Report on the contribution of occupational sociology to the study of labour relations problems in the UK - includes the nature of the business organization, trade unionism, and the influence of the organisation on employee behaviour.
First published in 1981, Theories of Trade Unionism traces the development of trade union theory from its nineteenth-century foundations to the more advanced conceptual models present at the time of original publication. The book surveys the main tributaries of modern approaches – the moral and ethical, the revolutionary, the defensive or conservative, and the economic and political – and analyses the work of contemporary industrial relations scholars. This includes the main types and varieties of systems theory, the disparate pluralist approaches and the ‘radical school’. The book identifies links between the differing premises of the various schools of thought, and combines the main perspectives in a higher analytical and conceptual unity. It concludes with a discussion of a number of avenues for theoretical and conceptual progress. Theories of Trade Unionism is ideal for those with an interest in the history of trade union theory.
This handbook is an indispensable teaching, research and reference guide for anyone interested in issues of labour and employment. The editors have assembled a top-flight group of authors and the end-product is an encompassing state-of-the-art review of the industrial relations field′ - Professor Bruce E Kaufman, AYSPS, Georgia State University ′This Handbook will quickly become the standard reference in industrial relations research. It provides the most comprehensive and challenging presentation of the key theoretical debates and topics of research that will shape our field well into the 21st century. All who wish to contribute to this field will need to read this volume and then build on what these authors have to say′ - Professor Thomas A. Kochan, MIT Institute for Work and Employment Research ′This authoritative panorama of the field demonstrates the contemporary vitality, breadth and critical depth of industrial relations scholarship and research. Thirty-four stimulating essays, by an international blend of leading academics, expertly review the analytical and empirical state of play across all aspects of industrial relations enquiry. In doing so, a rich agenda for further scholarly endeavour emerges′ - Paul Marginson, University of Warwick Over the last two decades, a number of factors have converged to produce a major rethink about the field of Industrial Relations. Globalization, the decline of trade unions, the spread of high performance work systems and the emergence of a more feminized, flexible work-force have opened new avenues of inquiry. The SAGE Handbook of Industrial Relations charts these changes and analyzes them. It provides a systematic, comprehensive survey of the field. The book is organized into four interrelated sections: " Theorizing Industrial Relations " The changing institutions that shape employment practice " The processes used by governments, employers and unions " Income inequality, employee wellbeing, business performance and national comparative advantages The result is a work of unprecedented scope and unparalleled ambition. It offers a compete guide to the central debates, new developments and emerging themes in the field. It will quickly be recognized as the indispensable reference for Teachers, Students and Researchers. It is relevant to economists, lawyers, sociologists, business and management researchers and Industrial Relations specialists.
This book, the first on industrial relations research methods, comes at a time when the field of industrial relations is in flux and research strategy has become more complex and varied. Research that once focused on the relationship between labor and management now involves a wider range of issues. This change has raised a number of key questions about how research should be done.The contributors represent four countries and a range of fields, including economics, sociology, psychology, law, history, and industrial relations. They identify distinctive research strategies and suggest approaches that might be appropriate in the future. Among their concerns are the relative value of qualitative and quantitative methods, of using primary and secondary data, and of single versus multimethod techniques.
This book owes its inception and much of its organization to the writer's experience in teaching a course on "Industrial Sociology" for several years at The Pennsylvania State College. In bringing together materials for that course it became evident that modern industry has rarely been viewed as a complex social organization and pattern of relations; and in the few outstanding cases that such a view has been taken the "internal" structure of industry has not been set within the society with which it is in constant interaction. Despite numerous guides and handbooks for selecting employees or conducting industrial relations, as well as numerous texts on the formal structure of industrial management and the history of labor organizations, the functioning of the structure as a whole has received scant attention. It is this latter point of view that is emphasized in the present treatment. It is intended less to supplant than to supplement the various "standard" treatments of industrial organization and industrial relations. The view that prompts this work is that the social aspects of modern industrial organization are of the most practical sort. They are as real, and their effects as crucial, as the engineer's equations and the accountant's ledgers. The presentation has been made as compact as clarity and the range of subject-matter seemed to allow. This has been done in the interests of busy industrial and union executives and informed laymen who may find the book useful, as well as of students who must encompass many specialties and hope for a useful integration. Social scientists may find the book a suggestive summary of scattered materials. An unusually extensive list of references is appended to each chapter, in which as in the text an attempt is made to bridge fields too rarely brought together.
This revised edition of Industrial Relations: Theory and Practice follows the approach established successfully in preceding volumes edited by Paul Edwards. The focus is on Britain after a decade of public policy which has once again altered the terrain on which employment relations develop. Government has attempted to balance flexibility with fairness, preserving light-touch regulation whilst introducing rights to minimum wages and to employee representation in the workplace. Yet this is an open economy, conditioned significantly by developing patterns of international trade and by European Union policy initiatives. This interaction of domestic and cross-national influences in analysis of changes in employment relations runs throughout the volume.
All phases of education from pre-school to post-compulsory, in virtually all parts of the world, have experienced unprecedented reform and restructuring in recent years. Restructuring has largely been driven by a global agenda that has promoted the development of human capital as the key to economic competitiveness in the global market. This book adopts an inter-disciplinary approach drawing not only on education research but also from the fields of industrial sociology, management studies and labour process theory to locate the reform agenda within a wider picture relating to teachers, their professional identities and their experience of work. In doing so the book draws on critical perspectives that seek to challenge orthodox policy discourses relating to remodelling. Illustrating of how education policy is shaped by discourses within the wider socio-political environment and how unionization and inter-organizational bargaining between unions exerts a decisive, but often ignored, influence on policy development at both a State and institutional level, this book is a must read for anyone researching or studying employment relations.
This book examines industrial and employment relations in the emerging economies of Brazil, China, India, South Africa and Turkey, and assesses the contribution of industrial relations institutions to inclusive development. The book uses real-world examples to examine the evolution of industrial relations and of organised interest representation on labour issues. It reveals contested institutional pathways, despite a continuing demand for independent collective interest representation in labour relations.