Deconstructing the ‘Aporias’ of Employee Codes of Conduct: The Zimbabwean Experience.

Introduction

The management of industrial relations in Zimbabwe using the employee codes of conduct has always been an area of great sensitivity, bone of contention and at times source of confusion. This is attributable to the aporias nature of employee codes of conduct. This paper seeks to review the contribution of Maunganidze [2014] to the deconstruction of the aporias nature of the employee codes of conduct.

Aporias, as adopted from Derrida, refers to a difficulty, impasse, or point of doubt or indecision. Deconstruction entails undoing or dismantling the individual elements around the whole concept of employee codes of conduct to try and establish the what, how and why of employee codes of conduct. The article under review is based on a qualitative analysis of five Zimbabwean State owned enterprises. The central argument of the paper is that there are blind spots, tensions and contradictions between the logic and rhetoric of codes of conduct and their practice that render the management of employee discipline an organizational dichotomy. Strikingly the predicament of employee codes of conduct is both structural and institutional and there is abundant evidence of partial or partisan execution particularly by employers. The article goes to argue that these Employee Codes of conduct are then rendered invisible and ineffectual if they are not coupled by sanctions and assimilated into daily organizational practice.

Maunganidze [2014] traces the origins of the Employee Codes of Conduct to the post-ESAP era which brought with it a multiplicity of challenges viewed as anti-labour. The Labour Act 28.01 was thus formulated to address the plethora of challenges that were vestiges of previous anti-labour programs. It was meant to be applicable to private companies. However, the meta-categorization of private companies need to be viewed with skepticism as government created state owned enterprises and Authorities which are private companies by law and yet their institutional ideology and control is still statist.

Theoretic Views

Systematic Modernism, just like a functionalist approach, view employee codes of conduct as serving a unitary purpose of creating harmony in the society in the creation and sustenance of organizational order and stability. Codes in this view become a management tool of suppressing organizational tensions. Critical Discourse Analysis is inspired by the concepts of knowledge and power propounded by Michel Foucault. Oppression in organizations is largely invisible as it encoded within institutions and discourses that appear as instruments of knowledge and not as sites of power. Codes of conduct should be understood according to power relations, circumscribing their origin, purpose and application. Postmodern deconstruction also adds another theoretical perspective as it views codes of conduct not as a symbol of harmonious industrial relations. It looks at the text interpretation which leads to multi meanings depending on interpretation and objective to be achieved. This renders the employee codes relative and not absolute in their truths.

Significance

The article is of vast significance as it deconstructs the employee codes of conduct in such an explicit way that it gives both academics and professionals an insight into both the subtle and express power dynamics at play. It gives the background and offers challenges as to why the wholesome adaptation of the employee codes of conduct might appear to fail in yielding desired results. This it argues that it is due to unknown or hidden facts of why the code was formed, it could be silently achieving its objectives which are not expressly stated. The code of conduct is also a prescription to employee relations challenges that may be bedeviling the organization and a promise which actors to the employment relationship can always depend on.

The discourse brings to the fore the aporias nature of employee codes of conduct especially when management flagrantly circumvent the provisions of codes of conduct and use unorthodox means to achieve desired results which might not be provided for by the employee codes of conduct in the prevailing circumstances. Whilst employee codes of conduct try to bring down everything in writing issues of integrity are difficult to deduce in writing. Even though if one manages to deduce the employee codes of conduct in writing a question arises on whether ethics and values can be taught or not. Such a question brings to the fore the challenge of employee codes trying to establish harmonious employee relations premised on mutual trust when values like trustworthy itself cannot be taught. Work to rule entails strict and rigid adherence to set provisions and by so doing when it comes to the application of employee codes of conduct there are far reaching negative consequences to the organization. Thus it becomes a dilemma or aporias in that strict adherence is negative and non-adherence is punishable.

An interesting situation, as observed in the case organizations, of old employee codes of conduct that have outlived their applicability to the dynamic business environment being still in use is of vast importance it brings cognizance of the fact that employee codes of conduct should evolve with the environment to suit the ever-changing needs of business to avoid obsolescence.

 

Conclusion

It would be imperative to note that the trajectory of the article juxtaposes Maunganidze [2014] as a Marxist theorist whose main argument is premised on the ideology that those who own and control the means of production use the employee codes of conduct to further their agendas at the expense of the oppressed, who in the article appear to be the employees. I would recommend this article as a must-read to both organizational colleagues and academics as it provides a historical insight of where codes of conduct emanated from, the subtle power dynamics at play in the application, as well as the challenges associated with trying to teach codes to employees. It also provides a Marxist theoretical framework to the deconstruction of the aporias nature of employee codes of conduct in the Zimbabwean context.