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Rethinking the employment relationship: a neo-pluralist critique of British industrial relations orthodoxy

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journal contribution
posted on 2014-06-25, 12:41 authored by Peter Ackers
Radical pluralism, the mainstream perspective for British and European industrial relations, centres on a Marxian, sociological conception of the employment relationship, which structures explanations of power and conflict. This theoretical critique stresses the historical specificity of the experience of work and the explanatory limitations of the employment relationship. The intellectual history of radical pluralism is traced from Fox ((1974), Beyond Contract: Work, Power and Trust Relations, London: Faber) to Edwards ((1995, 2003), ‘The Employment Relationship,’ in Industrial Relations, ed. P. Edwards, Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 1–36) and Blyton and Turnbull ((1994, 1998, 2004), The Dynamics of Employee Relations, Basingstoke: Macmillan). Five objections to the radical-pluralist employment relationship are outlined and an alternative, neo-pluralist sociological and historical perspective is sketched.

History

School

  • Business and Economics

Department

  • Business

Published in

The International Journal of Human Resource Management

Volume

on line first

Pages

1 - 18

Citation

ACKERS, P., 2014. Rethinking the employment relationship: a neo-pluralist critique of British industrial relations orthodoxy. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 25 (18), pp.2608-2625.

Publisher

© Taylor & Francis

Version

  • SMUR (Submitted Manuscript Under Review)

Publication date

2014

Notes

This is the submitted manuscript version of the paper. The definitive version is available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09585192.2012.667429

ISSN

0958-5192

Language

  • en