THE NEW INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS?
| Date | 01 July 1976 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8543.1976.tb00054.x |
| Author | Stephen Hill |
| Published date | 01 July 1976 |
Brifish Journal
of
Indusfrial Relations
Vol.
XIV
No.
2
REVIEW ARTICLE
THE NEW INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS?
STEPHEN HILL*
THESE three books? demonstrate how successfully the insights derived from
sociology and Marxism have become established in the social analysis
of
industry.
Indeed, among younger scholars, such insights threaten to develop into a new
orthodoxy, though one which is not as yet fully articulated. There are many
reasons for this shift of intellectual emphasis, but in the British context it is
probably true that a growing interest in sociology resulted from the failure of
other academic disciplines to provide convincing explanations of the social
processes which led to the loss of managerial control in the workplace in the
196Os,
while the growth of more radical intellectual positions was partly
a
response to the failure of the traditionally dominant liberal and pluralist ideologies
to cope satisfactorily with the forms of social and industrial conflict which have
emerged in the last few years. It is noticeable how most of the significant
developments in the formulation of a sociological and radical perspective have
come from outside the academic discipline of industrial relations, as these new
books attest, though Hyman and Fox stand out as people who have successfully
imported new ideas and contributed to their development.
The richness and variety of the new perspective is well covered by these new
volumes, because each has a different focus and is concerned with different prac-
tical problems and issues in industrial relations. Indeed, as will emerge later, the
range of different interests probably reflects some theoretical disagreement
among the various authors. Braverman is concerned to analyse technology,
managerial control systems and the degradation of work in industry, Hyman and
Brough to describe the mechanisms of ideological control which operate in society
at large, and the contributors to Parkin’s volume to examine the impact of work
experience
on
attitudes, the nature of working-class consciousness and the
possibilities of worker self-management. What unites these diverse contributions
is the conviction that order and coherence in industry and society rest
on
relations
of domination and power, and that in modern industrial societies, particularly
capitalist ones, power disparities are long term, structured, and not susceptible of
much modification. Power and control become central themes in the analysis of
industry and society.
Hyman and Brough present an exposition of the existing literature concerning
wage determination, income inequalities and fairness which is scholarly and
notable for the breadth of its coverage and the diversity of its sources. There are
lucid accounts of economic theories of wages, sociological theories about
reference groups and the more
individual/psychological
perspectives of manage-
ment science, which most readers should find valuable and which will guarantee
the popularity of the book with students. Out of this survey of secondary sources,
the authors construct their argument that norms of fairness with regard to wages
are crucially important for fixing income levels and maintaining differentials
within the income hierarchy, that these norms are socially given and the market
*
Lecturer in Sociology, London School
of
Economics.
t
Richard Hyman and Ian Brough,
Social Values and Industrial Relations-A Study in Fairness
Harry Braverman,
Labor and Monopoly Capital-The Degradation
of
Work
in
the Twentieth
Frank Parkin (ed.),
The Social Analysis
of
Class Structure,
Tavistock Publications, 1974,
3
15
2
14
and Inequality,
Basil Blackwell, 1975, 277 pp., Cloth 26.50, Paper f3.50.
Cenfury,
Monthly Review
Press,
1974, 465 pp., Cloth f5.30, Paper
f2.65.
pp.. Cloth f5.60, Paper f2.80.
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