The Future Role of Government in Industrial Relations

The future role of government in industrial relations depends on the choices made by employers, workers, and especially governments. Technological change and internationalization have reduced the viability of both Keynesian economics and the mass production system, once integrally related to the industrial relations systems of industrialized democracies after the 1930s. Economic success will require new policies and high-performance systems more appropriate for a global, knowledge-intensive economic environment     

Workplace Industrial Relations 25 Years after Donovan: An Employer View

Some common management themes of the 1980s can be traced to Donovan and are revealed in practice by the 1990 Workplace Industrial Relations Survey. The paper considers the relevance of factors not endorsed by Donovan and concludes that, while in terms of industrial action in manufacturing — the focus of concern in the mid-1960s — there is evidence that more order and responsibility has been injected into industrial relations at plant level, we cannot yet maintain that inflationary dangers have been overcome. Collective bargaining is, however, now revealed as affecting only a minority in the private sector, and public services behaviour looks increasingly out of step. The paper suggests that future surveys may therefore need to be recast to capture changing patterns of employer – employee relationships and their links to economic success.     

Political Activism and Workplace Industrial Relations in a UK 'Failing' School

The paper draws on a qualitative case study of workplace industrial relations in an inner–city secondary school identified as 'failing' and subsequently closed. It considers the way unionized teachers and their representatives interpret, influence and resist the impact of centralized managerial and educational change. The local implementation of such change leads to an engagement with the debates on union renewal. In particular, the paper explores the dynamic interrelationship between political and trade union activism and the tension between workplace relations and formal union organization.     

Variable Pay,Industrial Relations and Foreign Ownership: Evidence from Germany

We use a representative sample of German establishments to show that those with foreign ownership are more likely to use performance appraisal, profit‐sharing and employee share ownership than those with domestic ownership. Moreover, we show that works councils are associated with an increased probability of using each of the three practices when under domestic ownership but not when under foreign ownership. These results inform the ongoing debate over institutional duality, the extent to which foreign firms adopt uniform practices independent of local institutions, and the extent to which they adapt and participate in those local institutions.     

Workplace Transformation and the Disposable Workplace: Employee Involvement in Australia

Employee involvement (EI) programs should mainly appear either where "workplace transformation" occurs or where managers create a "disposable workplace." Cluster analysis of Australian workplace data supports the notion that transformed and disposable workplaces are distinct from one another and from traditional workplaces. These workplace categories are related to the reported incidence of EI programs as hypothesized. (JEL J41, J51, 553)     

Economic Citizenship and Workplace Conflict in Anglo‐American Industrial Relations Systems

This article argues that the expansion of individual employment rights is presenting a series of challenges to the collective model of economic citizenship that prevailed in most of the Anglo‐American world during the last century. We examine developments in the management of workplace conflict in Anglo‐American countries to highlight the institutional manoeuvrings that have been taking place to mould the nature of national regimes of employment rights. We argue that Governments almost everywhere are actively seeking to create institutional regimes that weaken the impact of employment legislation and we find that statutory dispute resolution agencies are eagerly trying to develop organizational identities that are aligned with rights‐based employment disputes.     

British Manufacturing Organization and Workplace Industrial Relations: Some Attributes of the New Flexible Firm

The characteristics of the largest British manufacturing firms are analysed in order to argue that the form of organization adopted at corporate and plant level by such firms is distinctive. The first part of the paper looks at the characteristic kinds and types of productive activities that the largest British firms undertake. It is then suggested that there is a distinctive pattern of organization for production at plant level, described as the 'new flexible firm', the features of which are formally set out. The new flexible firm have some key features which help to make sense of an emerging pattern of workplace industrial relations in manufacturing. The way this new form of organization at plant level utilizes labour contradicts rather than supports the expectations of some analysts about the importance of human resource management.     

Workplace Bullying,Psychological Perspectives and Industrial Relations: Towards a Contextualized and Interdisciplinary Approach

Workplace bullying is increasingly recognized as an important area of debate, particularly among researchers adopting a psychological perspective of work. This paper examines definitions of workplace bullying and explores less orthodox approaches within a British context. It focuses primarily on managers as perpetrators, and comments on the ‘bullying organization’, the relevance of human resource management and of gender. Context, the workplace balance of power, workers’ collective resistance and trade unions are then emphasized as significant factors and the potential for developing a contextualized, politicized and interdisciplinary approach to workplace bullying is suggested. Links with mobilization theory are explored, and the issue is also examined within the UK public sector environment.     

The State and Industrial Relations: Background to the Adoption of Compulsory Arbitation Law in Australia and Nigeria

Conventional wisdom maintains that industrial turmoil accounts largely for the enactment of the compulsory arbitration law, the Conciliation and Arbitration Act 1904 and the Trade Disputes (Emergency Provisions) Decree 1968, in Australia and Nigeria respectively. Considering this view as patently inadequate, the paper investigates a broader background of this law in both countries and finds more critical factors at work. Important as the industrial turmoil was, this factor turned out to be merely a symptom of a more fundamental phenomenon, namely the lack of an institutionalized consensual collective bargaining system, arising largely from a similar form of interaction between the state and industrial relations in both countries.     

Do Industrial Relations Institutions Influence Foreign Direct Investment? Evidence from OECD Nations

The potential impact of industrial relations institutions on economic outcomes has been a key element in analyzing the governing of the global workplace. We present case information and analysis that show that there are trade‐offs between higher levels of economic outcomes and greater equity and employee voice associated with more and deeper labor market institutions. The estimates from the model show the impact of industrial relations system policies within a nation on a country's foreign direct investment (FDI) from other nations for the period 1985 through 2000 using data from nations that are members of the Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development (OECD). Examples of the impact of major transformations in national industrial relations systems on FDI for UK and New Zealand also are presented. Our results show that higher levels of industrial relations institutions from the firms’ perspective are usually associated with lower levels of FDI.     

The Determinants of Racial Harassment at the Workplace: Evidence from the British Nursing Profession

This paper examines which individual and work-related characteristics increase the probability of an employee being racially harassed at the workplace using a unique sample of NHS nurses. The reported incidence of racial harassment at the workplace is staggeringly high — 8.9 per cent of all nurses report such episodes involving work colleagues and 22.4 per cent have experienced such abuse from patients (or their families). Nurses who are young, male or from the ethnic minorities are the most likely to be affected. The findings have important implications for equal opportunities policies and the retention of nursing staff in the NHS.     

The Decentralization of Decision Making and Employee Involvement within the Workplace: Evidence from Four Establishment Datasets

Participatory work practices, like teams, quality circles and joint consultative committees (JCCs) can, but do not necessarily, decentralize decision making and increase worker autonomy. We use broad, cross‐sectional establishment data from the European Union and three Commonwealth countries to measure the extent of decision making by workers across these countries, and to analyse how this measure varies with the use of participatory practices. Within Europe, workers in Sweden, Germany, France, the Netherlands and Ireland are most likely to be given the authority to make decisions. In Spain, Portugal and Italy, decentralized decision making is more unusual. While decision making is generally higher in establishments with teams, JCCs and quality circles, this result does not hold across all countries. Even where the relationships are significant, use of participatory practices explains a surprisingly small amount of the overall variation in decision making.