The SAGE Handbook of Industrial Relations

Paul Blyton, Edmund Heery, Nicolas Bacon, Jack Fiorito, Paul Blyton, Edmund Heery, Nicolas Bacon, Jack Fiorito, Author

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2008
• Print ISBN: 9781412911542
• eBook ISBN: 9781473971721
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business generale
• Index: Business

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.

1

Introduction: The Field of Industrial Relations

Edmund Heery, Nicholas Bacon, Paul Blyton and Jack Fiorito

INTRODUCTION

The purpose of this Handbook is to profile the academic field of industrial relations (IR) at the start of the twenty-first century. To this end we have assembled an international roster of subject experts to reflect on the multiple facets of IR scholarship, summarize bodies of knowledge and theory and identify current developments and likely future trends. IR was a product of the great class compromise of the twentieth century between ruling elites and the rising working class. Many of its founding scholars were exercised by the ‘labor problem’ and the need for a practically oriented field of study to support the creation of new institutions that would regulate industrial conflict and integrate the working population into liberal democratic societies (Kaufman, 1993: 4–9; Lyddon, 2003). Much of this impulse (though not all) has faded as the decades have passed but the field of IR continues to evolve and address a broad and continually shifting set of issues within the employment relationship. This collection we believe, attests to the continuing vigor of, what is now, a mature academic field and its continuing relevance at the start of a new century, very different from the old.

The purpose of this introduction is to provide a platform for the 33 chapters that follow. It does so by providing an overview of three core aspects of contemporary IR scholarship. We consider in turn the definition and scope of academic industrial relations, the multi-disciplinary nature of IR and the theoretical perspectives that shape its research program, and the normative orientations of IR scholars that provide a standard for evaluating IR practice and underpin the advice to governments, employers, unions and others that issue from an applied, policyoriented field. In each of these areas our aim is to identify classic positions and defining characteristics of IR but also point to contemporary themes and developments. Our purpose is to show how the enduring features of the field continue to evolve. To conclude the introduction, we also describe the structure of the Handbook and introduce the separate chapters that comprise the volume.

DEFINITION AND SCOPE

Twenty-five years ago Marsden (1982: 232) declared that, ‘Everyone, instinctively it seems, knows what industrial relations is about, even those who have never studied the subject. It is “about” trade unions, managers and collective bargaining.’ Undoubtedly many outside the field, if pressed, would provide a similar definition and it is certainly the case that the core of IR scholarship has focused, for a long time, on collective industrial relations. Studies of trade unions, collective employment law, collective bargaining and state–trade union relations continue to feature prominently in the field (Frege, 2005).

Definitions offered from within the field, however, typically cast their net much wider and effectively claim the non-union as well as the unionized segment of the economy as IR’s province. This was true of some of the first attempts to specify the bounds of IR as an academic subject. Thus, in Dunlop’s 1958 formulation of a ‘general theory of industrial relations’, the subject matter is defined as the ‘industrial relations system’, a distinct institutional domain within developed economies, comprising actors, processes, context and outcomes (Dunlop, 1993). Crucially, this definition includes but is not confined to the examination of trade unions and collective bargaining; the roster of actors embraces workers and their informal work groups as well as formal representative institutions, the list of processes covers management decision and legal regulation as well as bilateral regulation by unions and employers.

More recent attempts to designate the object of the study of IR have followed a similar tack and tend to define the field as the study of the employment relationship. This is true of authoritative statements by Kaufman (2004a: 45), who states that IR is ‘the study of the employment relationship and all the behaviors, outcomes, practices, and institutions that emanate from or impinge on the relationship’, and Edwards (2003: 1–2), who declares that the ‘focus is employment: all forms of economic activity in which an employee works under the authority of an employer and receives a wage for his or her labor.’ Both authors state that ‘employment relations’ is a more satisfactory label for the field, if only because it has less connotations with smoke-stack industry, and in some parts of the world IR has begun to yield to this newer label.¹ We are sympathetic to this change of usage but have retained the established term to minimize possible confusion, as do Edwards and Kaufman.

Defining IR as the study of the employment relationship is only an initial step and the next is to identify the component elements of the employment relationship in order to further specify IR’s domain. In our view, four elements can usefully be identified.

