It is suggested that any coherent social science of Employment Relations should examine the fundamental nature of workplace relationships and not be overly concerned with the contrived use and manipulation of organising frameworks from discipline areas such as Industrial Relations and Human Resources Management. An alternative framework is offered which allows for the generation of hypotheses, model building and empirical testing.
Introduction Joan Robinson (Robinson, 1970) once said that a reason why modern life is so uncomfortable is that people have grown self conscious about things that used to be taken for granted. It would seem that writers and practitioners in the field of employment relations are no exception. The editorial in the first edition of the ‘International Journal of Employment Studies’ pointed to a common theme of the study of employment, related behaviours, organisations and institutions, whilst avoiding ‘definition of its purpose in terms of particularistic discipline or paradigm’ (Morris, 1993).
Apparently the aim of the Journal is to accept articles which examine the nature of employment from an eclectic range of paradigms, and indeed, ideologies. Several commentators and writers have attempted some narrowing and closer definition of the field (Fastenau and Pullin, 1994; Mortimer and Morris, 1995).
However, in doing so they have failed to take cognisance of their own ideologies which reside in the background and inform the nature and direction of their theorising.
The Essay on Discuss The Key Influences On Employment Relations
Changes in society and legislation can somehow contribute to the influences on employment relations. There are several key influences that create impacts on the employment relations in workplaces nowadays, and they are the social influences, legal influences, economic influences and the new organizational behavioral influences. The existence of social influences involve the increased number of ...
There are common threads and assumptions within the corpus of the literature of these and other writers. Most argue that the incorporation of a pluralistic frame of reference and the integration of Industrial Relations and Human Resources Management (or similar areas) into some kind of seamless whole would set the groundwork for a new discipline (or area of enquiry) called ‘Employment Relations’ (Mortimer and Morris, 1995).
Some of the justifications mooted for this ntegration include the evidence of the formation of the International Employment Relations Association, changes in the names of academic departments from Industrial Relations to Employment Relations, advertisements in the press for Employment Relations managers, and the publication of various textbooks on Employment Relations (Fastenau and Pullin, 1994).
Yet both the argument for the use of pluralism, the conjoining of Industrial Relations and Human Resources Management, as well as the justifications offered for these actions are unsatisfactory.
In the first case, the incorporation of pluralism implies that an ideology is being mooted as an organising principle for some form of objective study and secondly, the various organisational and academic manifestations of the relations people have in the workplace do not get at either the fundamental nature of, and sound explanations for, the work relations themselves. Moreover, such a framework would probably not offer explanations as to why work relations take the forms they do, nor offer any speculation as to how they might evolve in the future.
It is essential that the bedrock of employment relations be understood and enunciated 50 Peter Slade before further development by way of explanatory power and model building progress much further. In this article, the nature of ideologies will be examined in order that their importance within employment relations will be understood. Next, the shortcomings of the use of pluralism as an organising principle for the study of employment relations will be considered, along with questioning the blending of Industrial Relations and Human Resources Management.
Lastly, an organising and explanatory framework will be offered which might allow the development of an employment relations discipline, which takes account of power relations, conflict and so on, and which has the potential to offer much in the way of explanatory power and useful theorising. Thus, the aim of the article is to ask academics and practitioners alike not to take employment relations for granted, and to feel uncomfortable and self-conscious about it.
The Research paper on Theoretical Approaches to Employment and Industrial Relations: A Comparison of Subsisting Orthodoxies
1. Introduction Theory could be viewed as a coherent group of assumptions or propositions put forth to explain a phenomenon. A theory is an abstraction of reality and is synonymous with perception, viewpoint, assumption, frame of reference or a perspective. The relevance of theory in any field of endeavour cannot be over emphasised. Theory attempts to observe, understand, explain, predict and ...
