Assessing partnership: the prospects for, and challenges of, modernisation
| Published date | 01 June 2002 |
| Pages | 252-261 |
| Date | 01 June 2002 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/01425450210428426 |
| Author | Miguel Martinez Lucio,Mark Stuart |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour |
Employee
Relations
24,3
252
Employee Relations,
Vol. 24 No. 3, 2002, pp. 252-261.
#MCB UP Limited, 0142-5455
DOI 10.1108/01425450210428426
Assessing partnership:
the prospects for, and
challenges of, modernisation
Miguel Martinez Lucio and Mark Stuart
Leeds University Business School, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK
Keywords Partnering, Central government, Employee relations, Capital
Abstract This paper has a dual role. First, it provides an overview of partnership, with
particular reference to the present Labour Government and the shaping of its relations with
the institutions of capital and business representation. Second, it provides an introduction to
the special issue on ```Assessing partnership: the prospects for, and challenges of,
modernisation'' and briefly outlines the papers included in it.
The politics, institutions and ```market'' for partnership
Partnership working has become synonymous with the contemporary political
project of ``modernisation''. It has underpinned the ideology and rhetoric of the
Labour Government and shaped its relations with the institutions of capital
and business representation (White, 2001). This is clearly evident with regard
to Labour's agenda of public sector and welfare reform, whereby future
investment is predicated on the involvement of private sector interests through
public-private partnership (Institute of Public Policy Research, 2001). While
this broader conceptualisation of partnership does not have any explicit
connection with matters of employment and workplace practice, it does
nonetheless act as an ideological frame. Thus, since its first landslide election in
1997, the Labour Government has purposely sought to establish the basis for a
new accord between capital and labour. In this respect, the modernisation of
employment relations via partnership is articulated in terms of the need to
move away from adversarialism to cooperation, on the basis of a common
interest between capital and labour in enterprise performance and
competitiveness.
This agenda of modernisation is, of course, nothing new. Indeed, it has been
a periodic feature of British industrial relations history (Whitston, 2001). The
Mond-Turner talks in the 1920s with their focus on greater collaboration on
matters of industrial reform, the Donovan Commission in the 1960s and its
attempt to ``formalise industrial relations'' by constructing consistent company
and workplace bargaining systems, and the Bullock Report in the 1970s with
its plan of integrating labour into employer decision-making processes all
represent attempts to ``modernise'' and transform industrial relations
behaviour.
The Blair Government's concerns with stable, orderly and consensual
industrial relations clearly draw, then, from a long tradition. It has sought to
advance its agenda of modernisation through micro-level exhortation and via
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