BOOK REVIEWS
| Date | 01 July 1984 |
| Published date | 01 July 1984 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8543.1984.tb00167.x |
BOOK
REVIEWS
British Industrial Relations,
by Gill Palmer, Allen and Unwin, 1983,259~~. Cloth
f20.00,
Paper
Industrial Relations in Britain,
edited by George Sayers Bain. Blackwell,
1983.
516
pp., Cloth
€6.95.
€27.50, Paper €9.95.
Two books with similar titles, published in the same year, naturally have an overlapping content.
Yet they are different in scope and purpose.
Palmer has written an unpretentious, competent text book. She defines industrial relations as
‘the processes of control over the employment relationship’. She then identifies and hriefly
discusses a range
of
perspectives which co-exist in the study
of
industrial relations: the unitary,
the liberal collectivist, the liberal individualist, the corporatist, the Marxist and the Wcherian.
She recognises that these differences draw attention to the controversial nature of much
discussion in industrial relations, both in terms
of
analysis and evaluation but maintains that
‘these perspectives provide a rich source
of
ideas that can be used to explain behaviour in
particular circumstances at particular times’.
There follow four chapters (S6) dealing first with employers’ strategies and organisations and
then with employees’ groups and trade unions. The author then looks at employer-employee
relations, taking into account the political context and the role
of
government, together with an
over view
of
collective bargaining in Britain and post-war attempts to reconstruct the system.
This is fairly compressed, taking up less than a hundred pages, but there is some useful
information and the sub-headings should make it helpful
for
the student new to the subject. It
also contains some material relating to the post- 1979 situation.
It is not until the last chapter that the various perspectives mentioned at the beginning
re-surface. Palmer attempts an analytical discussion
of
the topic
of
negotiation and control. Since
this deals with central issues
of
power, authority and the role
of
the state
I
suspect that the book
as a whole would have been more sociological and less descriptive
if
this chapter had been near
the beginning and more extended. It would surely have been easier
to
make connections between
the theory and the empirical work. Perhaps Palmer has not made up her mind as to the
theoretical position she endorses, settling instead for a tolerant eclecticism rather than any kind
of
developed synthesis.
The Bain volume,
Industrial Relations
in
Britain,
is an authoritative
tour de force.
There are
seventeen chapters, involving some nineteen authors, and as far as
I
can see, not a weak link in
the chain. This is a multi-disciplinary set
of
essays and does what it claims to do, namely provide a
comprehensive, systematic, up-to-date introduction to the study
of
British industrial relations.
The book is grouped under five sections: trade unions, management, patterns
of
industrial
relations, the labour market and the state and its agencies. There is also a substantial and
valuable consolidated bibliography.
Many
of
the contributors to this volume are based at Warwick University. In the light
of
recent
mischievous attacks on the Warwick Industrial Relations Unit, based, as we now know, on
ignorance in high places, it is particularly satisfying to observe the high standard
of
scholarship
which characterises this book. It would be invidious to select out particular authors for special
comment.
I
am content to recognise that there is much to be learned from this collective effort,
which represents a deeply serious engagement with a range
of
contemporary problems and issues
in British industrial relations. The book is well produced, reasonably priced and no serious
student
of
industrial relations should be without a copy.
J.E.T.
ELDRIDCE
University
of
Glasgow
280
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