THE ELEMENTS OF INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS
| Date | 01 March 1964 |
| Author | Jack Barbash |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8543.1964.tb00301.x |
| Published date | 01 March 1964 |
THE ELEMENTS
OF
INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS
JACK
BARBASH*
I
THIS
is
a
highly speculative attempt to set out the elements of industrial
relations. As
a
tentative working concept we may take industrial relations
to mean the area of study and practice concerned with the administration
of the employment function in modern public and private enterprise; this
function involves workers, unions, managers, government, and the various
'
publics
'.
There
is
an assumption here, of course, that industrial relations
is, in fact, an identifiable scheme which will admit virtually all industrial
relations actions and theories-established by usage as industrial relations-
as part of that scheme. It is, however, recognized that the generalizations
made will apply only to the United States unless otherwise indicated.
I1
The elements of industrial relations may be identified as:
(I)
enterprise
rationality
;
(2)
organizational discipline
;
(3)
human non-rationality, and
(4)
the values of
a
free society.
Enterprise rationality is the logic
of
getting
'
maximum results at
a
minimum cost
'1
or
as Landauer has put it,
'
the dictatorship
of
the balance
sheet
'2,
Sombart, who saw rationality as
a
mainspring of the capitalistic
system, listed three ways in which economic rationality
is
expressed.
(I)
There is
a
plan,
in accordance with which all things are ordered
aright. And the plan covers activities in the distant future.
(2)
Eficiency
is the test applied in the choice
of
all the means of production.
(3)
Seeing that the
'
cash nexus
'
regulates all economic activity, and that
everywhere and always
a
surplus is sought for, exact
calculations
become necessary in every undertaking.S
Or as a successful businessman has put it:
Efficiency has become the most revered of all goals. There
are
more
speeches, more articles and more conferences on the subject than on
*
Professor
of
Economics and Labor Education, University
of
Wisconsin.
1
Ben
B.
Seligman,
Main Currents
in
Modern
Economics
(Glencoe, Illinois
:
The Free Press
of
Glencoe,
2
Carl Landauer,
European
Socialism
(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University
of
California
Press,
3
Werner Sombart,
The
Jew
and Modern Capitalism
(New York: Collier Books, 1962), p. 162,
66
1962),
p.
128.
1959), Vol. 11,
p.
1657.
emphasis
in
original.
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