Only then might useful evolutionary pathways become available to the emerging field. Ideologies That the unexamined life is not worth living has been well attested to by Socrates, yet the process of examining one’s life is an emotionally costly and disturbing business. The main reason is that the existence of ideologies ensures a relatively trouble free emotional and intellectual existence for most people. By asking why we believe what we believe we usually find that the very basis of our world view is threatened or collapses.
Societies cannot exist unless their members have common feelings about what is the proper way of conducting their affairs, and such common feelings are expressed in ideology. An ideology can be said to be a set of beliefs held as a basis for action and expressed in a set of stock statements which are not seriously presented as open to challenge (Wiles, 1983).
Apparently, they are called upon to justify behaviour and are accepted as true without serious attempts to check their accuracy against evidence.
All individuals are governed by at least one, but often more ideologies. When there is more than one ideology, there may be conflicts between their basic tenets, and in this case the justifications given by an individual or group will not have a consistent defence. An aspect of some ideologies is that they are often coherent and contain propositions of a factual sort. However, these things do not necessarily offer ideologies any special pleading, creedence or worth in respect of science, or indeed, any objective reality.
Coherence often only offers plausibility, while facts are simply beliefs about what is (Naughton, 1990).
Very often a special methodology and vocabulary will grow up about an ideology, the use of which confines the devotees to problems and approaches that cannot threaten the basic propositions. In the long run, without a protective methodology and a limited vocabulary, an ideology cannot last. Before scientific method was agreed upon, special methodologies were legion. Now they arise only to protect ideologies. It is very difficult to define ideology.
The Term Paper on Employment Relationship With Reference To The Unitarist, Pluralist And Marxist Perspective
The aim of this assay is to discuss the statement—‘Conflict is inherent within the employment relationship’ with reference to the Unitarist, Pluralist and Marxist perspective. Firstly, I will give the definitions of employment relations, industrial conflict the three main conflict frames of reference in employment relations. Then I will explain the conflict in the three ...
Robinson (Robinson, 1970) has pointed out that logical definitions should not be confused with categories, and that ideologies are probably akin to elephants in this regard; we know an elephant when we see one, and we can describe but not define it. Robinson (Robinson, 1970) has further argued that ideologies can be further understood as being distinct from science according to a set of criteria. Generally, ideological propositions dissolve into meaninglessness or circular argument when treated logically. Secondly, an ideological proposition is not capable of being tested in the Popperian sense.
This is to say that it is not capable of being falsified by evidence. What is Employment Relations? 51 However, ideologies and ideological statements are useful in that they provide a basis from which hypotheses can be drawn. For example, an ideological statement might be that it is only in an entirely free labour market that the returns to labour are fully reflective of that factor’s productivity. The statement is prescriptive in advocating ‘free’ labour markets, and yet a number of testable hypotheses arise about the returns to labour, productivity, and what is meant about ‘free’ and ‘market’.
Thus, there is a sense in which ideologies can help us know what we want to know. This phenomenon would be useful in the evolution of a theory of employment relations. Academics, commentators and practitioners would be well advised to examine the bases of their viewpoints, to state the ideologies (or ideological propositions) they might uncover, and then to generate some useful and testable hypotheses from them, for the purposes of empirical enquiry and the development of the field.
Curiously there is evidence that some writers are confused between ideology and the concept of paradigms. Thus for example, when Fastenau and Pullin (Fastenau and Pullin, 1994) ask if there is evidence for the emergence of a new paradigm in employment relations, they point to the supposed convergence between Industrial Relations and Human Resources Management. They cannot actually define the paradigm, but they do find signs of its recognition and acceptance.
The Report on Relation Between the Olympics and Science
Many people are shocked to see that a young girl named Tessa Virtue from Windsor, paired with another teenager, are the youngest pair from North America to win gold. The skaters who win medals in the Olympics have jumps that leave the audience breathless, but how can they do so when most people can barely jump high enough to make one revolution in the air? This relates to both the Olympics and the ...
