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2012 37: 17Management and Labour StudiesApoorva Ghosh and Pranabesh Ray

A Contemporary Model for Industrial Relations: Relook from Global Perspective

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Article

A Contemporary Model for Industrial RelationsRelook from Global Perspective

Apoorva GhoshPranabesh Ray

Abstract

This article attempts to inquire what industrial relations (IR) is and analyzes the ways in which it has been defined and interpreted since its inception. Various scholars ranging from system theorists, pluralists, Marxists and neo- Marxists to the modern HR and strategic choice perspectives have added, modified or questioned its subject matter. An attempt has been made to propose a model for IR so that it can involve all the addressed as well as unaddressed issues. This model is then tested with what have been the scholarly opinions of how IR should change and respond to the contemporary realities. The article concludes by proposing empirical testing of this model in the service economy of post-industrial age when we have knowledge workers instead of blue-collar workers, flat team-based structures instead of hierarchy and participative control rather than bureaucracy. The possibility of IR, given its experience and time-tested understanding of managing workers of huge strength, to borrow the concepts from contemporary disciplines like HRM and behavioural sciences and develop new theories and frameworks that can add meaning to the new realities is also explored.

Keywords

Industrial relations, employment relations, human resource management

One may wonder why industrial relations (IR) cannot be understood without any normative bias as a single and simple definition of managing labour–management relations in a regulated environment. The answer needs contemplation. Kelly (2002: 52–53) says,

This abstract discussion on Industrial Relations Systems may seem academic, in the worst sense, to the uniniti-ated. What has all this got to do with the real world of shop stewards, personnel managers, union leaders, CBI spokesmen and government ministers? The whole point of an explicit theoretical perspective is to provide a framework within which the complex detail of the real world can be organized and thus understood…

We all would appreciate that industrial problems are multidimensional. Therefore, Snyder (1994) asserts that policies in IR should be made keeping in mind what context(s) they intend to serve and the hard and

Management and Labour Studies37(1) 17–30

© 2012 XLRI Jamshedpur, School of Business Management & Human Resources

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Management and Labour Studies, 37, 1 (2012): 17–30

18 Apoorva Ghosh and Pranabesh Ray

soft initiatives in policy making must be chalked out differently according to the social, economic, political and cultural environments in which they are implemented. Hence, the author makes a submis-sion here that IR must be studied from an interdisciplinary approach that includes inputs from various social science disciplines like sociology, psychology, anthropology, economics, law and personnel man-agement. Since IR is developed as a discipline meant more for practice rather than theory building, it is largely dependent on these fundamental disciplines for concepts and theories. And since the intellectual inputs come from these disciplines, scholars have defined IR in multiple ways based on their field of study and have attempted to answer the questions like what is the scope and content of IR, what it aims to study and finally what is IR.

With this premise, let us explore what IR has been understood as till now. Industrial relations is nor-mally understood as ‘processes and outcomes involving employment relationships (Ackers, 2002). IR has been most popularly but narrowly understood by scholars and practitioners alike, especially in USA, as employment relationships involving collective representation of employees in the form of a labour union or employee association (Encyclopedia for Business, 2nd ed.). In his essay on bargaining power and industrial relations theory, Somers (1969) argues that interaction of workers and managers at the workplace must be the central focus of IR. The IR studies should be centred round the bargaining–exchange theory that identifies costs and benefits the parties experience in their relationship. However, at the other extreme, there is a broad definition given by Kochan, Homewood and Irwin (1980), as ‘all aspects of people at work’. In the perspective of human relations, J. Henry Richardson says, ‘Industrial Relations is the art of living together for the purposes of production’ (Richardson, 1954). Dale Yoder (1956: 4) believes that IR deals with the whole gamut of human relationships arising out of the necessary collaboration of people in the employment process of modern industry. He uses the terms ‘Employment relations’ and ‘Industrial Relations’ interchangeably since the former is broader connotation and includes many employers who may not be in the purview of IR, particularly, government agencies. He further defines the subject matter of IR as both: on-the-job relationships making up the field of manpower or labour management and off-the-job relationships involving labour allocation, distribution or, simply, labour marketing. Kaufman (2004: 722) attempts to relate social and normative framework of the society as means to address the industrial problems and presents the following thesis on industrial relation.

