X. LABOR STUDIES/LABOR UNIONS, COLLECTIVE BARGAINING, DISPUTE RESOLUTION AND LABOR AND EMPLOYMENT LAW
REFEREED PAPERS

The Evolving Intellectual Core of Industrial Relations

PAULA B. VOOS AND HAEJIN KIM
Rutgers University

Abstract

      The central ideas of the field of industrial relations (IR) are contrasted with those of human resources (HR). IR has a public policy perspective--evaluating changes in the workplace in terms of societal well-being. In contrast, HR takes a management perspective, emphasizing the goal of improved firm performance. IR takes a pluralist perspective on the firm; it retains a particular interest in collective bargaining. IR should continue devoting attention to the economic and public policy context of work, since these have major effects on the standard of living, democracy, and other matters of vital concern to employees.

      Where is industrial relations going? Has the “intellectual center” of our field shifted away from the study of collective bargaining and the industrial relations theories related to labor relations? Is industrial relations (IR) becoming indistinguishable in its core approach from human resource (HR) management? Recently John Godard and John Delaney (2000) have raised precisely that possibility in a conceptual critique of the “high-performance paradigm” that has come to underlie much research on work systems in the IR field.¹ Thomas Kochan (2000), a scholar associated with the new paradigm, has answered Godard and Delaney on behalf of those who utilize the high-performance approach. In this paper, we propose a third perspective on the theoretical issues involved and the appropriate direction for IR scholarship.

      Our central thesis is that one of the essential elements of IR is its focus on public policy; this is complementary to IR’s parallel focus on collective bargaining. Public policy discussions in IR have the goal of improving outcomes for both employees and for the society as a whole. In contrast, HR’s primary focus is on what occurs inside corporations and on how managers can best enhance firm performance--HR policies, work systems, affirmative action practices are all major elements of the HR universe (Voos 2001). IR, however, is also concerned with those elements of the employment relationship that are internal to corporations because they do impact the well-being of employeesand hence the majority of the general public. They are appropriately part of the subject of IR; nonetheless, the perspective of IR on these matters is ultimately a public policy perspective rather than a management perspective.

      With this thesis in mind, we turn to a review of Godard and Delaney’s paper and the response to it by Kochan because we find that debate to be an illuminating one that has the potential for advancing IR theory.

Does the High-Performance Approach Blur the Difference Between IR and HR?

      Godard and Delaney charge that the academic field of IR is in danger of losing its distinctive soul and is increasingly blurring into the approach of human resource scholarship. They point to a variety of reasons for concern:

• Current IR research has devoted considerable attention to understanding the effects of high-performance work systems on firm performance and on discerning the reasons for the diffusion (or lack of diffusion) of these work systems.

• This contrasts with the study of collective bargaining, the institution that was at the center of IR research in the 1950s.

• The new paradigm differs from the traditional “pluralist” paradigm by placing less emphasis on the conflict in interests between labor and management and more emphasis on the mutual gains that are available from new modes of work.

• It also posits a less prominent role for collective bargaining and a greater role for direct employee participation.

• Finally, it attaches less priority to legal changes to ensure worker rights and puts more emphasis on progressive management initiatives (p. 485).

In these ways, Godard and Delaney contend we have come perilously close to the “unitary” framework of HRM in which the achievement of the firm’s goals are primary and in which there is an essential continuity of interest between management and labor. In their view, IR scholars in England have taken a more analytical and critical approach to the study of new work systems and have placed greater emphasis on understanding their impact on workers and on labor organizations.

The Unitary and Pluralist Perspectives

      Fox (1966) is the IR theorist who presents the classic discussion of how the unitary approach to the firm evolved in human relations theory from more classical theories of management, including that of scientific management. In this view, managers are responsible for providing leadership so that all employees work toward common ends, the success of the corporate enterprise. Fox contrasts the pluralist view of IR, in which conflict is inevitable because different parties have different interests, with the unitary view that conflict is a result of bad management (p. 369):

conflict was seen, not as intrinsic to the very nature of industrial organization, but as the outcome of managerial incompetence. For the classicists, the incompetence lay in the failure to apply scientific, rational principles to the planning and coordination of work; for human relations it lay in some failure of leadership and social skillsa breakdown, for example of effective communication between management and men. But both based their theorizing on the assumption that the industrial organization is a unitary, monolithic structure, a single set of integrated relationships.

