A STRATEGY FOR INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS RESEARCH IN GREAT BRITAIN*
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8543.1974.tb00006.x |
| Published date | 01 March 1974 |
| Author | George Sayers Bain,H. A. Clegg |
| Date | 01 March 1974 |
A STRATEGY FOR INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS
RESEARCH IN GREAT BRITAIN*
GEORGE SAYERS
BAIN~
AND
H.
A. CLEGG~
THE
Social Science Research Council decided to organize
a
conference
in 1973, mainly of specialists, to discuss research needs in industrial rela-
tions in Britain over the next few years. They hoped that such
a
conference
would yield guidance for dealing with applications for research grants in
industrial relations. We were asked to provide the conference with
a
survey
of British industrial relations research and research needs regarded gener-
ally, and not from the viewpoint of any one of the disciplines which are
applied to the study of industrial relations. The first aim of this paper,
therefore, is to offer such
a
survey.
We have also a second, and subordinate, aim.
As
directors of the
Social Science Research Council’s Industrial Relations Research Unit,
we are conscious that the Unit’s original programme of projects will be
largely completed in 1974 and 1975,
so
that, if the Unit is renewed,
a
new programme will soon be needed. In the final section of the paper,
therefore, we have applied the ideas developed from our general survey
to the Unit’s work in order to illustrate those ideas and also to make a
start in designing a new research programme for the Unit.
THE
SCOPE
AND
NATURE
OF
INDUSTRIAL
RELATIONS
In developing a strategy for industrial relations research, the first task
is to make clear what we conceive to be the scope and nature of the
subject. Our definition flows from the work of Dunlop in the United
States and Flanders in the United Kingdom. They see industrial relations
as a social system composed of actors-workers and their organizations,
employer-managers and their organizations, and the state and certain
of its agencies-interacting in a context composed of the labour and
product markets and the work place and social environments.
A
major
output of this system is the establishment and administration of a network
or ‘web of rules’ which govern the process ofjob regulation.
For
Dunlop
‘the central task of a theory of industrial relations is to explain why parti-
cular rules are established in particular industrial-relations systems and
*
This
is
a revised version
of
a paper presented to the Conference on Industrial Relations
Research at Sheffield, on
26-27
April,
1973,
which
was
organized by the Management and
Industrial Relations Committee
of
the Social Science Research Council. The
views
expressed
in
the paper do not necessarily reflect those
of
the S.S.R.C. or those
of
the Committee.
t
Deputy Director, S.S.R.C. Industrial Relations Research
Unit,
University
of
Warwick.
$
Director, S.S.R.C. Industrial Relations Research Unit, University
of
Warwick.
91
92
BRITISH JOURNAL
OF
INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS
how and why they change in response to changes affecting the system’.l
Flanders agrees with Dunlop’s contention that ‘the rules of the work place
and work community become the general focus of enquiry to be explained
by theoretical analysisYya and claims that ‘the study of industrial relations
may therefore be described as
a
study of the institutions ofjob reg~lation’.~
The emphasis which Dunlop and Flanders place on the rules and
institutions of job regulation as the central core of industrial relations is
a significant insight which provides the subject with a certain analytical
unity. Nevertheless, there are difficulties inherent in their reasoning.
To
begin with, there are certain ambiguities in the way in which the concept
of a ‘system’
is
used. Dunlop’s work, in particular, rests upon the Parsonian
analysis of social systems, and his argument that it
is
‘an ideology or a set
of ideas and beliefs commonly held by the actors that helps to bind or
integrate the system together as an entityy4 might be taken to imply that
an industrial relations system is ‘naturally’ stable and integrative and
‘necessarily’ strives to perpetuate itself. Such
a
notion has conservative
implications and is unacceptable for, as Eldridge has noted, ‘in sociology,
the sources of conflict and co-operation, order and instability must have
an equally valid claim to problem status’.6 Hence it is only permissible
and useful to use the notion of a ‘system’ as
a
heuristic device for structur-
ing data. In Gill’s words, an industrial relations system should ‘be regarded
as
a
model within which facts may be organized and must not be mis-
understood as having predictive value in itself’. Rather, it is ‘a means of
ordering
a
mass of facts relevant to the study’ of industrial relations.8
If used
as
a
heuristic device rather than as a theory of social action,
the concept of a ‘system’ not only gives the subject of industrial relations
an analytical focus but also points to
a
range of factors which should be
taken into account in trying to explain the behaviour of the actors in an
industrial relations system. But, as formulated by Dunlop and Flanders,
the systems concept does not point to all the important explanatory
variables. Dunlop has long held that ‘human relations’ variables ‘must
be cut to size-to a minor role-in any full explanation of industrial
relations behavior’.’ Hence it is perhaps not surprising that although
Dunlop’s formulation of an industrial relations system emphasizes actors
and their interactions, it largely omits such behavioural variables as human
motivations, perceptions, and attitudes. Similarly, Flanders has argued
that ‘personal, or in the language of sociology “unstructured”, relation-
John
T.
Dunlop,
Industrial Relations Systems,
Holt, New York, 1958, pp. viii-ix.
Allan Flanders,
Industrial Relations: What is Wrong with the
System?
Faber, London: 1965,
p.
10.
Op.
cit.,
p. 16.
J. E.
T.
Eldridge,
Industrial Disputes: Essays in the Sociologv
of
Industrial Relations,
Routledge
John Gill, ‘One Approach to the Teaching
of
Industrial Relations’,
British Journal
of
‘John
T.
Dunlop and William Foote Whyte, ‘Framework
for
the Analysis
of
Industrial
a
Ibid.,
p. 380.
and Kegan Paul, London, 1968, p. 22.
Industrial Relations,
Vol. VII,
No.
2,
July 1969,
p.
269.
Relations:
Two
Views’,
Industrial and Labor Relations Review,
Vol.
111,
April 1950, p. 384.
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