Aspects of work and employment have long been subjects of interest to academic commentators. This interest, around what used to be called the ‘Labor Question’ or more broadly the ‘Social Question’, continues to the present day. These concerns and Industrial Relations itself encompasses three topics: (i) the ethical, ideological, normative underpinnings of thought and action in the area; (ii) the ideas, concepts, and theories which have been developed to understand and explain arrangements and patterns; and (iii) how the fi rst two may have the potential to help solve problems.

A summary of accepted and well-known paradigms can be best illustrated in the work of Doeringer et al. (1981: 10–11), who classify the entire theoretical and conceptual frameworks developed in IR from international perspective into two approaches. The first is pluralist-institutionalist approach that was developed and widely accepted in Anglo-Saxon countries which views IR as applied and practitioner-oriented discipline wherein the research problems mainly focus on issues like problem solving and miti-gation of gaps in procedural and institutional practices. Bean (1985: 2) adds that this approach is empirically oriented and also had emphasis on policy relevance. On the other hand, the second one-class




A Contemporary Model for Industrial Relations: Relook from Global Perspective 19


approach mainly deals with workers, their unions and collective bargaining, and prevails in countries like Italy where IR is studied from a political and sociological perspective and the matter of analysis and inquiry is the stratification system and class structure in industrial realms involving worker and employer classes, political processes and power imbalance and conflicts between employers and employees. How-ever, there are also countries which have studies on IR based on both, applied as well as normative per-spectives, and these include France, Sweden and Japan. Doeringer et al. (1981: 11) distinguish three major divisions—an applied and pragmatic approach where theory plays little or no role in research; a Marxist approach stressing class relations and conflict between political and economic classes; and third, systems approach in IR, which is known by Dunlop’s (1958) work and Kerr, Dunlop, Harbison and Myers’ ‘Industrialism and Industrial Man’ (1960), is pluralist in perspective and talks about development of institutions and formulation of norms, rules and regulation governing the same (ibid.). The growth of systems approach in UK was contributed mainly by Oxford School which had major scholars like Flanders, Clegg, Fox and Kahn-Freund. Flanders’ (1970: 10) thesis of IR mainly deals with certain job and institutionalized relationships governing trade unions and employers in industry. Similar emphasis on the ‘institutions of job regulation’, especially trade unions and collective bargaining, is seen in Clegg’s (1979: 1) definition who says, ‘the study of rules governing employment, together with the ways in which the rules are made and changed, interpreted and administered. Put more briefly, it is the study of job regulation.’ However, the Oxford approach differed from its US counterpart in that it was more sym-pathetic to unions and less favourably inclined to state intervention (Kaufman, 2004: 277), as J. Henry Richardson observes that the regulation of relationship is from within, for the parties have to learn to live together by a process of accommodation and adjustment.

Hyman (1975: 31) not only criticizes the Anglo-Saxon systems approach, but also attempts to narrow down the definition in his writings,

In defi ning the scope of industrial relations, it is necessary to defi ne the subject more narrowly than the total network of social relationships in industry. But the popular defi nition in terms of ‘institutions of job regulation’ is unsatisfactory. First, it diverts attention from the structures of power and interests, and the economic, techno-logical and political dynamics of the broader society—factors which inevitably shape the character of relations between employers, workers and organizations. Second, the emphasis on institutions carries with it the danger of rectifi cation: it becomes easy to ignore the real, active men and women whose activities are industrial rela-tions. Third, the notion of regulation conceals the centrality of power, confl ict and instability in the process of industrial relations…. The defi nition of industrial relations in terms of processes of control over work relations avoids these diffi culties. It provides a criterion for excluding ‘merely personal’ relationships in industry from the fi eld of study, while including those informal processes which recent writers on industrial relationship have felt obliged to take into account. It points to the fl uidity of the process of control: a continuous and shifting relation-ship, which can never be effectively frozen in a formal rule. And fi nally, it helps indicate that the continuous relationship of confl ict, whether open or concealed, stems from the confl icts of interests in industry and society which is closely linked with the operation of contradictory tendencies in the capitalist economic system.