Are IR scholars who adopt the high-performance paradigm with its emphasis on “mutual gains” implicitly adopting a unitary perspective? Kochan (2000) denies the allegation. He states that he continues to regard the employment relationship as inherently one of mixed motives. That is, employers and employees have a “mix of conflicting and shared interests that require periodic resolution and fresh searches for ways to achieve mutual gains or integrative outcomes” (p. 707). The traditional way of stating this same fundamental premise of IR is contained in the first edition of Kochan’s influential IR textbook (1980:19):

There is an inherent conflict of interest between employees and employers. It arises out of the clash of economic interests between the employees seeking job and income security and improvements through their jobs and employers seeking to promote efficiency and organizational effectiveness. . . . The conflict is limited, however,
since (1) employers and employees are interdependent--neither can survive and achieve their goals without the survival and goal attainment of the other, and (2) employers and employees may share common goals on some range of issue of mutual interest.

Postmodern students of discourse will note both the continuity of ideas and the subtle shift in emphasis between 1980 and 2000. It is not possible in a paper of this length to fully explore the reasons for the changed language adopted by contemporary IR scholars. Nonetheless, Kochan’s current language does not represent an abandonment of the fundamental pluralist perspective, but rather entails a contemporary restatement of it particularly appropriate for public policy debates.

      Most IR scholars doing research on high-performance work systems do not predicate their scholarly activity on the assumption that employers and employees have similar interests. Rather, they recognize that often the two parties have different interests. It is precisely because workers have different interests than managers (and stockholders) that their direct participation in decision making can promote better outcomes for workers--this is the IR perspective. The view that work systems with significant amounts of employee involvement can better promote worker interests and worker voice than mass production systems reflects the traditional pluralistic perspective of IR in which workers do have separate interests from those who manage them (Voos 1996).

      In fact, on particular issues, different groups of employees may have different interests from one another, and from the union itself as an institution; this has long been recognized in IR discussions of “fractional bargaining” and the importance of the union as an institution that compromises disparate worker interests for the purposes of bargaining. IR scholars also recognize that managers at different levels in the organization may have different interests from one another, and from shareholders themselves--for instance, first-level supervisors may have a different set of concerns with regard to employee involvement programs than do middle managers, much less top executives. Discussions of “mutual gains” from high-performance work systems are not predicated on a unitary conception of the corporation. If anything, realistic discussion of whether or not changes in work systems can improve outcomes for both frontline workers and for the firm as a whole, and the reasons why such changes are often resisted by particular groups of employees, involve a deeply pluralist perspective on the firm.

What Is a Managerialist Perspective?

      In any event, it is not correct to equate managerialism and a unitary perspective claiming employers and employees have similar interests; it is quite possible to have a management perspective that is pluralist. Most American managers recognize that shareholders have different interests than employees, including management employees, and many contemporary business theories (e.g., agency theory) begin from that premise. Given this, what makes a perspective managerialist is that the goals of firm are emphasized over the goals of employees; performance is the vital outcome, and employee well-being is distinctly secondary and important primarily insofar as it affects retention and recruitment. In short, the focus is on what managers should do to enhance corporate performance, not on what society should do to enhance outcomes like the standard of living, equality, or democracy. In this respect, HR is clearly managerialist.

Has IR Research on High-Performance Systems Been Managerialist?

      Godard and Delaney fairly point out that IR research has devoted less attention to the impact of these systems on workers than their impact on firm performance. This is beginning to be remedied by IR scholars--for instance see Berg (1999), Osterman (2000), Appelbaum et al. (2000), Black and Lynch (2000), Lynch and Krivelyova (2000), Godard (2001); Bailey et al. (2001), Batt (2001), and Batt et al. (forthcoming). However, the early focus on firm performance has lent a managerialist coloring to much research on high-performance work systems done by IR scholars. It is doubtful this reflects much more than a desire by those scholars to encourage firms to adopt such systems and a pragmatic recognition that performance rather than worker wellbeing is key to such adoption decisions. Nonetheless, leading IR scholars now recognize the need for more research on the impact of new work systems on employees (Kochan 2000), and that would indeed improve the balance of our discipline.²

What About Collective Bargaining?

      Kochan claims that implicitly Godard and Delaney are imposing a “collective bargaining litmus test” on IR scholars:

Implicit in Godard and Delaney’s paper is an argument that collective bargaining as it has evolved over the years is the only way or the best way to advocate and represent worker interests. Therefore a shift away from the study of collective bargaining as it has been practiced implies an equivalent abandonment of workers interests for some other concerns--presumably, as noted above, a concern for management interests. (pp. 706–7)

Have most IR scholars adopting the high-performance perspective rejected the view that collective bargaining is the best way of representing workers? Some have and some have not.

