INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS RESEARCH IN BRITAIN
| Date | 01 March 1983 |
| Published date | 01 March 1983 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8543.1983.tb00123.x |
INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS RESEARCH IN BRITAIN
DAVID
WINCHESTER*
ANY review of British industrial relations research has to overcome a number
of
difficulties. First, there has been a substantial increase
in
the volume
of
published
material in recent years-a growing proportion
of
which has been produced outside
university social science departments by government agencies, trade unions and
employers' organisations. The problem
of
selection that this poses is inevitably
resolved, in practice, by the author's personal interests, values and disciplinary
competence that,
in
turn, shape any evaluation of the literature. The second major
difficulty centres
on
the problem
of
classification where at least three different
approaches are possible: classification by subject-matter, disciplinary contributions
or
research orientations and perspectives. The first is most suited to comprehensive
bibliographical surveys, the second encourages a better understanding of the changing
weight
of
disciplinary contributions to industrial relations and the third has been used
to highlight the methodological and ideological differences between research located
(often imprecisely) within the broad categories of pluralist
or
Marxist, systems
or
social action, and institutional
or
behaviourist perspectives.
In
this article, a simplified subject classification is used to allow a brief consideration
of
recent research under the broad headings of Trade Unions, Management,
Collective Bargaining and the State. Within these categories, it is possible to note the
changing disciplinary contributions
of
the main social science disciplines and to make
some observations
on
different research orientations. This approach, however,
focuses attention
on
some of the central interests of 'mainstream' British industrial
relations at the expense of a number
of
important areas of recent research, such as
manpower and employment policies and international industrial relations
developments. The scope and focus of the article is further limited in two ways; the
original survey
on
which it is based was primarily focused
on
the output
of
industrial
relations research funded by the SSRC from
1974
to
1980
and secondly, any ambition
towards bibliographical comprehensiveness was relegated to the interest
of
thematic
coherence in the paper presented to the BUIRA conference'. The article thus begins
with a preliminary survey
of
the scope of industrial relations research and identifies
some general issues concerning its evaluation.
THE
SCOPE
AND
NATURE
OF
INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS
A survey and evaluation
of
industrial relations research and literature demands at
least some consideration
of
the dominant definitions and perceived boundaries
of
the
subject. Such a discussion is closely related to the more important theoretical and
policy preoccupations of academics, the different disciplinary and methodological
contributions to industrial relations research and the changing political and economic
context in which it takes place. The extent to which an earlier consensus
on
the
boundaries of the subject has been undermined and the degree to which different
criteria
of
inclusion and 'exclusion of problems and perspectives has resulted in a
fragmentation
of
research interests is, perhaps, best considered in relations to
particular areas
of
research. For the moment, it is necessary simply to identify a
variety of influences
on
the scope
of
research.
First, an influential definition
of
the scope
of
industrial relations was proposed by
100
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