Actors

Much IR research is focused on the parties to the employment relationship, typically labeled since Dunlop the industrial relations ‘actors’. These include workers and their representative institutions, including trade unions and left political parties; employers, their managerial representatives within the firm and their collective organizations, employers’ associations; and the state and its multiple agencies involved in the formation and regulation of employment relationships. The latter includes legislatures, judicial and police authorities and specialist agencies engaged in training and development and dispute resolution. As traditional, collective actors have declined in significance in many countries so the field has begun to research ‘new actors in industrial relations’ (Heery and Frege, 2006). With regard to employees there has been a growth of interest in non-union representatives, including work councilors elected or appointed under statutory provisions and representatives operating under voluntary arrangements established by employers (Frege, 2002; Kaufman and Taras, 2000). There has also been a growth of interest in identity-groups and social movement organizations that campaign on behalf of particular categories of employee, for example, women, lesbian, gay and bisexuals, migrants, the disabled or older workers (Fine, 2006; Piore and Safford, 2006). A similar trend is apparent on the employers’ side. Here there has been a growth of interest in organizations that can be regarded as forming and expressing the collective interests of employers, including management consultants developing new practice, employment agencies and other labor market intermediaries, and organizations providing standards and inspection in the field of corporate social responsibility (Kuruvilla and Verma, 2006: 48–51; Logan, 2006; Osterman et al., 2001: 144–6).

IR research focused on actors deals with a broad range of substantive issues. If one considers the classic subject matter of trade unions then the following main areas of research can be identified:

1)	the formation and reproduction of unions including trends in membership and the basis of union joining;
2)	the internal structure and functioning of unions including union democracy, governance and management;
3)	the external structure of unions including the nature of union ‘job territories’ (enterprise, occupation, industry or general) and the degree of integration of the national trade union movement;
4)	union functions and areas of activity including direct service provision to members, collective bargaining and dispute handling, legal advocacy and political action;
5)	union strategies particularly in the context of union decline and attempts of renewal; and
6)	union effects on business, economy and society and their effectiveness in representing their members.

Equivalent lists can be compiled readily for other IR actors though perhaps in all cases the key distinction that can be drawn is between the organizational characteristics of any given actor and the nature of its intervention within the IR system; that is between structure and strategy. Thus, for employers IR researchers are interested in the degree of centralization or decentralization of the management hierarchy and its composition, with a particular interest in the presence and power of specialist HR managers. But they are interested also in management strategies of labor use and the multiple initiatives pursued to secure the compliance of workers or their active commitment to employer goals (Purcell and Ahlstrand, 1994).

Processes

The second main focus of IR research is the processes through which the employment relationship is governed. Again according to Dunlop, it is common to define these processes in terms of rule-making or ‘job regulation’, with two primary types of rule being generated: substantive rules that specify the content of the employment relationship (wages, hours of work, methods of working, staffing levels, etc.) and procedural rules that govern the interaction and behavior of the parties (bargaining, consultation, information disclosure and dispute resolution). Both types of rule may be formal, inscribed in company policies, collective agreements or statutes, or informal, enshrined in customary expectations and relationships. The main way of classifying these regulatory processes is in terms of their authorship – which actor or combination of actors is the creator of rules. It is usual to distinguish unilateral regulation by employers (and less frequently) trade unions, joint regulation through collective bargaining, legal regulation by the state and tripartite regulation, in which government, employers and unions formulate ‘social pacts’ that govern the economy, including wage growth, welfare expenditure and employment (Hassel, 2006).

From this starting point theoretical and research work on IR processes has followed a number of avenues. One course has been to identify the component elements of each rule-making process; to break it down into its constituent elements. A classic venture of this kind was Clegg’s (1976) identification of the structural components of national systems of collective bargaining, which varied in terms of bargaining coverage, level, depth, scope and degree of employer support for trade unions. More recent contributions have identified the elements of other IR processes. Sisson and Marginson (2002), for example, have developed a framework that is similar to Clegg’s for analyzing ‘co-ordinated bargaining’, the process through which discrete episodes of bargaining are linked in broader sectoral, national or, indeed, international systems of regulation.

A second development has been to identify separate forms of each process. Thus, with regard to legal regulation, it is common to distinguish ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ forms of regulation (Kuruvilla and Verma, 2006). The former consists of rights and employment standards established by statute and enforced both through application to courts and inspection by government agencies. The latter, in contrast, consists of opinions, advice, guidance, charters and codes of practice, which are issued by legislative bodies and intended to encourage the adoption of good practice but which are not reinforced by direct sanctions. Scholars have further refined this typology, identifying other forms of legal regulation. In the European Union (EU), for instance, there has been a growth of what has been labeled ‘reflexive governance’ (Barnard and Deakin, 2002), in which employers can derogate from legal standards and tailor regulations to their particular circumstances provided this occurs through consultation with employee representatives.

