EDITORIALSTATEMENT

TheBJIRand Industrial Relations in theNewMillenniumStephen Wood

Industrial relations remains a vibrant inter-disciplinary field with a strongpolicy orientation. The British Journal of Industrial Relations has beenleading the changes in its focus in the past twenty years and the editors aredetermined that this should continue to be the case in the new millennium. Ifanything, they would like to quicken the pace of change. Readers' commentsoffer support for this. Feedback suggests that the Journal needs to keepexpanding its scope, both methodologically and substantively. Readersacknowledge that the Journal has been at the forefront of a more theor-etically driven industrial relations and they have welcomed the growingsophistication of the empirical work that is being published. They alsorecognize the value gained from having authors from an increasing range ofcountries. But some readers question whether the Journal has been at theleading edge of recent debates on some of the issues that underlie develop-ments in industrial relations, most notably the changing nature of work andthe organizations in which people are employed.

At first sight it might appear that these changes have sucked the lifebloodÐ collective bargaining and unionism Ð from the subject of industrialrelations. Certainly if one looks outside the subject, the institutions ofindustrial relations, once so central to core arguments within sociology,economics, and political science, seem to have ceased to be of such con-suming interest. Yet the key issues surrounding industrial relations at thebeginning of the twentieth century are remarkably similar to those ofcentral concern at the dawn of the twenty-first. This is particularly wellillustrated by the British case: `new unionism', low pay and skill deficiencies,so central today, were all concerns at the turn of the last century. However,the core issue that underlies much current debate Ð the nature of work inthe future Ð has no strong parallel in the discussions of the late nineteenthcentury.

Much recent social science pre-empts the debate, as unanalysedassumptions about trends are packaged in such phrases as `post-Fordism'

British Journal of Industrial Relations38:1 March 2000 0007±1080 pp. 1±5

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and `the consumer society'. The effect of this is most extreme in the conceptsof post-modernism, where the consumer is prioritized to such an extent thatthe producer is hardly visible. It is as if we can take for granted that the massworker of the factory system has given way to the portfolio career of thenetworked society. Certainly the consolidation of trade unionism in themiddle of the twentieth century reflected the rise of the large industrialcorporation, with its historically distinctive semi-skilled workers for whom alifetime organizational career appeared increasingly realistic. None the less,any attempt to portray the counter-trends that have been all too apparent inthe last quarter-century as a straightforward schism with a past industrialage is likely to be misleading. Indeed much industrial relations research,with its emphasis on middle range theory and detailed empirical investi-gation, provides an important antidote to the excesses of post-modernism.Researchers from this tradition have been at the forefront in highlightingthe increasing variety of employment situations, while at the same timedemonstrating that the link between these and changes in work is notpredetermined. Moreover, existing industrial relations institutions are animportant moderator of this relation. For example, while trade unionism isclearly affected by the changing nature of work, it also shapes the conse-quences of these changes and, more fundamentally, the way work evolves ina particular society.If the trends of the past twenty years need not amount to the `end of

industrial relations', they do expose weaknesses in its foundations. It issomewhat of a caricature to describe its past as focused on collectivebargaining. Only a cursory glance at the volumes of this Journal since itsinception in 1963 is needed to reveal a wider terrain. Nevertheless, the fieldripened in the context of the increasing importance of trade unionism in thepost-war period as collective bargaining became a symbol of the maturityof pluralist society, so significant in the Cold War debate with Marxism. Itwas especially invigorated in the Anglo-Saxon world when the problemsthat arise from the normal operation of collective bargaining under fullemployment began to surface: wage militancy, inflation and slow adaptationto change. Leading industrial relations specialists consolidated what hadbecome known as the institutional approach, in which the emphasis was onthe development and impediments to the orderly and `rational' working of aunion-based industrial relations system, even to the neglect of the outcomesthey were concerned to achieve.From the core social science disciplines it was mainly sociologists,

particularly in Britain, who made the first major impact within the emergingindustrial relations profession when they addressed these problems in away that exposed weaknesses in the institutional analysis. Industrialrelations specialists had drawn previously on the core disciplines of thesocial sciences, but they had been eclectic and often somewhat unenthusi-astic in this process. Subsequently, in my judgement, the field has been at itsmost vibrant when specialists from core disciplines have taken an interest inits substantive concerns.

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In the 1980s, sociology as the key discipline within industrial relationstended to give way to economics. This partly reflected the advent of neo-liberalism, as well as the past failings of the institutionalists to analyseeconomic outcomes such as productivity. The neoliberal diagnosis of theproblems of industrial relations placed these firmly within the system ofcollective bargaining. This was a diagnosis that Reagan's and Thatcher'sgovernments acted upon in no uncertain way, beginning by turning on itshead the sacred cow of full employment that had created the very conditionsfor collective bargaining to mature. Understandably, it was economists,many of whom were largely unsympathetic to the neoliberal agenda, whotook the lead in analysing the developments of the 1980s.