How well the development of broad theoretical framework based on foregoing perspectives suc-ceeded in defining IR would be discussed a little later in this article, but from 1980s there was wide contention from HRM theorists that IR is in a marked phase of decline. As Ramaswamy (2000: 182) observes,






Human Resource Management has emerged as an exciting new approach to people management since about the middle of the 1980s, pushing personnel management and industrial relations steadily into the background. Books and journals in fashion, university curricula in demand, and practitioners commanding fancy salaries and rising careers have almost by defi nition to be in HRM. In contrast, there are no takers—not in competitive market econ-omies, in any case—for rusty trench warriors putting out industrial relations fi res and clinching collective agree-ments, courses of study that train these eternal fi re—fi ghters, and research projects chronicling their deeds.

Janardhan (2003: 3260) relates the adversaries between the management and labour as a result of an over-imbued ideology, ideas and values that considered conflict as inevitable, or even desirable, which was the means for promoting industrial democracy as well as economic justice and the resultant discon-tent to the rise of HRM that was more conducive to the post-Fordist capitalist philosophy. Thus, the main principles and practices of HRM—just in time, flexible production, and therefore a flexible workforce, Kaizen, etc.—are getting more acceptability in the organizations and management and IR is getting marginalized. However, there are scholars who are not so radical and believe that though there were some initial hiccups during 1980–90 when the rise of HRM was seen to be threatening the very existence of IR, during later years, both the disciplines gained from each other and there is mutual respect for each other’s subject matter. The co-existence is peaceful and both the disciplines are in the process of integra-tion with each other giving rise to cumulative learning in management practices of human resources (Edwards, 2003; Guest, 1990; Strauss, 2001). However, instead of viewing this as a defensive strategy of IR for its survival, Kaufman (2008: 315) argues that HRM principles and subject matter were actually integrated and well accepted in IR, so the re-codification of knowledge in the form of new discipline called HRM was not really posing any threat to IR and that IR really never needed any survival strategy. It was just accepting what was its own.

Though not directly, the HRM perspective is backed by another school of thought—the strategic choice theory, which believes that the outcomes of IR are mainly governed by the concerned actors who make certain choices, given the economic and technological constraints. Under the new economic sce-nario, there is a breakdown of unionized relationships and collective bargaining practices, and the tripar-tite system of relations is giving way to bipartite system. The organizations and managements are governed worldwide by proactive HRM practices and more participative form of management, thus widening the span of authority (Kochan et al., 1984, 1986). Kochan, McKersie and Cappelli (1984), in their strategic choice theory, argue that in a paradigm shift in the form of IR and the ways employment relations are governed and regulated are changing especially from late 1970s and 1980s. The era of par-tici pative style of management has rendered permeability to traditional forms of class structure, and with the coming of alternate forms of workforce, employee participation is highly talked about and practised. The top level corporate decision making is governed by best HRM practices which determine the status of technology and unions in the organization.

One may find such positive to moderately negative to highly negative reactions from the contem-porary scholars alarming, to an extent that may endanger the very existence of a discipline. So the ques-tion arises, what went wrong in constructing the theoretical framework of IR, and if there are certain missing links, what are they? Kaufman’s (2008: 314–315) research attempts to answer the first question. As stated earlier in this article, the systems approach-based Anglo-Saxon paradigm had not just one but two variants. The original paradigm that developed in North America after World War I included both unionized and non-unionized forms of employment relationships and included in its gamut personnel






management as well as labour management relations. However, with the rise of HRM theories, which were nothing but old wine in a new bottle, this paradigm saw decline from 1930s and disappeared by 1960s. During this course, a second version of Anglo-Saxon IR, today called the modern IR paradigm, developed in Britain (led by Oxford approach), Canada and the USA which was narrowly centred on union sector and studied all associated areas like collective bargaining, labour management relations and national labour policy. However, in reality, this transition is still not complete and there is a sizeable chunk of post-World War II authors who base their theoretical framework of IR based on sum total of employment relationship but ultimately converge their focus on the unionized sector. This can be seen as Adams (1993) writes, ‘Industrial relationists, while paying lip service to the goal of achieving under-standing, prediction and control over all aspects of employment, in practice, tend to focus most of their attention on unions, collective bargaining, and miscellaneous labor market issues.’ In a similar fashion, Kochan and Katz (1988) state that ‘IR encompasses all aspects of the employment relationship’, but narrow down their thesis to labour management relations, justifying this as the predominant focus of the discipline.

