions than those based in other EU states.
This trend was developing against a background of a growing management inclination to challenge "the collectivist tradition characteristic of Irish industrial relations", Mr Patrick Gunnigle, of Limerick University, told a meeting of the Institute of Personnel and Development in Dublin yesterday.
He was presenting the findings of a survey into the attitudes of new investors to industrial relations problems between 1987 and 1992.
The findings contrast "starkly with contemporary research evidence on longer established (brownfield) firms where the role of trade unions remains quite robust", Mr Gunnigle added.
More companies, however, were putting greater emphasis on "individualism" in their personnel policies, with "performance based pay systems tied to individual employee appraisals and greater direct communications with employees".
Ownership was "the most critical variable impacting upon variations in management styles in industrial relations", Mr Gunnigle said.
"European ownership was the most significant independent variable positively associated with collectivism, while US ownership was the most significant variable negatively impacting upon levels of trade union recognition and density."
The impact of US ownership was also obvious in terms of the degree to which "individualism" dominated a workplace.
Mr Gunnigle and his colleagues, Mr Michael Morley and Mr Thomas Turner, said the increasing trend towards individualist based strategies in industrial relations was, to a large part, due to growing competition.
"This intensification of competitive pressures has served to focus management attention on their cost structures, including labour costs. Thus it appears that all trading companies, and not just low cost producers, must tightly control their cost structures.
"Although the need to control labour costs may be more acute in labour intensive sectors, this need also pervades less labour intensive sectors, due to the intensification of competitive pressures."