      Both Godard and Delaney, and Kochan, fail to make distinctions among scholars with diverse views. There is currently a debate in the IR community regarding the necessity of union revival for worker voice in the United States. Some of us would see union revival as absolutely central, whereas others would view it as of lesser importance than the provision of alternative mechanisms of worker voice to a majority of workers who presumably will remain nonunion in the years to come. Such mechanisms might include nonunion employee representation (Kaufman, forthcoming) and a greater role for other representative groups/market intermediaries besides traditional unions (Heckscher 2001). At the same time, the partnership perspective on high-performance work systems adopted by many IR scholars (e.g., Appelbaum et al. 2000; Rubinstein and Kochan 2001) emphasizes the value of combining collective bargaining and high performance work systems. In short, study of high-performance work systems doesn’t imply any particular set of views about unions and collective bargaining.

      Has U.S. IR abandoned the study of collective bargaining? No. Many U.S. IR scholars continue to study collective bargaining and its effects. Consider the distribution of sessions as these meetings. Judging simply from the title of the papers in the IRRA program for 2002, out of ' sessions containing multiple papers, we counted 21 with one or more papers concerning unions, collective bargaining, or labor relations. Furthermore a majority of sessions clearly have papers concerned with public policy issues like contingent work, labor market intermediaries, work hours, mobility opportunities for low-skilled workers, and so forth.

      Paul Jarley, Timothy Chandler, and Larry Faulk (2001) recently published an insightful analysis of the contents of six “core” IR journals, Industrial Relations, Industrial and Labor Relations Review, Journal of Labor Economics, Journal of Human Resources, Labor Law Journal, and Journal of Labor Research.³ Their evaluation of articles in the six journals from 1986 to 1995 inclusive indicates that 58 percent of all articles were on unions and collective bargaining; the second largest group (33 percent) were on matters related to labor markets and the associated public policy issues.

      IR has not abandoned the study of labor relations, unions, and collective bargaining, nor should it. At the same time, it is important that IR not limit itself to the study of collective bargaining because other employment matters affect the well-being of workers and the society at large. IR scholars study public policies affecting labor markets, changing work systems, contingent employment, the relationship between work and family, and other matters besides collective bargaining for this reason.

Concluding Comments

      In our view, the problem with the “high-performance” paradigm is not so much that it is based on a unitary perspective of the firm, because it really is not, but because it tends to focus IR scholarship on developments that are internal to corporations, which is only part of our field. One of the crucial differences between IR and HR has always been that HR has been focused “inside” the firm while IR investigates the dependence of what happens inside firms on the wider economy and on the public policy that crucially shapes the economy (Voos 2001).

      In this respect, IR as a field of scholarly endeavor mirrors the activities of unions themselves.⁴ Unions work to change public policy in economic areas that are central to workers’ well-being. Recently, central issues in American politics have been the size of a tax cut and its distribution across income groups, the quality of the public education system that serves the children of workers, the continued fiscal soundness of the Social Security system that provides income to retired workers in the United States, and the availability/quality of health insurance. These are issues in which U.S. workers need a voice. They are also issues that deserve continued study by United States IR scholars. In short, it is fine for IR to study developments internal to corporations, like high-performance work systems, and its OK to consider the changing nature of corporations (Kochan 2000), but it is also essential that IR continues to devote considerable attention to the broad economic and public policy context of work.

Endnotes

1. Ichniowski et al. (1996) is adopted by Godard and Delaney as a prototypical example of the paradigm.

2. Kochan adds that the IR attention to the impact of these systems on firm performance comes not so much from a managerialist perspective as a frank recognition that management was the initiating party in the wave of changes in work and the IR system in the 1980s. If IR were to ignore these developments and to focus exclusively on unions and collective bargaining, it would be missing the most important IR developments of our era.

3. We and others might quibble about the particular set of journals analyzed--we’d add Advances in Industrial and Labor Relations (appears annually), Relations Industrielles/ Industrial Relations (Canadian), and Labor Studies (close to IR) to the group and subtract the Journal of Labor Economics and the Journal of Human Resources as being primarily labor economics, not IR, journals; nevertheless, the study highlights the continuing importance of collective bargaining to the field.

4. We are reminded of the Webbs’ discussion of the “methods” (today that would be termed strategies) of unions: mutual insurance, collective bargaining, and legal enactment. Today mutual insurance would encompass all self-help strategies of workers in union and other organizations; legal enactment would include all strategies emphasizing public policy.