Given this dilemma, wherein IR as a discipline is facing criticism over its dealing with management and organizations which is primarily arising out of narrowing down the discipline, as we have seen already, it appears logical at this stage of inquiry to go back to the initial phase of IR that was developed after World War II in North America to see what original IR paradigm comprised of. Whalen (2008: 34–36) answers to this inquiry as: The original paradigm comprised three dimensions or ‘faces’: (i) science- building, the focus of which was on explaining the behaviours, institutions and outcomes associated with the employment relationship, (ii) problem solving, that is, application of science and knowledge to solv-ing practical problems and devising public policy. Kaufman (2008) says that the focus of early IR was on solving the labour problems. The four instruments of problem solving in the original paradigm were professional/progressive labour management, labour law and social insurance, trade unions and collec-tive bargaining, and macroeconomic stabilization/full employment, (iii) ethical/ideological, that is, the ethical values and ideological position of the field regarding work and employment; that is, there are some basic values which are of high significance to the human factor involved in the production and dif-ferentiates it with the inanimate factors of production like land and capital.

However, the major weakness of original paradigm was it neither developed a well-articulated theo-retical framework for IR nor attempted to define IR (Kaufman, 2008). But he interprets that the original paradigm largely talked about ‘political economy of labor’ formed from a union of three major (but not exclusive) elements: economics (orthodox and heterodox), sociology and law. However, the original IR paradigm in North America was mainly an extension of institutional economics that talked about labour issues, but in UK, IR derived more from sociology and politics than economics—quite similar to Doeringer et al.’s (1981) distinction of systems approach in North America and UK.

There is a well-accepted argument that the so-called ‘threatened’ status of IR and its declining popu-larity worldwide is mainly due to the emergence of this modern paradigm of IR, which takes a very narrow view of the subject matter of IR centred on unionized relationships and collective bargaining and not incorporating the other dimensions of employment relationships (Ackers and Wilkinson, 2003; Kochan, 1998; Strauss and Whitfield, 1998). Though this is not a criticism of union as an institution, but the dependence of a discipline on one institution is alarming as it may flourish or perish with it. Par-ticularly, when unions are seen in bad light, the whole IR is also painted in the same picture. This is






substantiated as Ramaswamy (2000: 14) argues that trade unions have developed as reactive institutions over a century, which is only interested in reacting to management decisions, mostly protesting in self-centred manner catering to only the interest of labour and not the organization as a whole. They are hardly seen to be taking any initiative that helps organizations reaching their goals. Ramaswamy’s con-tention that the reactive nature of trade unions is founded in the theorizing and conceptualization of unionized relationship itself (Ramaswamy, 2000: 14) and his later views (see Ramaswamy, 2000: 182) that IR is in a marked phase of decline and its subject matter serves no benefit to the industry reveals that the dysfunctionalities associated with unionism and collective bargaining are dominating over the over-all picture of IR because of its narrow definition.

While the authors in IR have underlined various broad issues, certain missing elements in most popu-lar writings are appalling. Though Industrial and Organizational (I-O) Psychology emerged as early as 1960s (e.g., Blum and Naylor, 1969; Guion, 1965), the neglect of psychology in the literature of IR, and how its contribution can help, is narrated as follows:

Thus, there exists a ‘psychology of industrial relations’ to which psychologists have contributed very little. The result is that the treatment of psychological factors in the scientifi c study of industrial relations consists of mostly ad hoc postulations almost at common sense level articulated with the body of psychological theory… (Walker, 1974, p. 6).... The industrial relations behaviour of workers (and managers) will be determined by the combination of personal characteristics of the people concerned and the salient aspects of the situation in which they fi nd themselves. Psychology can contribute to the study of the interaction between various types of situa-tions and various types of workers (and managers) in two main areas: the person’s perceptions of the situation and the person’s modes of reaction to the situation—adaptation, actual or psychological withdrawal, or attempts to change it. (Walker, 1974: 24)