Yet Industrial Relations and Human Resources Management are simply different views of the same set of phenomena that pertain to the relationships people have with one another in a work place where paid employment is the norm. It can be argued that each of Industrial Relations, Human Resources Management, Employee Relations and so on, constitute (or are representative of) differing ideologies. Within Alan Fox’s frames or reference (Fox, 1966), Industrial Relations might be seen as encompassing a set of ideologies that are pluralist in character, whilst others are largely unitarist.
Given that ideologies are often internally consistent and coherent, it is difficult to see how such opposing views could be reconciled. All this begs the question as to what constitutes a paradigm, and at first blush, there appears to be very little to distinguish between an ideology and a paradigm. Paradigm comes from the Greek word ‘paradigma’ which means ‘example’. It came to popularity in the English-speaking world as a consequence of Thomas Kuhn’s (Kuhn, 1962) use of it in his work on the nature of scientific thought.
He argued that science might evolve and progress in leaps or jumps rather than incrementally, as was held by such people as Karl Popper (Popper, 1959).
Thus, a paradigm was seen as a research program which determines the nature and direction of scientific enquiry. It is in this respect that there is little which distinguishes a paradigm from an ideology. Ideologies constitute a program by which one might comprehend and make sense of the world. They are a basis for action.
They contain statements of a factual sort and are internally consistent. In this sense, they might conceivably offer a research program. However, paradigms differ from ideologies in that ideological propositions dissolve into meaninglessness or circularity when treated logically, and secondly, ideological propositions are not capable of being tested and falsified in the Popperian sense. Paradigms can be falsified by evidence and when such events occur a new research program comes into being, and a ‘paradigm shift’ is said to have taken place.
The Essay on Industrial Relations
Industrial relations has three faces: science building, problem solving, and ethical. [9] In the science building phase, industrial relations is part of the social sciences, and it seeks to understand the employment relationship and its institutions through high-quality, rigorous research. In this vein, industrial relations scholarship intersects with scholarship in labor economics, industrial ...
Fastenau and Pullin (Fastenau and Pullin, 1994) have implied that a paradigm shift is occurring as is evidenced by the rise of ‘Employment Relations’, but they don’t spell out what the new research program is. When they, and to a lesser extent, Mortimer and Morris (Mortimer and Morris, 1995), argue that pluralism should constitute a building block for the evolution of employment relations, they seem to ignore the importance of formulating testable hypotheses and the avoidance of circularity and meaninglessness. Pluralism might offer 52 Peter Slade escriptions, but it is also prescriptive in that, for example, it argues that there is a balance of power between parties in a workplace relationship. For this reason, it is unsatisfactory to the development of a credible science of employment relations. In the employment relations field it would appear that the emergence of a new paradigm indicates a new direction of enquiry and new or different questions being asked than hitherto. However, it is argued here that there is no new paradigm, but rather an old ideology manifesting itself in a different garb.
This is not an entirely unwelcome development, since as was pointed out earlier, ideologies can be lucrative ground for the generation of testable hypotheses in the social sciences. It is important that academics, practitioners and writers should concede that pluralism is an ideology, otherwise it will remain in the background as some kind of ‘eminence gris’, unexamined and illegitimately informing the nature and direction of the development of employment relations. It is to pluralism and its shortcomings that I now turn.
Pluralism Industrial Relations pluralism stipulates a perspective of organisations made up of interest groups with varying and sometimes antagonistic goals, objectives and allegiances. Given antagonistic goals and aims, the perspective holds that negotiation can restore and equitable equilibrium, even in the long run. Fox (Fox, 1979) characterised an enterprise as ‘a coalition of interests, a miniature democratic state composed of sectional groups with divergent interests over which the government tries to maintain some kind of dynamic equilibrium.
The necessity of the presence of government is, according to Hyman (Hyman, 1978), one of three common features of Industrial Relations Pluralist writers, which are; firstly, that there are no undue concentrations of economic power; secondly, that there is, despite the sectionalism of contemporary society, such a thing as the public or national interest; thirdly, that the state is the guardian or arbiter of the national interest, and is presumably not subject to pressure from the economically powerful. All three of these implied theses are, at best, tenuous.
