Reports the results of a study examining the relationships between organizational structure (formalization, specialization, participation, and centralization) and human resource practices, (training and internal labour market (ILM) with the state of the firm’s industrial relations. The data...

Uses a longitudinal case study approach to analyse changes in industrial relations in a chemical company over the last decade. The authors argue that the concept of “waves” can be used to help understand developments during this period. The first wave related to the crisis of the early 1980s...

States that there has been much debate about the EC’s Social Charter but very little research on the implications for personnel managers. Personnel managers will be responsible for implementing the majority of Social Charter initiatives within their organizations. Based on the results from a...

Using data from the Price Waterhouse Cranfield Project, investigates a umber of key aspects of industrial relations at organization level as a means of evaluating the nature of change in industrial relations. Examines levels of trade union membership in organizations across Europe; the extent and...

Returns to a case study of a newspaper company introducing HRM presented five years earlier in this journal. Looks at all the editorial offices of the company and examines the extent to which the company has succeeded in implementing HRM and what this has meant for a key section of its...

Discusses the nature of employee development programmes (EDPs) and the use made of them by UK employers; examines the structure and operation of similar schemes developed jointly by management and union in the “big three” US car companies. Argues that these US EDP schemes, through their use...

Makes a critical examination of annual hours (AH), a relatively new development in industrial relations in Britain. First, considers the extent, sectoral distribution and development of AH before moving to examine the reasons why a growing number of employers are introducing this way of...

Focuses on the introduction of personal contracts to replace terms and conditions of employment derived from collective agreements in light of the findings from three surveys of employer organizations conducted in 1991/92, 1994/95 and 1995/96 by the Employment Relations R&D Centre at Anglia...

The decade has witnessed unprecedented interest in what has been seen as a radically new direction in the management of people in organisations: human resource management (HRM). HRM has, however, been bedevilled by controversy and ambiguity to the extent of being regarded as just another...

New evidence from a British electronics plant on the experience of a harmonisation programme is presented and questions the generally accepted favourable image of moves towards single status working. The presentation is novel in that instead of offering a traditional literature review followed...