This paper defends a materialist analysis of employment relations against two recent critiques, by Peter Ackers and Patrick McGovern. 'Radical pluralism' is Ackers's preferred term. The critiques are useful in exposing some ritualistic uses of terms such as conflict, contradiction, and...

Huw Beynon's Working for Ford achieved celebrity when published in 1973. An assessment 40 years later identifies the lasting value of the book. Though written from a clearly stated point of view, it did not present a biased account, and it included much information permitting alternative...

The concept of a 'structured antagonism' in the workplace, introduced in 1986, is revisited and extended. Part of the revisiting clears up misunderstandings about the idea which have arisen as a result of its being cited without always being fully understood. The core idea, that the SA exists...

Organizational neuroscience (ON) is a rapidly emerging sub-field. Criticisms of its reductionism are common. Yet it is possible for practitioners and critics to engage. Such engagement is facilitated by realism. It agrees with the practitioners of ON that brain functions can in principle be...

The paper reviews the progress of the sociology of work in Britain since 1945. It identifies two long-standing influences, Marxism and Weberian analysis, and a third more recent approach shaped by post-modernism. It disputes claims associated with the last, that the field suffers from...

This paper addresses two related issues: the effect of the `regulatory shock' of the National Minimum Wage on small firms and the consequent effects on the commonly observed practice of `informality'. It draws on a survey of such firms but primarily uses case study evidence from five firms to...

The social and economic institutions of a country provide a framework shaping the performance of individual firms. The introduction of the National Minimum Wage (NMW) in the UK provides a key illustration of the weakness of institutions and the ways in which they might be strengthened. Evidence...