The Term Paper on A Report On Industrial Relation In Bangladesh
The relationship between employer and employee or trade unions is called Industrial Relation (IR). Harmonious relationship is necessary for both employers and employees to safeguard the interests of both parties of the production. In order to maintain good relationship with the employees, the main functions of every organization should avoid any dispute with them or settle it as early as possible ...
The notion of a set of roughly equilibrating forces has been used for many years in the social sciences and was probably taken from the physical sciences. Most modern rudimentary macro economic analysis, for example, presupposes that an economy, which is an amalgam of forces moves from one state of equilibrium to the next. Little is said or understood about what happens between equilibria, as this method of comparative statics analysis is simply a pedagogic device to enable students to gain some kind of understanding of the rudiments of economic analysis.
Generally, economic dynamics comes later in an economist’s education. By assuming a pluralistic framework for enquiry and writing, the employment relations school are sentencing themselves to being the equivalent of first year economics students. It is very rare that an equilibrium of forces is to be found in the physical sciences, indeed the second law of thermodynamics mitigates entirely against such a conjunction ever happening. It would be a very odd and important event should one ever be perceived in the social sciences.
History might well repeat itself, yet at each appearance of a familiar junction, dress, attitudes, technology, populations, and so on will have all changed and moved on. All these banalities do apparently have to be repeated because the assumption of pluralism implicitly refuses to accept them. It is almost as if pluralist writers can see dialectical materialism ahead of them, but do not wish to take it on for fear of what they might find. There are other problems with pluralism. Clegg (Clegg, 1975) has come close to describing pluralism as an ideology when he likened it to a moral doctrine.
Pluralism presupposes that various groups in society should recognise a moral obligation to seek compromise, even to the extent of negating their interests and aspirations. This idea of searching for compromise leads What is Employment Relations? 53 (almost) to a fixation with the achievement of compromise to the exclusion of all else. It is not surprising that (Anglo-Saxon) Industrial Relations has as its strongest element the examination of procedures above examination and discussion of underlying causes, structures, antagonisms, power systems and substantive issues.
Yet these substantive issues offer a raison d’etre for the existence of Industrial Relations and Employment Relations in the first place. The ‘bedrock’ is what gives rise to the form and appearance of the land above. The landscape is best understood by what lies beneath. Perhaps it should come as no surprise that the concern with proceduralism should be rent through pluralist’s theorising. This is because there is an assumption that all parties to a dispute wish to ensure some kind of ongoing relationship, and that necessary protocols should be followed to make sure of longevity in the relationship.
Chamberlain (Chamberlain, 1951) for example, emphasised what he called a ‘conjunctive’ relationship between the parties. An employer cannot normally forego the service of employees, as employees cannot normally collectively do without the employer. Accordingly, both parties are tied together out of necessity, and must actively work together to resolve their differences. It is easy to concede that the parties might need one another because of economic reasons, but this does not preclude the possibility that there remain fundamental and ongoing structural antagonisms between parties to an employment relationship.
At a psychological level, pluralist writers probably need the combined emphasis on equilibrating forces and procedure because to attempt to describe and evaluate employment relations in any other way would imply a search for new methods of analysis and construction, and indeed, a new mindset. The intellectual investment might not be worth the results in the short run to such writers. That pluralism is an ideology is illustrated by the point that it says more (and prescribes more) about HOW a social system is constructed, than about why it should operate as it does.
It would be inimical to the pluralist ideology to admit to the examination of substantive issues, structural antagonisms and so on, since to do so would lead, in the end to the demise of pluralism itself. One cannot imagine that the world is spherical without a knowledge of the laws of gravity and how they work. Pluralism is essentially a doctrine that leads to an uncritical orientation towards managerial priorities of cost effectiveness, efficiency and technical rationality. A broader and more open approach should be brought to bear to the study of employment relations.
