Employment relations and industrial welfare in Britain: business ethics versus labor markets.

Perspectives on employer-employee relations have undergone significant changes, and business historians can daim a substantial contribution to the subject's development. What was once the study of trades unions and collective bargaining was transformed into an investigation of shop-floor organization and the regulation of employment. The focus moved to the firm, its objectives and its capabilities, and, as a result, business historians offered insight into the evolution of labor management. Just as technological progress altered production systems and skill requirements, greater returns to scale influenced the size, capabilities and needs of firms.The adaptation of work relations on the factory-floor was partnered by modifications in employment relations, as big business evolved status and benefit policies that might assist the procurement and maintenance of labor [Fitzgerald and Rowley, 1997, pp. ix-xxvi; Gospel, 1983, pp. 1-24;Jacoby, 1990, pp. 1-20]. Earlier interpretations of Taylorism, deskilling, and their impact viewed employee motivation and loyalty to be a negligible consideration, yet later historical research at the level of the firm unearthed policies aimed at the integration of workforces [Edwards, 1979; Burgess, 1975; Fitzgerald, 1988; Gospel, 1992; Nelson, 1975; Lazonick, 1990; Brandes, 1976; Jacoby, 1997]. These organizational goals were increasingly characteristic of large British employers in the twentieth century, at least within certain sectors, and are reminiscent of the so-called "white collarisation" or inclusiveness of Japanese industry [Gordon, 1985; Sugayama, 1995]. The Japanese employment system has been linked with specific national and cultural traits, and the gradual systemization of workplace status and benefits within Britain also grew out of deeplyembedded values and corporate traditions. In entrepreneurial or family businesses, ownership and practice were justified as mutually beneficial by appeals to ethical, usually Christian values and to the traditions of paternalism which infused social hierarchy [Roberts, 1979]. Classical political economy could not fully describe the realities of industrial employment. During the twentieth century, the employment and corporate welfare schemes which replaced owner