Industrial relations, the New Right and the praxis of mismanagement
| Date | 29 January 2024 |
| Pages | 1290-1305 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/ER-06-2023-0282 |
| Published date | 29 January 2024 |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour,Industrial/labour relations,Employment law |
| Author | Tony Dobbins,Tony Dundon |
Industrial relations,
the New Right and the praxis
of mismanagement
Tony Dobbins
Department of Management, Birmingham Business School,
University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK, and
Tony Dundon
Department of Work and Employment Studies, University of Limerick,
Limerick, Ireland and
Work and Equalities Institute (WEI), The University of Manchester, Manchester, UK
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of the article is to outline the insights provided by Alan Fox in Man Mismanagement
in relation to the rise of the New Right political economy and the spread of unitarist managerialism. The article
assesses the contemporary work and employment relations implications of mismanagement arising from a
“second wave”of the New Right ideology from 2010 in the UK.
Design/methodology/approach –Responding to the Special Issue on Alan Fox, the article focuses on Alan
Fox’s book Man Mismanagement, considering industrial relations developments arising between the 1st
(1974b) and 2nd (1985) editions relating to the political rise of the New Right. It reviews various literature that
illustrates the contemporary IR relevance of the book and Fox’s insights.
Findings –The New Right’s ideology has further fragmented work, disjointed labour rights and undermined
collective industrial relations institutions, and macho mismanagement praxis is even more commonplace, compared
to when Fox wrote Man Mismanagement. The stripping away of the institutional architecture of IR renders the
renewal of pluralist praxis, like collective bargaining and other forms of joint regulation of work, a formidable task.
Originality/value –The value of the article relates to the identificationof dramatic historical indust rial relations
eventsandchangeintheUKinAlanFox’sbookMan Mismanagement, most notably relating to the rise to power of
the Thatcherite New Right in 1979. Originalityis evidenced by the authors’drawing on Fox’s ideas and assessing the
implications of the “secondwave”of the New Right in the contemporary industrial relations (IR) context of the 2020s
under the conceptual themes of fragmented work, disjointed labour rights and undermined collectivism.
Keywords Fox, Industrial relations, Mismanagement, New right, Pluralism, Praxis, Unitarism
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Alan Fox published two editions of Man Mismanagement* (in 1974b and 1985). In the 1974b
edition, Fox (147–148) noted the distinction between the industrial and political arenas in the UK
context:
The distinction between industrial and political issues is a key feature of Britain’s industrial relations
system, and constitutes another of the joint understandings which comprise the pluralist philosophy
informing relationships between the organised forces of employers, trade unions and the party-political
structure.
ER
46,6
1290
© Tony Dobbins and Tony Dundon. Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This article is published
under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute,
translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes),
subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be
seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode
We thank the SI editors Andy Hodder and Michael Gold and reviewers for helpful feedback. We also
appreciate Alan Fox for his industrial relations scholarship, which has influenced our own research.
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
https://www.emerald.com/insight/0142-5455.htm
Received 5 June 2023
Revised 1 September 2023
19 October 2023
2 January 2024
Accepted 10 January 2024
Employee Relations: The
International Journal
Vol. 46 No. 6, 2024
pp. 1290-1305
Emerald Publishing Limited
0142-5455
DOI 10.1108/ER-06-2023-0282
One of the principal changes in Fox’s analysis between the first and second editions (1974b
and 1985) is his focus on the rise of New Right ideology in the second edition. At the time the
first edition was published in 1974, the Labour Party had gained power (led by Harold
Wilson), after the miners’strike of 1974 precipitated the fall of the Conservative government,
led by Edward Heath. In 1975, Heath, from the “One Nation”wing of the Conservative Party,
was replaced by Margaret Thatcher from an emerging and harder New Right-wing
conservatism. Thatcher won power in 1979 at a time of serious industrial strife (e.g. the
so-called Winter of Discontent). In 1974, Fox noted the industrial context was characterized
by “a standard model of collective bargaining”that was, he argued, “grounded firmly on the
explicit or implicit acceptance of both negotiating parties of the pluralistic conception of the
organisation”(Fox, 1974b, pp. 131–2). In less than a decade, by the time the second edition
was published in 1985, the industrial relations (IR) and political landscape had changed
dramatically, with institutional pluralism and trade unions under attack politically from the
New Right. Indeed, the back cover of the second edition states:
Since Man Mismanagement* was first published in 1974, Britain’s industrial relations climate has
altered considerably. Ten years ago the unions were approaching the peak of their post-war powers.
Since then the fracturing of the Labour Party and the policies of the Thatcher administration have
had a dramatic impact on industrial relations.
Furthermore, in the preface to the 1985 second edition, Fox comments:
The major differences wrought in this second edition are therefore twofold. The nature and reasons
for the changes of the past ten years are explored, along with the political background that has
changed so significantly in ways which cannot help but continue to affect industrial relations.
Accordingly, to reflect the orientation towards focusing on the rise of the New Right in British
politics and IR, Fox made significant changes to the content of the second edition. The major
differences in content between the 1974b and 1985 editions of Man Mismanagement can be
summarized as follows. Chapters 5 (Consent and participation in decision-making), 7
(Participation and the status quo) and 8 (Participation, bargaining and the wider society) were
rewritten. For example, chapter 7 contains new sections, including ones on Thatcher
governments, Labour politics and the politicization of industrial relations. Chapter 8 contains
new sections including industrial relations and the New Right, and “macho”management and
shop-floor realism. Other chapters retained their basic structure but were also revised and
updated to account for changes in political economy. Nonetheless, the analytical approach
outlined in the first edition (mismanagement) remained intact but was extended to
incorporate a dramatically changed political economy context. The analytical approach, in
both editions, was to analyse the managerial problem of control and associated strategies for
securing employee compliance (through unitarist coercive power, for instance) or, more
ambitiously, seeking consent and moral involvement (through pluralist participation in
decision-making, including collective bargaining, joint consultation, job discretion and
enrichment).
Our interpretation of the concept of mismanagement is that it has two inter-relating
meanings and arenas: industrial and political. Managerial mismanagement in the industrial
arena concerns long-standing historical tendencies in the UK “master and servant”context
towards managerial coercion to impose worker compliance, rather than the pluralist high-
trust work relations which Fox perceived as “good”management. Mismanagement in the
political arena, in our interpretation, refers to, for example, political strategies by New Right
ideologues to reify permissive market forces and extend managerial prerogative –evidenced
by our three overlapping themes of fragmentation of work, disjointed labour rights and
undermining collectivism (see in the following text). The industrial and political arenas are
intertwined, notably because the political strategies by the New Right set the rules of the
Political and
industrial
mismanagement
1291
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