One such approach is outlined later in this article, but an examination of the efficacy of regarding Employment Relations as a combination of Industrial Relations and Human Resources Management is needed. IR and HRM Concatenated A number of writers have argued that, in part, some kind of merging between say Industrial Relations and Human Resources Management departments in universities and workplaces could be evidence for the evolution of a new discipline, paradigm or school (call it what you will) which could be called Employment Relations (Fastenau and Pullin, 1994; Mortimer and Morris, 1995).
This seems an odd assertion at best.
The merging of two intellectual edifices or artefacts does mean that something new, or something nearer to a picture of reality has evolved. The issue is that there must be an attempt to get at the causes and nature of workplace relationships, and not at some sets of constructs removed from that fundamental understanding. It is conceded that constructs and the like can be the basis for the understanding of many phenomena, but the problem with the current mode of thinking is that constructs are being piled on top of constructs, 54 Peter Slade without any serious attempt to question their utility.
One perceives a state of near worship of old constructions and modes of enquiry. There is another problem here as well. The constructs of Industrial Relations, Human Resources Management, etc. , are largely the evolution of, and emanate from, either managerialist thinking, or the imagined truths espoused by academics. These form only one side of the employment relationship. Just as valid a view should be derived from those who are on the ‘employed’ side of the relationship. There is a singular lack of effort in researching this aspect. This is probably because it is more difficult to do than gleaning the managerialist perspective.
The representatives of employers and some academics are reasonably materially well off, well read, articulate, have a good knowledge of political systems and processes, are well funded, and consequently tend to propagandise and publish. On the other hand, people on the other side of the employment relationship either have none or few of these things and generally have few opportunities for the construction of alternative world and work views. Consequently, there is no readily accessible literature available to academics and writers to read and thereby incorporate this view into the literature and into construct formation.
Exceptions to this rule are the elementary efforts of Studs Terkel (Terkel, 1975).
Incidentally, this problem of inarticulation and consequent vacuum in theory applies as much to white collar workers, functionaries in service industries and youth holding down McJobs as it does to traditional bluecollar occupations. Something needs to be said about the attachment of names to artefacts and objects, since the giving of names, such as Industrial Relations, Employment Relations and so on, implies a power relationship. John Maynard Keynes (Keynes, 1931) once argued that ideas are the motivating force in historical change.
Marx (Marx, 1976) took the proposition further back. Generally, the accepted ideas of any period are those that serve the dominant economic interest ‘… intellectual production changes its character in proportion as material production is changed. The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of the ruling class’ (Marx, 1976).
Nothing more reliably characterises a social truth than its tendency to be agreeable to the significant economic interest. Not to notice this takes some effort, yet many writers in employment relations have apparently succeeded.
The edifice of ideas thrown up by employers and their representatives should be explored, challenged and analysed. The same applies to those who are employed. That it might be extraordinarily difficult not to step beyond outside the ideational hegemony thrown up by the owners and controllers of capital is not denied, and the difficulty is made even worse when considering the importance of names. Those who give names to things, whether physical objects, phenomena or concepts, are endowed with a great deal of power.
Which precedes which is often open to question by those who name, yet following on from Marx, economic power confers the right to give names. Moreover, it is often the case that names precede the artefacts they define, so that thinking and viewpoints are not merely controlled by names, but are constructed by them. We are told what to think simply because as things are defined, so they become real in their consequences (Marx, 1962).
Thus writers and academics in employment relations should take care and much trouble when defining what employment relations is and what it isn’t.
