Dimensions
181 x 243 x 27mm
Edited by Trevor Colling & Mike Terry.
This revised edition of Industrial Relations: Theory and Practice follows the approach established successfully in preceding volumes edited by Paul Edwards. The focus is on Britain after a decade of public policy which has once again altered the terrain on which employment relations develop. Government has attempted to balance flexibility with fairness, preserving light-touch regulation whilst introducing rights to minimum wages and to employee representation in the workplace. Yet this is an open economy, conditioned significantly by developing patterns of international trade and by European Union policy initiatives. This interaction of domestic and cross-national influences in analysis of changes in employment relations runs throughout the volume.
The structure has been amended slightly. Britain is placed straight away in comparative perspective before attention focuses explicitly on employment relations actors, contexts, processes, and outcomes. Each of the chapters is written by authorities in the field and provides up to date analysis and commentary. A spine of chapters from the preceding volume have been revised and extensively updated and new chapters have been added to refine coverage of issues such as the private sector and developing legal institutions.
Overall, a picture emerges of an economy that is in incremental and contested transition. The imperatives of ‘globalization’ now infuse governance mechanisms that were once responsive principally to domestic agenda and employment standards are set now by the state that once were established through collective bargaining. It is this fragile and emerging model that will be tested significantly through sustained political and economic change.
“This volume definitely constitutes the most comprehensive and best collection of empirical as well as analytical essays on industrial relations in Great Britain. This substantially revised, enlarged and updated version of its well known predecessors puts the specific national experience in comparative context and international perspective. Its overall structure with its closely interrelated sections on comparative context, actors, contexts, processes and outcomes is highly innovative and opens the perspective not only for a revitalized industrial relations approach but also for major concerns of the broader economy and society. Therefore this truly interdisciplinary volume by leading authorities has to be highly recommended for domestic as well as foreign scholars, practitioners and policy makers.”
- Berndt Keller, Labour and Social Policy Professor, University of Konstanz
