Gender: the missing link in industrial relations research

This article extends the critique of how industrial relations research continues to be gender‐blind and argues that it is in part a result of early definitions which relegated ‘personal’ relations as outside the boundaries of the field and in part a result of a simultaneous strategy of acknowledgement and abdication, acknowledging that gender is important while at the same time arguing that gender does not need to be addressed. In order to demonstrate how gender is central to industrial relations, the article uses Antonio Gramsci’s concepts of ‘hegemony’, ‘ideology’, ‘good sense’ and ‘common sense’ to illustrate how patriarchal common sense is drawn on by both managers and trade unionists in negotiations over hours of work in a manufacturing firm in the North ‐west of England. It is argued that in order to include gender as a central feature of industrial relations research, it is necessary to analyse how the interests of capital, labour and patriarchy are embedded in negotiations on the shopfloor.     

THE ROLE OF MANAGEMENT CONSULTANTS IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY: THE INDISSOLUBLE NATURE OF SOCIO-POLITICAL AND TECHNICAL SKILLS*

This paper explores the role of management consultants in the development of information technology (IT) in organizations. Contending that the process of IT systems development is characterized by the exercise of power, the central theme of the argument concerns the indissoluble nature of the technical and socio-political skills inherent in IT consultancy practice. IT consultancy practice is not just socio-political when winning a contract - the sales pitch - and technical when developing an IT system. Rather, socio-political skills centred on the mobilization of discursive and symbolic resources are an inherent part of the construction of such systems.