To argue simply that it is a pinch of pluralism and a dollop or two of Industrial Relations and Human Resources Management is not good enough. Mortimer and Morris (Mortimer and Morris, 1995) argue that pluralism might have a ‘generic’ applicability to the integrated study of Human Resources Management and Industrial Relations outside the original institutional framework in which pluralism was applied to Industrial Relations. They then go on to suggest that such a focus ‘would be based on the process of negotiating or mediating agreements between the employing organisation and its employees… n conflicting differences of interest relating to the employment relationship. ’ What is Employment Relations? 55 There are problems with this. Firstly, we are back in the old pluralist mode of having a particular interest in procedures as opposed to structural issues. Secondly, it is doubtful if pluralism does have generic applicability, since one of its over riding prescriptions is that there is an equilibrating framework of forces, as mentioned earlier. This would exclude, for example, any researcher who thought that no such equilibration existed, and who had a more dynamic or evolutionary view of the subject matter.
Lastly, the use of the words ‘conflicting differences of interest’ has a peculiar ring to it. Why not just admit to fundamental differences and be done with it? In this manner, the way is opened to investigate the fundamental nature of employment relationships. Mortimer and Morris (Mortimer and Morris, 1995) later argue that Human Resources Management is a unitarist perspective because it doesn’t call into question the assumption of inherent conflicts or differences of interests in organisations.
Yet pluralism is not much better, since whilst it does purport to examine conflicts and differences, it tacitly assumes that all such disturbances and problems will be solved. Even though the HRM school might have a unitarist perspective, Mortimer and Morris (Mortimer and Morris, 1995) suggest that there is a basis for the integration of Human Resources Management with Industrial Relations in that Human Resources writers could well benefit from a more empirical approach to their subject.
They believe that the Human Resource school tend to be too normative, assuming that the adoption of a pluralist approach mitigates against prescriptive and normative suggestions. However, as is pointed out in this article, pluralism is as prescriptive as unitarism, especially in the assumption of the equilibrating forces belief, and in the concept of the national interest. Mortimer and Morris (Mortimer and Morris, 1995) seem to assume that Industrial Relations, combined with a pluralist perspective, is more empirically based than the Human Resources School.
It may well be that Industrial Researchers have conducted more studies using data collected from ‘real life’ situations than their counterparts in the Human Resources school, but in the end, all studies in the social sciences are dependent upon and are informed by some form of ideology or world view. Even the way in which data are collected and presented in the first place is dependent upon some ordering on the part of the collector/presenter.
Therefore, all empirical work done under the rubric of Industrial Relations using a pluralist framework is bound to manifest results and conclusions that are both conditioned by and reflect the prescriptions and norms that inform pluralist ideology. In this sense, there is little to distinguish Industrial Relations from Human Resources Management. There is nothing inherently wrong with this; indeed it is unavoidable since such things inform and guide social science research.
The problem is that in restricting oneself to a given frame of reference or ideology, one eschews the development of a broad and rich theme of analysis and research. Employment Relations should not be limited by pluralist prescriptions under the false notion that such a frame of reference is somehow neutral. Moreover, researchers should state which particular ideological view they subscribe to. Mortimer and Morris (Mortimer and Morris, 1995) later correctly suggest that one basis on which Human Resource and Industrial Relations might be usefully linked is that both deal broadly with the same subject matter.
Leaving aside the issue of the names and meanings of the areas of enquiry, the idea of endeavouring to find out just what the field covers is of immense value. Indeed, Mortimer and Morris later state that, ‘a credible science of employment issues and studies requires explanatory understanding rather than polemics and prescriptions’ (Mortimer and Morris, 1995).
It is to this last issue that I now turn. 56 Peter Slade
Organising Framework for Employment Relations There is a temptation to define Employment Relations in a way that encompasses all (or a wide range) of the frames of reference that might conceivably bear on the area. Such a definition, by being broad, would be of little use. Yet definitional issues are important. It is possible to conduct an argument using undefined, or at least partly defined terms, and generate valuable insights in the process, but it is not possible to reach any viable conclusions by reasoning which uses the terms, or constructs any testable hypotheses and theories about them.