One may wonder why the psychological dimensions did not appear in the definition of IR when popular concepts like alienation and class consciousness in Marxian literature have important socio-psychological dimensions in IR. Another significant aspect that was missed by all definitions, as we saw in our discussions, was the technological factors in IR. Though technology is discussed by a few IR scholars (e.g., Dunlop, 1958), it was not included in any of these definitions. Hence, how the IR changed with a shift from labour to capital-intensive technologies and with technological advancements like automation, computerization and numerically controlled machine tools was never addressed through them. Though Taylor’s scientific management, time and motion studies, Gantt charts, etc., were the foun-dations in managing IR, they never found mentioned in theoretical framework of IR. Thus, Janardhan’s (2003) assertions that quality circles, just in time, Kaizan, flexible production and flexible workforce are HR offerings, is nothing but an opportunistic hijack of what originally is a subject matter of IR since these concepts were developed by involving industrial workers in Japan after World War II and were brought during 1980s in the factories of US organizations like Xerox, General Electric, Ford and Motorola (Walton, 1986).

The foregoing contentious debate finally brings us to the underlying question: With interpretation varying across time and geographical boundaries, the challenge IR broadly faces today is where from now? How IR can be re-defined so that (i) it adds meaning to all the stakeholders who are party to it, and (ii) it can relate to the totality of subject matter that has been developed till now and would be developed in future. Kochan et al.’s (1980) definition of ‘all aspects of people at work’ appears all inclusive as it






includes individuals as well as group of workers (who may or may not organize as trade unions), the behaviour of employers and union organizations, together with public policy and legal frameworks gov-erning the employment relations. But such a conceptualization falls under a stretched concept domain (Osigweh, 1989) in which the boundaries of the concept are not defined (i.e., defining IR through nega-tion approach, as what IR is not); the coverage is broad with too many classes of things lumped together with little attention to the precision of their many attributes. The definitions offered with human relation-ship perspective confines narrowly on the interpersonal relationships between the employees themselves and the employer and misses largely on the political, legal and economic influences. The systems approach definition of ‘institutions of job regulations’ and the Marxist approach of processes of control over work relations have been criticized alike for being too narrow in perspective. The strategic choice theory fails to address the industrial realities when it envisages the breakdown of union membership and collective bargaining mechanisms and over emphasizes on the decision making at higher levels where the workers participate in decision making through means like joint management councils that have not been made equal partners in reality, as observed by Professor Zivan Tanic (Sarma, 1989: 161). These conceptualizations are configurative and situational (Osigweh, 1989) which are narrow in coverage, have too few attributes (only as few as permitted by the narrow breath), configurative/imprecise taxono-mies and specific generalities.

The desired conceptualization of IR can be best described as one which should be travelling in nature, that is, broad coverage of distinct classes of things, few but determinate attributes of distinct classes and precise at a universal level (Osigweh, 1989). An attempt of conceptualizing IR using this mode takes the author to the thesis of Kaufman (2008) and Whalen (2008) that point out to move back to the original paradigm and see IR holistically and not confined to certain populist concepts. The following model is, thus, proposed that attempts to respond to the foregoing unaddressed issues (Figure 1).

Based on the model, an all-inclusive and holistic definition of IR is proposed as:

IR is a sum total of employment relations, addressing the overall socio-political, legal, economic, psychological, technological and corporate dimensions in the industrial set-up involving the mutual participation of employer and employees in an environment regulated by the state, the cumulative output of which determines the collec-tive human factor involved in industrial production.

The whole idea of a holistic and all-inclusive definition of IR is defended by the view that any case or issue of IR cannot be compartmentalized to a specific sphere or dimension. In most of the cases there are overlaps and how an interdisciplinary approach towards conceptualization of IR could be helpful can be illustrated in studies of manufacturing in late industrializing countries which note that higher skilled workers benefit most from inward foreign direct investment (FDI) and more technologically advanced production systems; lesser skilled workers receive little benefits, if any (Diwan and Walton, 1997). This view is endorsed by Weathers (2001: 177) in case of highly industrialized countries like Japan which reveals similar pattern in large differentials in wages and working conditions that exist according to firm size, educational background and gender. This reveals how technology could determine the socio-economic agendas of labour. Other factors which influence the socio-economic fabric of IR and affect jobs and skills include scientific management or time and motion studies, location of plants, shifts in product demand, changes in machinery and automation (Heber et al., 1963). One of the problems created by the introduction of modern technology in industries is the resistance on part of workers to the changed




Fig

ure

1. T

he p

ropo

sed

IR m

odel






environment, work situation and so on. The resistance takes various forms such as militancy, strikes, absenteeism and resignation (Strauss and Sayles, 1960). However, all changes are not resisted. It is found that workers resist any change in their work as a result of automation if it threatens their basic security or if they do not understand when they are forced to changes (Bright, 1964).

