CHAPTER TWO: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY AND PROCEDURE
2.2 RESEARCH PROCEDURE
issues were also used. Overall, these documents provided vital information in the process of understanding the concept of worker participation not only on the company under review but also on other general issues on the topic. However, it must also be pointed out that such information can never be said to contain all relevant facts on the question under examination, since these do not go back far enough to uncover issues which could have been of great interest in the study, which happened far back in the company's history.
In reviewing these documents, there has been a deliberate distinction made between documents prior to the establishment of a democratically elected government and those in the post apartheid era. The reason for such distinction being to try and establish if there was any change in either the content, form or tone of such documents, with the advent of the new societal institutions. Concurrent to this process of reviewing the company's internal documents has been a process of looking at the circulars and briefing notes from the Steel and Engineering Industry Federation of South Africa (SEIFSA) to its own members and the Iron, Steel, Engineering and Metallurgical industries bargaining council to all employers within the industry.
Further, the National Industrial Council (NIC) agreement governing terms and conditions of employment within the industry and the Steel and Engineering Industry Federation of South Africa (SEIFSA) handbook's abridged version of the National Industrial Council (NIC) agreement have been consulted, as part of data-gathering process.
To complement the task of documentary review, interviews were also conducted with both members of the workforce and management. Interviews with employees were done such that the two categories, 'old' and 'new' as they are normally referred to were given
space to express their views on various issues. The 'old' here refers to employees whose association with the company on a permanent basis predates the short time-strike of 1992.
The 'new' refers to employees who were employed by the company on a permanent basis after the 1992 strike.
Care was also taken to ensure that amongst the 'old' employees, space was given to the views of the female workers who came back after the strike and those employees whose association with the company goes back as far as thirty years and more. Apart from interviewing workers as individuals, shop stewards were interviewed both on the side of the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) and the South African Workers Trade Union (SAWTU), in an attempt to gain some insight into the aspirations, views and fears of the workers as expressed through a collective voice and most
importantly along the dividing line of trade union affiliation.
Interviews with members of management were also plotted in such a way that the views of both senior management and shop floor managers were gi ven space to be articulated.
The reason for this being that amongst the management component, more often than not, views held by senior management are not necessarily similar to those held by shop floor managers. The question of service was also taken into account given the fact that like in the workforce, there are managers whose history with the company dates back to more than 25 years and less than 10 years respectively, both at the level of shop floor and senior management.
It must also be said that with interviews as well, as it has already been indicated above, necessary care was taken to ensure that access to as much and as reliable information as
could be possible was attained. However, the fact that the information gathering process, in this instance had to rely on people's memories, information gathered can never be said to contain an accurate reflection of the state of affairs, particularly, information going as far back as the study would have required. Despite this shortcoming, information obtained through such interviews played an immensely significant role not only in the construction of the thesis, but more importantly on the understanding of the topic and issues under investigation. The fundamental aspect therefore to understanding efforts made to gain access to much information as was possible, lies not in viewing the different sources of data as isolated and mutually exclusive entities, but as various components of the same product, which must be viewed as integrated dimensions servi'ng to complement one another.
The last issue on this section requiring brief attention is the question of the researcher involved in the data gathering process. As it has already been indicated above, the researcher is a full time employee of the company under investigation. This situation admittedly, has its own contradictions. The fact that the researcher is part of the problem being researched brings the issue of objectivity into sharp focus. It is highly possible that the researcher, as part of the day-to-day activities in the company under scrutiny, has had his analytical and critical sharpness to a greater or lesser extent blunted. Consequently his assessment and interpretation of issues and events and therefore conclusions drawn out of these, may not necessarily be a reflection of an impartial and objective account of the true state of affairs.
On a positi ve note however, the day to day participation of the researcher on these issues
provided him with a unique and very rare opportunity of experiencing most of these issues as they practically happen. This has also created for the researcher the necessary amount of credibility not only to the workers but also to management. This association of the researcher with the company has been instrumental not only in gaining access to the documents studied, but also in the enhancement of the manner in which interview questions and subsequent responses were handled. Coupled with this is the amount of time, which sometimes is required to conduct interviews. The time constraint, which has always been and continues to be a major limitation for many researchers, as pointed out by Churchill (1995) that among the shortcomings of this adopted form of interviewing is the fact that in-depth and unstructured interviews can take longer than filling in structured questionnaires and may even require several interviews with the same correspondent, never posed any major difficulty for the researcher in question.
It is also important to mention that there is a considerable amount of data gathered for purposes of this project predating the employment of the researcher by the company, a situation, which effectively minimizes the threat of the researcher's impartiality and objectivity. It is believed therefore that the opportunities presented by the researcher being part of the researched company far out-weighs the threats.
On the basis of this analysis, it is contended in this study that the question of impartiality and objectivity in any scientific investigation, is a serious and probably one of the most fundamental one. In line with this conviction, necessary caution has been taken to ensure the problems arising from the methods adopted and the researcher in question are not so intense as to render this data gathering process unscientific.
CHAPTER THREE:
THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVEIn this chapter, an outline of the major theoretical perspectives on worker participation is given. However for the purpose of this exercise, only three major perspectives will be examined. These are the unitarist, pluralist and marxist perspectives. This outline seeks to explore the manner in which these schools of thought have attempted to explain the concept of worker participation and to understand the objectives advocated by each.