The Employment Relationship and the Field of Industrial Relations

The term 'industrial relations' (IR) came into common use in Britain and North America during the 1920s. It has been joined by personnel management (PM) and, since the 1980s, human resource management (HRM). All three denote a practical activity (the management of people) and an area of academic enquiry. Texts in all three fields commonly take as their starting point the corporate assertion that 'people are our most important asset': if this is indeed so, there is little further need to justify a text. Yet we need first to explain what lies behind this apparent axiom. It is then important to highlight some of the key current issues about the conduct of work in modern Britain. We can then consider how IR as an academic approach addresses these issues and the distinction between it and the other two fields of enquiry. Finally, the structure of the book is explained. First, some basic explanation. 'Industry' is sometimes equated with manufacturing , as in contrasts between industry and services. 'Industrial relations' has in principle never been so restricted. In practice, however, attention until recently often focused on certain parts of the economy. These in fact embraced more than manufacturing to include the public sector for example, but there was neglect of small firms and large parts of the private service sector. Whether or not there were good reasons for this neglect (and the case is at least arguable), the situation has changed, and recent research has addressed growing areas of the economy such as call centres. To avoid confusion some writers prefer the term 'employment relations', and if we were starting from scratch this might be the best label; yet the term 'industrial relations' has become sufficiently embedded that it is retained here to cover relations between manager and worker in all spheres of economic activity. The focus is employment: all forms of economic activity in which an employee works under the authority of an employer and