A politico-economic analysis can help understand issues like why in early 1990s, Mexican Con-federación de Trabajadores de México (Confederation of Mexican Workers, CTM) responded differently from other national confederations facing the common threat of globalization and there was a policy shift of allied labour-based parties implementing neoliberal policies. The combination of partisan monopoly and union competition explains the subordination of Mexican workers’ confederation (CTM) to Salinas administration and variation across Mexican unions (CTM as well as non-CTM unions) in their strate-gies for confronting the common challenge of globalization (Murillo, 2001). A socio-political case is found in the case of post-Soviet transition—where the formal IR and production system were trans-formed but at the same time could not uproot the continuance of informal practices and norms in the enterprises. Global economic forces and the introduction of new institutional models, clearly, could not supersede the norms and attitudes established by key economic actors at the local and enterprise levels. The continuity of their informal operations on the basis of accepted moral tenets was also because the formal market institutions were in no way fairer or more predictable than the erstwhile official Soviet system of IR. Therefore, the new labour code proposed by Putin administration in early 2000s—which made it easier for employers to temporary contracts, increase working hours and even choose which union to negotiate with—faced tremendous opposition from most of the key trade union federations (Sil, 2001). Another case of socio-political dimension is pointed by Budhwar (2003: 143) who points out the need for policy makers in Indian organizations to pay serious attention towards the unique Indian factors such as social relations, political contacts, caste, religion and economic power while designing policies on internal labour market.

A politico-legal approach helps to understand the historical disagreements among trade unions and between them and the government that have prevented the adoption of a standard mechanism for trade union recognition in case of India. While in Pakistan employers are able to negotiate with legally recog-nized, workplace-elected trade union officials, it may appear ironic that an authoritarian regime would institute workplace elections whereas a democratic regime promotes statism and bureaucracy (Candland, 2001). The socio-economic dimension helps in understanding social partnerships—the voluntary agree-ments between the government, main employer groups and the trade unions in Ireland (since 1997, voluntary organizations have also been taking part), as to how pay, wage and other issues such as tax are important constituents of overall social welfare which are tailored to medium-term national, economic and social needs (Doherty, 2001).

The effect of corporate strategies on IR can be illustrated by the case of Chinese IR that reveals far from reality the possibility of China’s labour– management relations changing in the wake of globaliza-tion. China’s gradualist strategy of transition is aimed towards careful avoidance of large-scale social unrest. This delay in transformation of existing socialist enterprises to modern corporations is evident of postponing the dislocation of millions of workers who are used to lifetime employment and benefits (Lu, 2001). A stark contrast to such gradualist strategy and its effect on overall IR framework can be seen in Gorbachev’s attempt in late 1980s to pursue both—brigade reforms aimed towards collective labour welfare and benefits and market reforms within the enterprise emphasizing greater material rewards for individual efforts and merit—simultaneously. Gorbachev could not view the inherent contradiction in






the fundamental principles governing both—one emphasizing collective responsibility towards jointly determining the division of labour and distribution of rewards while the other placing individual respon-sibilities for performance of tasks. Workers, however, recognized the contradiction and mostly attacked the new incentive system (Connor, 1991).

