The discourse of ‘Respect for People’ in UK construction

Abstract

Critical discourse analysis (CDA) is mobilized to investigate some of the assumptions that lie behind the text of the Respect for People reports (2000, 2004), part of the ‘Egan agenda’ in the UK. The concept of respect is examined, contrasting the humanist view of people as ends in themselves with the instrumentalist view in which human beings are treated as means to an end. Conceptualizing people as an asset encourages this instrumental view. Similarly, the ‘business case’ argument for respecting people means that improvements to working conditions are judged purely in accordance with their contribution to efficiency and profitability rather than in terms of moral imperatives (not killing people) or fairness (not discriminating against them). Investigation of the structural, institutional and discursive context of the text reveals it to be a response to conditions at a particular historical moment: labour shortages; the desire to avoid or pre‐empt regulation; changes in the wider prevailing discourse; and the need to give the impression that ‘something is being done’. In conclusion it is suggested that, while the Respect for People discourse may be seen as a way of containing and defusing potential critique, it could also be drawn on by those seeking to improve working conditions.

Keywords:

• Discourse
• human resource management
• Respect for People
• working conditions
• labour relations

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank Stuart Green and Libby Schweber for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper. Stuart Green also supervised the research on which this paper is based, and his invaluable contribution is gratefully acknowledged. I would also like to thank four anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful suggestions on how the paper might be improved.

Notes

1. Lean construction seems perhaps at odds with the concept of Respect for People, but the same contradiction can be seen in Egan’s revival of Jaguar—based both on promoting the educational standards of employees, and on reducing their number.

2. There is, of course, no question of suggesting that power is only a matter of language. Other forms of power, including economic coercion, remain important, but in modern society power is increasingly exercised through the ideological workings of language.

3. Membership of the working group is discussed in the next section.

4. Compare with the growth of a technocratic audit culture which attempts to measure the ‘value’ of everything through KPIs, etc., thus deflecting attention from issues of defining value and purpose.

5. The ‘business case’ approach was the basis of both the ‘Opportunity 2000’ programme to improve women’s employment, and the CRE’s ‘Racial Equality Standard’ (Duncan et al., 2002).

6. Self‐employment is otherwise an ‘elephant in the room’ throughout this report, as its possible influence on issues such as health, safety and training is never mentioned.

7. In this case the analysis is informed by the author’s 25 years’ experience in construction. Fairclough (1989, p. 167) makes the point that ‘the analyst must draw upon her own “members’ resources” (interpretative procedures) in order to explain how participants draw on theirs. The analysis of discourse processes is necessarily an “insider’s” or a member’s task’.

8. ‘Improving the industry’s respect for people is not a high‐minded aspiration; it is a business necessity’ (RfP, 2000, p. 9).