INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVE ON INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS

International Perspective on Industrial Relations



International Perspective on Industrial Relations

Industrial relations has three faces: science building, problem solving, and ethical.[2] In the science building face, industrial relations is part of the social sciences, and it seeks to understand the employment relationship and its institutions through high-quality, rigorous research. In this vein, industrial relations scholarship intersects with scholarship in labor economics, industrial sociology, labor and social history, human resource management, political science, law, and other areas. In the problem solving face, industrial relations seeks to design policies and institutions to help the employment relationship work better. In the ethical face, industrial relations contains strong normative principles about workers and the employment relationship, especially the rejection of treating labor as a commodity in favor of seeing workers as human beings in democratic communities entitled to human rights."The term human relations refers to the whole field of relationship that exists because of the necessary collaboration of men and women in the employment process of morden industry."It is that part of management which is concerned with the management of enterprise -whether machine operator,skilled worker or manager.It deals with either the relationship between the state and employers and workers organisation or the relation between the occupational organisation themselves.

Industrial relations scholarship assumes that labor markets are not perfectly competitive and thus, in contrast to mainstream economic theory, employers typically have greater bargaining power than employees. Industrial relations scholarship also assumes that there are at least some inherent conflicts of interest between employers and employees (for example, higher wages versus higher profits) and thus, in contrast to scholarship in human resource management and organizational behavior, conflict is seen as a natural part of the employment relationship. Industrial relations scholars therefore frequently study the diverse institutional arrangements that characterize and shape the employment relationship—from norms and power structures on the shop floor, to employee voice mechanisms in the workplace, to collective bargaining arrangements at a company, regional, or national level, to various levels of public policy and labor law regimes, to "varieties of capitalism" (such as corporatism), social democracy, and neoliberalism).

When labor markets are seen as imperfect, and when the employment relationship includes conflicts of interest, then one cannot rely on markets or managers to always serve workers' interests, and in extreme cases to prevent worker exploitation. Industrial relations scholars and practitioners therefore support institutional interventions to improve the workings of the employment relationship and to protect workers' rights. The nature of these institutional interventions, however, differ between two camps within industrial relations.[3] The pluralist camp sees the employment relationship as a mixture of shared interests and conflicts of interests that are largely limited to the employment relationship. In the workplace, pluralists therefore champion grievance procedures, employee voice mechanisms such as works councils and labor unions, collective bargaining, and labor-management partnerships. In the policy arena, pluralists advocate for minimum wage laws, occupational health and safety standards, international labor standards, and other employment and labor laws and public ...