References

Appelbaum, Eileen, Thomas Bailey, Peter Berg, and Arne L. Kalleberg. 2000. Manufacturing Advantage: Why High-Performance Work Systems Pay Off. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University/ILR Press.

Bailey, Thomas, Peter Berg, and Carola Sandy. 2001. “The Effect of High-Performance Work Practices on Employee Earnings in the Steel, Apparel, and Medial Electronics and Imaging Industries.” Industrial and Labor Relations Review, Vol. 54, no. 2A (March), pp. 525–43.

Batt, Rosemary. 2001. “Explaining Wage Inequality in Telecommunications Services: Customer Segmentation, Human Resource Practices, and Union Decline.” Industrial and Labor Relations Review, Vol. 54, no. 2A (March), pp. 425–49.

Batt, Rosemary, Alexander Colvin, and Jeffrey Keefe. Forthcoming. “Employee Voice, Human Resource Practices, and Quit Rates: Evidence from the Telecommunications Industry.” Industrial and Labor Relations Review.

Berg, Peter. 1999. “The Effects of High Performance Work Practices on Job Satisfaction in the United States Steel Industry.” Relations Industrielles/Industrial Relations, Vol. 54, no. 1, pp. 111–34.

Black, Sandra E., and Lisa M. Lynch. 2000. “What’s Driving the New Economy: The Benefits of Workplace Innovation.” Cambridge, MA: NBER Working Paper No. 7479.

Fox, Alan. 1966. “Managerial Ideology and Labour Relations.” British Journal of Industrial Relations, Vol. 4, no. 3 (November), pp. 366–78.

Godard, John. 2001. “High Performance and the Transformation of Work? The Implications of Alternative Work Practices for the Experience and Outcomes of Work.” Industrial and Labor Relations Review, Vol. 54, no. 4 (July), pp. 737–75.

Godard, John, and John T. Delaney. 2000. Reflections on the ‘High Performance’ Paradigm’s Implications for Industrial Relations as a Field,” Industrial and Labor Relations Review, Vol. 53, no. 3 (April), pp. 482–502.

Heckscher, Charles. 2001. “Living with Flexibility.” In Lowell Turner, Harry C. Katz, and Richard W. Hurd, eds., Rekindling the Movement: Labor’s Quest for Relevance in the Twenty-First Century. Ithaca: ILR Press, 2001.

Ichniowski, Casey, Thomas A. Kochan, David Levine, Craig Olson, and George Strauss. 1996. “What Works at Work: Overview and Assessment.” Industrial Relations, Vol. 35, no. 3 (July), pp. 299–333.

Jarley, Paul, Timothy D. Chandler, and Larry Faulk. 2001. “Maintaining a Scholarly Community: Casual Authorship and the State of IR Research.” Industrial Relations, Vol. 40, no. 2 (April), pp. 338–43.

Kaufman, Bruce E. Forthcoming. “The Employee Participation/Representation Gap: An Assessment and Proposed Solution.” Journal of Labor and Employment Law.

Kochan, Thomas A. 1980. Collective Bargaining and Industrial Relations: From Theory to Policy and Practice. Homewood, IL: Richard D. Irwin.

Kochan, Thomas A. 2000. “On the Paradigm Guiding Industrial Relations Theory and Research: Comment on John Godard and John T. Delaney, ‘Reflections on the ‘High Performance’ Paradigm’s Implications for Industrial Relations as a Field.’” Industrial and Labor Relations Review, Vol. 53, no. 4 (July), pp. 704–11.

Lynch, Lisa M., and Anya Krivelyova. 2000. “How Workers Fare When Employers Innovate.” Unpublished paper, Tufts University and Boston University.

Osterman, Paul. 2000. “Work Reorganization in an Era of Restructuring: Trends in Diffusion and Effects on Employee Welfare.” Industrial and Labor Relations Review, Vol. 53, no. 2 (January), pp. 179–96.

Rubinstein, Saul A., and Thomas R. Kochan. 2001. Learning from Saturn: Possibilities for Corporate Governance and Employee Relations. Ithaca, NY: ILR Press.

Voos, Paula B. 1996. “Labor Law Reform: Closing the Representation Gap.” In Todd Schafer and Jeff Faux, eds., Reclaiming Prosperity: A Blueprint for Progressive Economic Reform. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, pp. 123–42.

Voos, Paula B. 2001. “An IR Perspective on Collective Bargaining.” Human Resource Management Review, Vol. 11, pp. 487–503.