Student-Customers as Actors in Employment Relations: The Case of Australian Higher Education

Traditionally, serving one's customers has meant providing goods or services (as requested by the customer) and doing so with courtesy (as defined by social custom). The customer was clearly outside the employment relationship, although a focus of its output. Contemporary management practices have seen the strategic extension of customer service under the mantel of customer relations in which management seeks to construct a mutually satisfying, social relationship with its customer, in order to secure brand loyalty and competitive advantage. A relationship implies interaction, interdependence and the potential to share decision-making and power, albeit to varying degrees. The question then arises, at an organisational level when customer relations and employment relations intersect, are customers actors in the industrial relations system?