This paper reviews changes occurring in the U.S. industrial relations system at the workplace, in collective bargaining, and at the level of strategic decision making within business and labor organizations. By relating these current developments to longer term pressures on the post New Deal industrial relations system, we suggest that the system is undergoing fundamental transformation. To ada...

It has been argued that, given the more varied and less stable employment and the increasingly diversified workforce characteristic of the globalised, technologyled economy of the 21 century, there is need of a new theory of industrial relations (Kochan, 2000). This paper seeks to bring together discussion of new theories from a numb er of disciplines in order to explore the integrated nature o...

Does the Quality of Industrial Relations Matter for the Macro Economy? A Cross-Country Analysis Using Strikes Data Using international data, we investigate whether the quality of industrial relations matters for the macro economy. We measure industrial relations inversely by strikes – which proxy we cross-check with an industrial relations reputation indicator – and our macro performance outcom...

IN the past the study of industrial relations has been treated 25 an off-shoot of economics, law and other disciplines. It has not been treated as a separate discipline in itself. Instead of a general theory of industrial relations we have had empirical studies of particular aspects of industrial relations in particular circumstances. Allan Flanders, who is a senior lecturer in industrial relat...