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Conflict
Paternalism Revolution
Approaches to industrial relations
• Employee response
– Resistance (restrictive practices)
– Collectivism (joint regulation)
System Approach
Originated by Dunlop, being subjected to
a variety of interpretation, uses and criticism. However they do not
invalidate the systems approach but they suggested accommodation and
Refinement. It is a broad based integrative model that sought to provide
tools of analysis to interpret and gain understanding the widest possible
range of IR facts and practices and to explain why particular rules are
establish in particular IR systems and how and why they change in
response to changes affecting the system.
This model sees IR as a subsystem of society distinct from but overlapping,
the economic and political subsystem
System Approach
Four interrelated elements:
Actors- management, non-managerial employees and their representatives
And specialize government agencies concern with IR.
Context : influence and constraints on the decisions of the actors which
emanate from other parts of society, such as technology, market,
budgetary and the locus of power in the society..
Ideology; beliefs within the system which not only define the role of each
Actor or groups of actors but also define the view that they have of the role
of other actors in the system. If the view compatible-stable IR system and
other wise.
Rules; the regulatory framework, developed by a range of process and
presented in variety of forms which expresses the terms and nature of the
employment relationship.
System of industrial relations -
1
• Dunlop - Actors, working within contexts
(environment), developing a body of rules, held
together by an ideology
• System producing rules (IRS) and system
governed by rules (production)
• Naturally stable and orderly?
• Emphasis on roles rather than people
• Importance of environmental influences
System of industrial relations
-2
Industrial relations system (2)
Political Other levels of the
Environments Government and State Agencies Environments
Legal industrial relations
‘system’
Economic Attitudes
structure Roles Values
Interests Social
Cultural
Productive system
Market Technology
Environments
WIDER APPROACH TO IR
Comparative
approach
• Difference between:
– Comparative (analysing different countries)
– International (transnational institutions and phenomena)
• Importance of comparative approach
– Inform public policy debate
– Changing world economy
– Development of ‘fair’ international employment standards
• Problems of comparison
– Lack of common terminology and definitions
– Differences between stated institutional framework and
reality of actual practice
– Problems of transferability
Convergence
• Logic of industrialisation
– All countries subject to same economic, technological and
market forces
– All need concentrated, disciplined workforce with new and
changing skills
– Similar government role in providing economic and social
infrastructure for industrialisation (competing for same
international investment)
• Modified convergence
– Countries at different stages of industrialisation
– Alternative solutions to common problems
– Regional based convergence
Divergence
• Distinctive value systems and cultural features
• Heterogeneity within national industrial relations
systems (decentralisation & flexibility)
• Different strategic choices by Government,
employers and unions at macro (society) and micro
(organisation) levels on nature, content and process
of employment relationship