What Is Employment Relations
International Employment Relations Review, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2002 49
WHAT IS EMPLOYMENT RELATIONS? Peter Slade University of the Sunshine Coast This article examines the question as to whether or not a new paradigm of employment relations is emerging. In doing so, it examines the nature of ideologies, and argues that the specific adoption of pluralism and the joining of Industrial Relations and Human Resources Management as a prerequisite to the evolution of a new field of enquiry is misplaced. 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
WHAT IS EMPLOYMENT RELATIONS? Peter Slade University of the Sunshine Coast This article examines the question as to whether or not a new paradigm of employment relations is emerging. In doing so, it examines the nature of ideologies, and argues that the specific adoption of pluralism and the joining of Industrial Relations and Human Resources Management as a prerequisite to the evolution of a new field of enquiry is misplaced. 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
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