Not only the model is relevant for an empirical discussion, it also addresses the various scholarly concerns on conceptualization of discipline. The model, as suggested, addresses Purcell’s (1983) con-cern towards the need of broad-based study of IR explaining particularly how the corporation manages the employment of labour, and also incorporate other things which govern employment relations outside the workplaces (ibid.: 11). His conclusion: ‘the boundary definitions of industrial relations should be broadened to include corporate decision-making and its effects on labor, and be more concerned with the whole gamut of employee relations policies and actions’ (ibid.: 16). This model, by addressing the psy-chological dimensions, addresses to the contentions in Essays on Industrial Relations Theory edited by Somers (1969) that there has been a tendency of IR scholars to narrow down the explanation of organi-zational behaviour in industrial set-ups to only conflict in management–labour relationships, collective bargaining and exchange propositions at the cost of an important dimension of human relations’ motiva-tional emphasis. The ‘economic dimensions’ in the IR model addresses the issue of centralization or decentralization of wage bargaining raised by Katz (1993) and Golden, Wallerstein and Lange (1997) respectively.

The inclusion of the dimensions mentioned in the proposed model takes care of various transforma-tions in IR system considered in a review by Erickson and Kuruvilla (1998). Qualitative parameters such as changes in IR policy and practice (Kuruvilla, 1996), changes in legislation (Armingeon, 1994), statu-tory authority of central unions and employer federations as well as quantitative aspects like union den-sity, coverage rates (Golden et al., 1997), wage dispersion and wage drift (Freeman and Katz, 1995) can be understood. Further the scope of addressing issues like level of bargaining, strategic decision making, innovative practices in workplaces (Kochan et al., 1986), enterprise focus, increased flexibility, focus on skills development (Locke et al., 1995), stability of formal institutional mechanisms (Crouch, 1993), dimensions of change in management initiative, deregulation of labour market (Hyman, 1994) and adap-tations in IR due to changing demographic, market, technological and political environment (Dunlop, 1993) is enhanced.

With the foregoing all-inclusive interpretation of IR, the challenge in this research is to test this model empirically in the post-industrial service economy in which the distinction between blue and white collar workers is getting blurred, the influence of rising skill levels and knowledge workers’ perceptions in labour relations is growing (Gold, 2003), the workers are coming from the middle class intelligentsia, the bureaucratic control is getting replaced by participative structure, the technology is changing rapidly, access to information is made easy by technology and communication flows more scientifically from the source to end users. In such a scenario how this model can address the issues of adjustment processes and voluntary retirement, new economic reforms and public sector restructuring, management of sexual harassment, problems of mental fatigue, workplace relations between peers and superiors, scientific measurement of performance and promotion of quality culture in business process outsourcing/call cen-tres and administrative dispensation of IR handling at state/central government level could be an interest of study. The contemporary times are posing new challenges such as prevention of employee poaching in Indian knowledge process outsourcing industry when they get specialized training (Raman et al.,






2007: 708) and a holistic framework of IR can help the IR/HR managers to effectively tackle such prob-lems. Though the old differences between IR and HRM appear artificial in today’s environment (Guest, 1987) and the title of Personnel Management and IR is getting changed to HRM in both academic insti-tutions and industry (Budhwar, 2000: 296), one can still test the proposition in sectors like business/knowledge process outsourcing, software industries, telecom and healthcare, where, given the coming of knowledge workers in masses who do not like to be called workers and attract salaries at the levels of managers in manufacturing industries, if there is an usurping of areas ordinarily understood to be belong-ing to HRM by IR. There is a lot of scope for IR managers to use experience of IR spanning more than a century in dealing with mass workers and at the same time learning ways from HRM and organiza-tional behaviour to explore how educated and ambitious workers can be effectively dealt with. The need for broader view of HRM (Purcell, 1993) emphasizes the exploring of possibility whether trade union-ism can develop in these sectors which were traditionally untouched by unionism. With better education, standards of living, awareness of mutual interests and scope of multidimensional learning, the possibility of realizing what Lenin (1978: 70) calls ‘socio-democratic consciousness’ is more—provided the assumption that with better conditions, parochialism and fragmentation based on ascriptive identities get minimized is true.

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Apoorva Ghosh (corresponding author), is FPM Student, XLRI School of Business and Human Resources, Jamshedpur, India. E-mail: [email protected]

Pranabesh Ray, is Professor and Dean, XLRI School of Business and Human Resources, Jamshedpur, India. E-mail: [email protected]




mls~37 1-02-ghosh & raysites.uci.edu/ghosh/files/2015/09/pdf4.pdfapoorva ghosh pranabesh ray...

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