The institutional foundations of British industrial relations were apparentin the response of many specialists to neoliberalism: focusing on continuityin institutional arrangements, they were, in contrast to economists, slow torealize its potential. Much was made in Britain of the survival of collectivebargaining where it had been strong, and a commonly held assumptionprevailed long into the 1980s that an industrial relations backlash againstThatcherism was inevitable. In this context, human resource managementwas treated by many as a competitor to industrial relations, rather thansimply as an alternative to collective bargaining as a means of managingemployment relations.

Industrial relations specialists have increasingly broadened their agendaas union membership and collective bargaining continued to decline in allOECD countries, the law has played an ever-greater role in employment,and new forms of management and methods of pay determination areseemingly reducing the role of bargaining and altering the nature of con-sultative and involvement processes. The articles in this Journal testify tothis response. But there is some way to go before the subject could be saidto have fully addressed the weaknesses of the legacy of it's particularinstitutional approach. The issue is not, it should be stressed, its institu-tional focus Ð indeed, without this the subject would lose its distinctive-ness and bite. Rather, the issue is, first that primacy seems to have remainedon collective bargaining as the key form of (at least self-) labour regulationwith insufficient attention being given to how it relates, theoretically, toother modes of regulation and managerial practices (including those sub-sumed under the human resource management umbrella). Attention hasbeen slow to turn to the non-union sector, small-scale economic units ornon-standard employment relations.

Second, the weaknesses of the institutionalism that dominated earlyindustrial relations have not been entirely eradicated. These are its focus onstructures at the expense of either the processes (including the psychologicalprocesses) involved in the operation of institutions or their effects onkey outcomes, and its treatment of these structures in a vacuum, to theneglect of their wider social, economic and political context. The potential ofwork, particularly from a comparative perspective, which overcomes thesedeficiencies has not as yet been fully realized. Moreover, research is only just

Editorial Statement 3

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beginning to adjust to the contextual changes that often go under the labelof `globalization' as poorly specified as it may be.To speed up the adjustment in the new millennium, the editors have some

fresh objectives. First, we aim to broaden the scope of substantive issuescovered. The Journal has never confined itself to a narrow concern withunionism and collective bargaining, and it should be clear that we are notseeking a complete break with institutionalism or with the policy orientationof the past: in fact we have recently published articles that have demon-strated `institutions do matter' or have presented detailed policy analyses.We want more of both. Yet, there is a whole range of current issues uponwhich we would like to see more submissions, for example, gender andethnic diversity, the family±work interface, the relationship between paidand unpaid work, the `ageing society', individual conflict and its regulation,business ethics and employment practices, as well as more conventionalindustrial relations matters such as individual representation and flexibleworking arrangements.Second, we wish to extend the range of disciplines from which we draw

contributions. Psychology became more significant in the 1990s, as ques-tions of employees' attitudes and commitment, and their implicit contracts(with both employers and unions), have become more prominent. It has not,however, come into the position of prominence that sociology had in the1970s or economics had in the 1980s, which may well reflect the growinginter-disciplinary nature of the subject, a trend we wish to encourage andwould see as a mark of the growing maturity of the field. We welcome workfrom across all the disciplines, including law, social anthropology, politicalscience and international relations, as well as from intellectual currentsthat have not featured strongly in industrial relations, such as feminism,regulation theory, the new personnel economics and post-modernism. Itfollows from this that no one methodology will be given priority.Third, we aim to intensify our process of internationalization. Currently

the Journal has authors and readers from across the globe, and haspublished articles based on comparative analyses of industrial relationssystems and dealing with transnational matters. We want to encouragemore of these to reflect the globalization process. Theoretical work on theimplication of the globalization thesis for industrial relations, by both itssupporters and its critics, would be particularly welcome.To help us achieve these objectives, we shall be soliciting overviews of

key but neglected topics and debates. The first of these, by Judy Wajcmanon the treatment of gender in industrial relations, appears in the next issue.Readers are strongly encouraged to make suggestions for topics and authors(including themselves).The last editorial statement (by John Kelly, vol. 34, no. 1, March 1996)

asked readers to address what was perceived as a problem of under-theorizing. This is endorsed here. We wish to stress that the plurality oftheories is very much in our minds, as a major aim is to increase the quantityof debate in the area and not just its quality. We would thus like to

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encourage articles that adopt theoretical and conceptual perspectives thateither build on or develop counter-arguments to previous articles in theJournal. Our intention is that the Journal will be helping to create thecontroversies surrounding employment relations in the twenty-first century.The aim of the BJIR is to ensure work, and how workers relate to each otherand their employers, returns to centre stage of intellectual life.

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# Blackwell Publishers Ltd/London School of Economics 2000.