Thus discussions about Employment Relations might be truthful and constructive in a kind of poetic sense, but unless a definition can be framed which can distinguish between what is and what is not Employment Relations, and which can be used to point out at least one publicly agreed instance of employment relations, then logical arguments concerning Employment Relations have no publicly acceptable meaning. In a strictly scientific sense, they would have no meaning at all. The editorial in the irst edition of the International Journal of Employment Relations did a great disservice by eschewing this issue and failing to offer some definitional guidelines. One approach to a possible definition of Employment Relations is to consider articles written in an ostensibly ‘employment relations’ vein. All such articles point in the end, to employment relations themselves. This is not paradoxical. It simply means that the situation being examined is one where some people are employed by others to perform paid work. Various avenues for enquiry then present themselves.
From examining the nature of employment relations, to asking questions about power relationships within a cash nexus, through to considering the history of the development of the relationship and speculating on its future. This approach ensures that the tendency to take only views of one side of the relationship is negated because interest is focussed upon the nature of the relationship in total, its origins and development, and most importantly, on its role in society. This is to say that the underlying and fundamental aspects of paid work are considered and not just the ideologies from one side alone.
It is reasonable to suggest that the relationships people have with one another in the production process have a bearing on all other aspects of their lives; attitudes, expectations beliefs – the entire social and cultural context – all are shaped by the niche occupied in the economic/production/employment relationship. Thus the production and economic bedrock gives rise to employment and workplace relations which influence the cultural and social superstructure, and which are in turn reinforced and bolstered by the legal and religious environment. There is nothing new in this.
It is probably Marxist in origin, but it still offers important and fruitful ground for examination, discussion and enquiry. In New Zealand’s case for instance, it might be possible to examine the origins and meaning of the Employment Contracts Act, to consider its progress in the light of this view and to consider its effects in terms of wage rate trends, costs of production, and indeed, in terms of economic rationalism, as against social consequences. So far as Employment Relations itself is concerned, a host of writers has contributed some understanding, and still much more awaits development.
Hales (Hales, 1993) has suggested that three key themes have emerged from this research. Firstly, the management process has become separated into a distinct function. Next, this function is extended by amalgamation with functions flowing from ownership, and lastly, this combined function has become dispersed through different management specialisms and levels. These changes have a profound effect on employment relations. The separation of the management process can be seen to occur in a number of ways, which can be classified into two stages. What is Employment Relations? 7 The first stage, known as the Formal Substitution of Labour under Capital (Marx, 1976), occurs when an existing mode of production comes under the control of some external agency. An example might be when an artisan, who previously made cloth for sale in ‘his own account’ takes work in from a merchant to produce under contract at some predetermined piece rate. This is the ‘putting out’ system which has been well described by historians. Yet it still survives to this today, where workers produce garments in their own homes on a payment by results basis.
This is not confined to the clothing industry, and can be seen in all forms of franchising, subcontracting, business acquisition and so on. The last ten to fifteen years has seen the rise of the consultant. Previously a person in full time paid employment, restructuring in their previous employment lead them to offering their previous occupation on a contract for service to all comers. The essential features of formal substitution are that the external agency, by providing various financial and material resources necessary for production, exercises control over the inputs and outputs of the work process, but not the work itself.
In Marx’s words, ‘… the fact is that capital subsumes the labour process as it finds it, that is to say, it takes over an existing labour process’ (Marx, 1976).
The labour process if it remains unaltered, implies that production can only be increased by increasing working hours. Under these circumstances, productivity gains are difficult to achieve, although the scale of production (the volume of the means of production invested) can be increased enormously (Marx, 1976).
The second stage, which is the Real Subsumption of Labour under Capital, occurs when management (or the capitalist) takes control over the work process itself (Marx, 1976).
When this occurs, the nature of the divisions of labour, the use of machinery, the conscious use of science for specific ends (technology) and the enormous increase in the scale of production all become subject to owner’s and management’s prerogative (Marx, 1976).
It is through the real subsumption process that the vast productive capacity of capitalism is unleashed. People become subject to the direction of the previously external agency, not only over what to produce, but how to produce, the rate of production, how they relate with one another in production, and indeed, how and what to think in about the act of production.
