Exploring the role of employer forums – the case of Business in the Community Wales

Collective employer representation in the UK has changed in fundamental ways in recent decades. Collective bargaining has declined and instead, the authors have seen the emergence of a significant new form of collective organisation, the employer forum (EF), which promotes good corporate behaviour and typically focusses on issues of equality and diversity, social policy and community engagement. The purpose of this paper is to examine this new form of collective action through a case study on Business in the Community (BITC) Wales. It also compares this EF with traditional employers’ associations (EAs) in order to establish what is significant and distinctive about EFs.

BITC Wales is a “typical case” (Patton, 2014; Seawright and Gerring, 2008) that shares key characteristics and functions with other EFs across key analytical dimensions, and therefore provides insights into the wider population of EFs in the UK. In addition, the paper compares EFs, examined through a qualitative case study of BITC Wales, and traditional EAs, introduced and discussed in the literature review, along the same analytical dimensions. The aim of contrasting EAs with the case study on BITC Wales is to establish what is distinctive and significant about EFs and to consider the implications for employment relations in the UK.

The paper argues that EFs and EAs support employers in dealing with the challenges of managing the employment relationship and threats to profitability in different political contexts. The organisation of employers in EAs was a response to increasing trade union power and labour costs. EFs are helping employers to deal with a different set of challenges, including declining social cohesion in communities in which employers operate, reputational and legal risks posed by new equality and diversity legislation and expectations of good corporate citizenship by consumers and their own employees. EFs address these challenges by engaging in social projects in local communities, by promoting good corporate behaviour through benchmarking and codes of conduct, and by boosting the reputation of employers through award schemes and promotion of corporate social responsibility activities of member companies.

Previous literature has not examined EFs and their role in employment relations. This paper considers EFs as a new actor in employment relations.