Guest editorial: Reframing Fox: the continued impact of “Beyond Contract” and “Man Mismanagement” 50 years on
| Date | 30 October 2024 |
| Pages | 1217-1232 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/ER-10-2024-641 |
| Published date | 30 October 2024 |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour,Industrial/labour relations,Employment law |
| Author | Andy Hodder,Michael Gold |
Guest editorial: Reframing Fox:
the continued impact of
“Beyond Contract” and
“Man Mismanagement”
50 years on
Introduction: the rationale for this special issue
The influence of the so-called Oxford School of Industrial Relations on the development of
British industrial (or employment) relations has been subject to increased attention in recent
years (see Ackers, 2011,2014). Yet the idea that this concentration of scholars represented a
coherent school of thought has been dismissed (Clegg, 1990;Fox, 2004), and consequently the
works of Hugh Clegg, Allan Flanders and Alan Fox – the three names most closely
associated with it – have been subject to extensive individual re-examination (see, for
example, Ackers, 2014;Kelly, 2010;Gold, 2017). Fox’s work on the unitary, pluralist and
radical frames of reference in particular continues to be hugely influential in both teaching
and research. On the teaching side, the frames of reference continue to dominate introductory
chapters of numerous employment relations texts (e.g. Blyton and Turnbull, 2004;Colling
and Terry, 2010;Dundon et al., 2017;Gold and Smith, 2023). From a research perspective, the
influence of the frames is sustained (Edwards, 1986;Heery, 2016,2024;Barry and Wilkinson,
2021;Dobbins et al., 2021;Gold, 2021) and has resulted in a number of attempts at critique,
development and extension (see Budd and Bhave, 2008;Ackers, 2014;Kaufman, 2015;Tapia
et al., 2015;Cradden, 2018).
Fox is arguably best known for his frames of reference. There have been two recent
special issues on the frames of reference alone (Barry and Wilkinson, 2021;Ferguson,
2022), and there are several entries on the frames appearing in various dictionaries (Heery
and Noon, 2017), encyclopaedias (Cullinane, 2023) and reference books (Blyton and Jenkins,
2007). However, Fox’s influence on the development of employment relations is
substantially broader, although arguably it has not received the attention it deserved
(Edwards, 1998, p. 229). This year, 2024, marks 50 years since the publication of his two
most significant texts – Beyond Contract: Work, Trust and Power Relations (Fox, 1974a)
and Man Mismanagement (Fox, 1974b)[1]. Fox’s analysis of the employment relationship
in both Beyond Contract and Man Mismanagement is now central to how we define
and understand employment relations as a field of study today (see, for example,
Edwards, 2003;Gold, 2017, pp. 156–157; Dobbins, 2023;Hodder and Mustchin, 2024). Of the
two texts, Beyond Contract has received the greater scholarly attention, with almost 3,500
citations since its publication, whilst the first edition of Man Mismanagement has received
fewer than 400 citations [2]. Yet Fox’s work has rarely been subject to thorough
examination beyond the frames of reference (for exceptions, see Edwards, 2002;Gold, 2017;
Roche, 1991;Wood and Elliott, 1977). So, in the 50th anniversary year of their publication,
this special issue of Employee Relations is dedicated to the legacy of Alan Fox’s work.
Employee
Relations: The
International
Journal
1217
The guest editors would like to thank Dennis Nickson and Emma Ferguson at Emerald for their support
throughout the special issue. We would also like to thank Deborah Dean and Patrick McGovern for their
helpful comments on a previous version of this paper.
Employee Relations: The
International Journal
Vol. 46 No. 6, 2024
pp. 1217-1232
© Emerald Publishing Limited
0142-5455
DOI 10.1108/ER-10-2024-641
The contributions to the special issue fall broadly into one of three categories. The first
group of articles assesses the historical background to Alan Fox’s concepts (their own
origins, the radicalisation of Fox’s thought and comparisons with another influential work
published the same year, Harry Braverman’s Labor and Monopoly Capital). Our second
group of articles looks at the continuing contemporary relevance of Fox’s work (to
understanding the New Right, the enduring attraction of unitarism, strike waves since the
early 2020s and the reform of corporate governance). Finally, our third set considers issues
absent from Fox’s assessment of the world of work (including a feminist critique of his work
and revisiting his frames of reference in the light of the emergence of identity politics in
contemporary employment relations). We briefly outline each contribution below before
discussing Fox’s legacy in general, though we turn initially to sketching his life story to
discover a little more about his origins, influences and personality.
The life and work of Alan Fox
Alan Fox, who died in 2002, aged 82, would have been the despair of any contemporary
university research director. Over an active writing career that spanned some 35 years –
from 1955, when he published his first academic article, until 1990, the year in which his
autobiography appeared – his output consisted of only half a dozen academic journal
articles (and not one in an American journal), a stream of pamphlets, pieces in magazines
and several books – in short, barely anything REF-able (for a list of his publications, see
Fox, 2004, pp. 304–306). He rarely attended conferences and did not have a doctorate.
Furthermore, he started late in his career, had no interest in promotion (declining several
offers of professorships) and was a disaster at what we would call “networking”. And yet,
and yet . . . As we noted above, there is not a student of industrial relations (IR) or of
human resource management (HRM) in the UK or other anglophone country who is not
familiar with the terms “unitarism” and “pluralism” nor a theorist of management styles
who has not examined “trust relations” between employers and workers. Fox’s analysis of
power and control, using these concepts, remains largely as fresh today as it did 50 years
ago when he was publishing his most influential work. Towards the end of his life, when
he was working unpaid for Oxfam, he could not help commenting on the management
consultants – “young men and women in suits” – sent in to rationalise the work methods of
the elderly volunteers: “our opinions were not invited”. Following a reorganisation, he
noted wryly that takings continued rising on the same gradient as before (Fox, 2004,
p. 289). To the very end, Fox was using his own experience to inform his understanding,
which is why his work is still so relevant for the study of HRM and IR and, indeed, blurs
the distinctions between them.
The best source of material on Fox’s life is his autobiography, first published in 1990 and
reissued by the British Universities’ Industrial Relations Association in 2004, which throws
light on both his personal and intellectual development (Fox, 2004). It reveals a series of
dilemmas in his life, some of which were resolved only after much torment. For example, he
outlines the intense relationship he had with Sue involving an on-off affair that he shared
with a rival lover and ended only when, after the Second World War, he realised she could not
share the “intellectual journey” of his subsequent education (he was later to enjoy a long and
rewarding marriage to Margaret). He writes of his love of books and learning, which created a
rift with his parents, and his background, a drab suburb of east London in the 1930s. There is
his obvious ability, but his failure to fit into an Oxford college. He describes himself
throughout as “unclubbable”, and his toe-curling analysis of the pretensions of life as a
Fellow of Nuffield College is one of the most heartfelt passages of all. He resigned his
Fellowship, being “unusually thin-skinned, and certainly unconfident and insufficiently
adaptable” (Fox, 2004, p. 236), in favour of an Oxford University Lectureship in Industrial
ER
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