Research Note: Identifying the Invisible Colleges of the British Journal of Industrial Relations: A Bibliometric and Social Network Approach
| Author | G. Steven McMillan,Debra L. Casey |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8543.2007.00645.x |
| Published date | 01 December 2007 |
| Date | 01 December 2007 |
Research Note: Identifying the Invisible
Colleges of the British Journal of
Industrial Relations: A Bibliometric
and Social Network Approach
G. Steven McMillan and Debra L. Casey
Abstract
The academic field of industrial relations has gone through much change in the
last 20 years. On account of the rapid decline in union membership in the USA
and the UK, industrial relations, which historically has focused on the employ-
ment relationship, has been searching for a new intellectual base. By conducting
a bibliometric analysis of the journal British Journal of Industrial Relations
(BJIR), we uncover the intellectual bases for that publication outlet for two time
periods, 1986–1995 and 1996–2005. From the late 1980s to the mid-1990s,
BJIR’s articles relied on the economics literature, while in the later period,
it moved to the human resource and management journals, authors and
articles. The possible explanations and implications of these findings are
discussed.
1. Overview
The British Journal of Industrial Relations (BJIR) began publication in 1963.
Since that time, over 900 research articles and research notes (as well as
countless book reviews, etc.) have been published. The journal’s early intel-
lectual roots focused on employee, union and collective bargaining issues.
However, as union membership and interest in collective bargaining, in both
the USA and the UK, have declined dramatically in the subsequent years,
BJIR, like one of its US counterpart, Industrial & Labor Relations Review,
has been seeking a new intellectual home. Bruce Kaufman, sometimes nick-
named Dr. Doom, argued in the early 1990s that industrial relations (IR) was
G. Steven McMillan and Debra L. Casey are at Penn State Abington.
British Journal of Industrial Relations doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8543.2007.00645.x
45:4 December 2007 0007–1080 pp. 815–828
© Blackwell Publishing Ltd/London School of Economics 2007. Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd,
9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
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