Workplace industry Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Workplace industry - Essay Example It is evident that every organization has unique policies and strategies all synchronized towards achieving the goals of that particular organization. With diverse culture and management styles in today’s workplace, the employees, especially the women become more vulnerable to unfavourable policies, management, office culture, and labour (Blackard, 2000). This has especially affected women in occupations considered to be the domain of their male counterparts like the mining industry. This essay discusses the role of management in the work place, resistance and coping, and how these knowledge enables one to understand the challenges of ‘women in mining’ with reference to individual employees, frontline manages, and the unions. The role of management in the work place In most industrial relations, the role management plays is very important especially where the organization structure is broad and complex to the extent of containing numerous management lines. Blackar d (2000) relates the complexity to how the management of the organization may categorize the management structure. The manner in which a given organization reacts to any incidence of flexibilities is more often than not dependent on the effectiveness of the management structure and the efficiency with which all the staff at the managerial level deliver their services. Flexibility in the workplace is vital as the modern market environment is stormier than never before and this leads mangers to rethink their strategies like establishing the role played by women in the managerial positions (Blackard, 2000).   Most organizations use three approaches in managing the affairs of their company, be it a physical company or a company operating on a virtual platform like the internet. When the management uses the trust approach, it either allows or restricts the employees’ within their workplace to operate with or without supervision. This approach depicts that the level of supervisio n a manager accords an employee is dependent on their trustworthiness. Other approaches used by some management include collective versus individualising approach, and structured versus unstructured approach (Blackard, 2000).   Women in the mining industry encounter this challenge in their respective workplaces in that some of their fellow employees show some element of distrust towards them. This approach is really discouraging as the some front managers and the mining firms in general take advantage of this level of distrust to infuse strict supervision on the women employees. The collective versus individualising approach deals with the extent to which women miners can participate in the formation and implementation of their union’s agenda. Most mining firms deny women the right to have representations in the unions. The structured approach entails the explicit nature of company policies as appertains to matters affecting women miners. It is obvious that some mining firm s do not have policies that classify women specially and differently. This loophole enables other employees to discriminate against and assault women (Blackard, 2000).   Resistance and coping According to Gregory (2003), several mining firms are a hostile environment. This is especially so to the women in terms of the working conditions, the complicated company policies, and the strict disciplinary measures. The faint hearted do not have a place in the firms that require strong resistance and the ability to cope with these difficult conditions. Despite the many challenges that women miners face in these workplaces, most of them have developed a strong resistance and the ability to cope with harsh conditions in such harsh conditions. A classic example of this resistance shows up when