Marx took the idea further by arguing the ‘transmutation of the immediate process of production itself and the development of the social forces of production of labour… affected… not merely… the level of ideas, but also in reality, the social character of his labour confronts the worker as something not merely alien, but hostile and antagonistic, when it appears before him, objectified and personified in capital’ (Marx, 1976).
All this is ‘pure’ employment relations discussion. It provides ample opportunity for the generation of hypotheses, model building, empirical work and so on.
The contention is that by asking what is meant by ‘employment relations’, it is possible to circumvent the sterile issues of the inclusion, or otherwise, of pluralism, the merging of Industrial Relations, Human Resources Management, Employee Relations, etc, as well as recognising that much of the literature has a mangerialist bent. By concentrating initially on the employment relationship, researchers are able to assess in a more objective fashion the evolution, development and status of employment relations, using whatever disciplinary roots they might feel comfortable with.
Conclusions If Employment Relations is to be seen as some kind of convergence of Industrial Relations, Human Resource, Employee Relations, and so on, contingent upon the adoption of a pluralist viewpoint, then it will never become a ‘credible science of employment issues and studies… which point toward genuine explanatory understanding rather than polemics and 58 Peter Slade prescriptions’ (Mortimer and Morris, 1995).
All that will emerge will be the reiteration, in a different guise, of management stances, conventional wisdoms, and misplaced objectivity.
It is necessary to stand back, ask what is meant by ‘Employment Relations’, and adopt appropriate disciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches to try to understand basic and underlying issues which occur between those who are paid to work and those who pay. It is clear that arguing for some kind of paradigm shift is tantamount to dressing a tired ideology in some new garb. Frankly, the Emperor is somewhat scantily dressed these days. References Chamberlain, N. W. (1951), Collective Bargaining, New York: McGraw-Hill, pp. 445-446. Clegg, H. A. 1975), ‘Pluralism in Industrial Relations’, British Journal of Industrial Relations, 13. Fastenau, M. and Pullin, L. (1994), ‘Employment Relations: An Emerging Paradigm’, International Employment Relations Association 2nd Annual Conference, Conference Notes. School of Business, Monash University, Churchill, (July).
Fox, A. (1966), ‘Industrial Sociology and Industrial Relations. ’ Research Paper 3, HMSO, London, 1966. Fox, A. (1979), ‘Industrial Relations Pluralism’, Sociology, 13(1).
Hales, C. (1993), Managing Through Organisation, London: Routledge, p. 4. Hyman, R. 1978), ‘Pluralism, Procedural Consensus and Collective Bargaining’, British Journal of Industrial Relations, 16(1): 16-40. Keynes, J. M. (1931), Essays in Persuasion , London: Macmillan & Co. , pp. 248-249. Kuhn, T. (1962), The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Marx, K. (1976), Capital, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books Ltd, pp. 1019-1038. Marx, K. (1973), The Revolutions of 1848, 1, London: Allen Lane and New Left Review. Marx, K. (1962), Selected Works, Moscow, 2: 22. Morris, R. (1993), ‘Editorial’, International Journal of Employment Studies, 1(1, April): 3. Mortimer, D. and Morris, R. 1995), ‘Some Aspects of Employment Relations ‘Theory’: Towards a New Discipline’, International Employment Relations Review, 1(1, July).
Mottershead, P. and Naughton, J. (1973), Modelling Economic Systems, Milton Keynes: Open University Press. Popper, K. (1959), The Logic of Scientific Discovery, London: Hutchinson Robinson, J. (1970), Economic Philosophy, Harmondsworth: Pelican Books, p. 7. What is Employment Relations? 59 Terkel, S. (1975), Working, New York: McGraw-Hill. Wiles, P. (1983), ‘Ideology, Methodology and Neoclassical Economics’, in Eichner, A. S (ed) Why Economics is Not Yet a Science, London: Macmillan, pp. 61-89.