A third line of development has been to explore the relationship between different forms and the degree to which they supplant or complement one another. National economies contain multiple processes of job regulation with management decision, collective bargaining, legal regulation and the inclusion of social partners, business and worker representatives, in government policy-making existing alongside one another, applied variously to different issues, different segments of the workforce or different industrial sectors. The separate processes may reinforce one another, with particular regulations establishing boundaries and ensuring integration. Thus, collective agreements frequently contain ‘management rights’ clauses that specify those elements of the employment relationship that are subject to collective bargaining and those that are regulated through management decision (Sisson, 1987). A similar interface can be identified between collective bargaining and employment law. In Anglophone countries the prime function of the latter through much of the twentieth century was to serve as ‘auxiliary legislation’ (Davies and Freedland, 1993: 29), providing legal support for trade unions and collective bargaining rather than directly regulating the terms of the employment relationship. In Britain, auxiliary legislation famously took the form of ‘statutory immunities’, legal protection for trade unions from civil action under the common law if they organized industrial action that disrupted employers’ business (Howell, 2005: 61–4, 149–50).

The decline of collective bargaining over the past two decades in many countries, however, has generated a fresh interest in the relationship between different forms of job regulation. It is asked with increasing frequency whether the rise of other forms is implicated in the decline of bargaining and researchers have focused on the interaction between joint regulation and both new forms of management regulation and the expanding volume of employment law. The central questions have been whether alternative regulatory processes supplant bargaining or whether collective bargaining and other forms can hybridize and support one another? Answers differ. For some writers the spread of human resource management and high-performance work systems poses a threat to joint regulation and is implicated in the de-unionization of industrial relations, essentially because it realigns worker and management interests and provides the basis for ‘mutual gains’ (Dickson et al., 1988; Fiorito, 2001). For others collective bargaining can support new work systems, union pressure serving to ensure that benefits are shared equitably between company and workforce and thereby helping to sustain innovation (Bacon and Blyton, 2006; Frost, 2001). A similar debate has emerged over the ‘juridification’ of the employment relationship, the growth of individual employment law. On the one hand, it is argued that individual rights diminish worker need for collective bargaining (Metcalf, 2005: 114), while on the other hand it is suggested that new law can support collective bargaining, the platform of rights providing minima above which collective agreements can build and the threat of union-sponsored legal action serving as a lever to open up negotiations (Heery and Conley, 2007). Whichever of these positions is correct, the relationship between new and old forms of job regulation has emerged as one of the central themes in current IR research.²

Outcomes

IR is also, indeed increasingly, concerned with assessing the outcomes of processes. The classic expression of this concern can be seen in the very substantial body of research exploring the relationship between trade union presence and collective bargaining and a broad range of economic, psychological and social phenomena. The latter include rates of productivity and profit, job satisfaction and organizational commitment and levels of income inequality (Turnbull, 2003). Although a well-established research theme, development continues with new datasets, new theories, and new research techniques adding to an established body of work (for example Belman and Voos, 2006; Fairris, 2006). Another area where outcomes research has blossomed in recent years is that concerned with the impact of HR practices on business performance. This work lies at the center of what Godard (2004a) has termed the ‘high performance paradigm’ within current IR research. Its distinguishing feature is the use of large datasets and econometric methods to establish a statistical relationship between measures of sophisticated human resource management, often expressed as the use of ‘high performance work systems’, and a variety of indicators of business performance (Wall and Wood, 2005; Whitfield and Poole, 1997). The broad aim is to validate employer investment in the human resource and confirm that good management practice can have a bottom-line pay-off.

Research on outcomes within IR research has a number of dimensions. One marked feature is the emphasis on evaluating outcomes from the perspective of multiple stakeholders. Unlike other subjects taught in business schools, in IR there is no unreflexive adoption of the perspective of the employer and resea...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Notes on Contributors
• Preface
• 1 Introduction: The Field of Industrial Relations
• PART ONE PERSPECTIVES AND APPROACHES
• PART TWO THE ACTORS IN INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS
• PART THREE INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS PROCESSES
• PART FOUR INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS OUTCOMES
• Index