TOWARDS USEFUL THEORISING ABOUT INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS*
| Published date | 01 November 1977 |
| Author | Kenneth F. Walker |
| Date | 01 November 1977 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8543.1977.tb01136.x |
British
Journal
of
Industrial
Relations
Vol.
XV
No.
3
TOWARDS USEFUL THEORISING ABOUT INDUSTRIAL
RELATIONS*
KENNETH
F.
WALKER+
I.
THEORY
VERSUS
PRACTICE
IN
INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS
Practitioners
of
industrial relations are commonly as suspicious
of
theory as they are
of experts, regarding theory as the opposite
of
practice. In contrast academics find mere
data-collection wasteful, and stress the need for integrating ideas. Dunlop, for example,
complained of the lack
of
theory in the field of industrial relations;’ many practitioners
would applaud its absence.
Nevertheless any systematic practice implies some theory, even if not explicit. Keynes
drew attention to the influence
of
theory on practice, even though such influence may be
delayed, and the practitioner unaware of Lewin wrote that ‘there is nothing
so
practical as a good the~ry’.~
It
is
not difficult to cite examples
of
the influence
of
theories on practice. Ricardo’s
‘iron law
of
wages’ was used to argue against raising wages; Senior’s ‘proof‘ that the last
two hours
of
work alone produced profit was put forward in the debate on the British
Factory Act in 1837. Early in the twentieth century the legal concepts relating to civil
law and order were applied in the establishment
of
compulsory arbitration
of
industrial
disputes in New Zealand and Australia. In the second half
of
the century, the expec-
tation that industrial relations in the developing countries would evolve in the direction
of
industrial relations in the industrialised countries seems to have been widely held
among unions, employers and governments, and to have been the conceptual base for
the technical co-operation work of the
I.L.O.
To be useful in practice, industrial relations theory must meet at least three tests:
(a) it must not be banal;
(b) it must
go
further than merely codifying practice;
(c) it must cope with the multi-faceted character of industrial relations.
Banality is found in industrial relations theory when it merely restates a truism. For
example, ‘if one of the actors, e.g., the union, demands something the other is not
prepared to concede, then there
is
more likelihood
of
confli~t’.~
To
be useful to a practitioner, industrial relations theory must
do
more than merely
register, in esoteric language, a tendency that any reflective practitioner could rec-
ognise. For example,
as a
principle favouring industrial peace: ‘There is full acceptance
by management
of
the collective bargaining process and
of
unionism as an in~titution’.~
Industrial relations theories based on a single discipline must present a distortion of
reality and imply prescriptions for action that are likely to be ineffective because
of
their
neglect
of
other factors.
As
Flanders wrote: ‘Theoretically speaking, these disciplines
tear the subject apart by concentrating attention on some of its aspects to the exclusion
or comparative neglect
of
others.’6 For example,
Clinical psychology
and
psychiatry, concerned
as
they
are
with
the
emotions and
the
malad-
justments which produce emotional thinking
and
conflicts,
hold the ultimate key to harmonious
labour-management relations.
. . .
The
forces of employees’ dissatisfaction
can
be
kept at
a
A
revised version
of
a paper presented to
the
Fourth World Congress
of
the International
Professor
of
Industrial Relations, European Institute
of
Business Administration (INSEAD),
Industrial Relations Association, Geneva,
6-10
Sept,
1976.
Fontainebleau, France; Associate, Ecole Polytechnique, Paris.
307
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