Blackwell Science, LtdOxford, UKIRJIndustrial Relations Journal0019-8692Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2005 2005364264282Original ArticleThe challenging but promising future

of IRPaul Edwards

Industrial Relations Journal 36:4, 264282

ISSN 0019-8692

The challenging but promising future of

industrial relations: developing theory and
method in context-sensitive research
Paul Edwards
ABSTRACT
Industrial relations (IR) in the UK are often seen as being in a state of some disarray.
Yet analytical advances can also be detected. This article takes one part of IR, contextsensitive research, to suggest ways of building on such advances. Its focus is the
intellectual core of the subject, and not its institutional position. The particular route
identified is to link IR to the programme of critical realism and thereby to make
methodological progress and strengthen links with social science. Policy relevance may
also be enhanced. Whether IRs possibilities are realised remains uncertain, and
whether an intellectual programme leads to institutional advance is even harder to
predict.

INTRODUCTION
Assessments of the state of industrial relations (IR) research in the UK over a period
of 30 years have pointed to an emphasis on institutional description at the expense of
theory (Bain and Clegg, 1974; Berridge and Goodman, 1988; Kelly, 1998; Towers,
2003; Winchester, 1983). In the words of Ackers (2002: 2), IR has proved generally
incapable of restating or revising its core paradigms, as they were established in the
1970s. Ackers and Wilkinson (2003a: 2) identify a strong sense of intellectual marginalisation of IR. IR research received no serious mention in the report of the
Commission on the Social Sciences (2003). Kaufman (2004a) finds six factors accounting for the decline of IR in America, and argues that these apply, albeit with less force,
in the UK. He concludes his assessment of the subject at a global level by identifying
reasons for both optimism and pessimism, though probably the scales tilt in the
direction of the latter (p. 621). The present concern is not to review this powerful and
largely convincing argument. It is to pursue one aspect of an optimistic view.
The article builds on the conclusions of Whitfield and Strauss (1998: 294) who argue
that the tide engulfing industrial relations is strong but that a distinctive position can

Paul Edwards is Professor of Industrial Relations, University of Warwick. Correspondence should be

addressed to Paul Edwards, Industrial Relations Research Unit, Warwick Business School, University of
Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK; email: p.k.edwards@warwick.ac.uk
This is an extensively revised version of a plenary article given to the British Universities Industrial
Relations Association Annual Conference, Leeds, July 2003.

Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main St., Malden, MA 02148,
USA.

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be sustained and indeed developed through stronger research design allied to changes
in conceptual tools, a broadening of scope, and possibly a modification of the fields
title. The article does not directly address the tide. As a referee of an earlier draft
notes, the tides components include the possibly greater apparent relevance of human
resource management or organisational behaviour to business schools, a relevance
heightened by the ability of scholars in such fields to target leading journals that count
highly in the Research Assessment Exercise. Symptoms include the renaming of degree
programmes. Some remarks on the institutional position of British IR have been
offered elsewhere (Edwards, 2005). They suggest some positive elements, though certainly do not constitute a rebuttal of the more downbeat view; one further comment
is made below. The present concern is largely the intellectual position of IR, which, it
is argued, is more robust than might appear. The focus is thus IR analysis in general,
and not specifically the state of research in the UK, though many of the examples
given are British-based.
This task will be pursued by focusing on one strand of research based on contextsensitive explanatory approach. This label signifies two things. First, IR institutions
and processes are grasped in context so that, to take a familiar example, the meaning
of trade union democracy is different in different countries and indeed within countries. Second, there is a concern to offer systematic explanation of, and sometimes
generalisation from, the cases chosen for study. Examples are given below, but the
label is intended as no more than a reflection of much that is taken for granted in IR.
The classic study of the car industry by Turner et al. (1967), for example, addressed
this particular context and showed that key IR characteristics, notably strike levels,
varied within the industry and between the UK industry and those of other countries;
explanations thus turned on embedded features of particular IR arrangements rather
than generic features of the industry. Cases can plainly be workplaces, industries or
countries. Locke and Thelen (1995) use the term contextualised comparison, a term
borrowed here, to capture this approach.
There are several reasons for this delimitation. First, the aim is not to review the
whole field of IR research. Nothing is said about, for example, historical methods,
large-scale survey research or interpretivist or social constructivist approaches. Some
research within such traditions is consistent with the analysis developed below, but
this point is not argued out. The purpose is simply to address one style of research
that captures important elements of the core of IR as traditionally practised. Second,
such issues as the definition of the field and what might constitute IR theory are
addressed only very briefly. Third, the relationship with approaches such as that of
human resource management is not considered. The Ackers and Wilkinson (2003b)
volume addresses these last two points. Finally, nothing is said about the teaching of
the subject.
The central reason for the focus is to concentrate on one issue: the development of
research that offers genuinely explanatory accounts derived from context-sensitive
analysis. Such research has an ontological and epistemological base in the programme
of critical realism (CR), and there are some specific methodological tools on which it
can draw. It offers a way forward in relation to: new challenges within the field of IR,
such as how to incorporate gender relations; and the making of connections between
IR and wider social science disciplines.
In international comparative context, UK IR is in a potentially strong position.
According to Kaufman (2003a; 2004a), IR in the USA developed earlier than was the
case in the UK, and a clear focus was identified, but an ironic result was that IR cut
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itself off from wider developments in social science and management studies and thus
found itself in a narrow conceptualisation from which it could not escape. In continental
Europe, by contrast, industrial relations has not become an independent academic
discipline (Frege, 2003: 242). The UK tradition is somewhere between these extremes,
though arguably it needs to link its own insights into the employment relationship
with the wider socio-political (Frege, 2003: 256) emphasis of other countries.
The article proceeds in three main stages. First, developing conceptual, epistemological and empirical themes are reviewed. Second, challenges within IR and in making links with social science are discussed. Third, methodological prospects are
indicated. IR has always been a practical subject, however, and the implications of the
suggested approach for policy relevance are also briefly sketched.

THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES
Analytical development is addressed in three steps. First, IR has a conceptualisation
of its core focus, albeit one that may need some relabelling. Second, an IR approach
constructively illustrates some leading approaches to social science, though this has
rarely been recognised. Third, conceptualisation and epistemology can be illustrated
by developing empirical research.
Conceptualisation of the employment relationship
There seems to be widespread acceptance, as illustrated by the texts cited above and
several others (Blyton and Turnbull, 2004; Edwards, 2003a; Kaufman, 2004b), that
IR studies employment relations or the employment relationship. Conceptualisation
of this subject has proceeded under two heads (Ackers and Wilkinson, 2003a: 20;
Kochan, 1998).

The employment relationship as a contested terrain, embracing conflict and consent. From an employer point of view, there is an inherent management of uncertainty. For employees, concerns include dignity and justice as well as economic
interests; and employees tend to develop moral economies rather than operating
as purely individually rational actors.
At a more concrete level, the web of formal and informal rules and expectations
governing the conduct of work and the negotiation of order. This provides a
powerfully political understanding of how order is negotiated and uncertain.

The standard definition of IR was the study of the rules governing employment
(Clegg, 1979: 1). This remains a remarkably robust statement, if rules are understood
to embrace a complex and shifting set of expectations and norms involving the use of
power and if influences from outside the employment relationship that shape the rulemaking process are taken into account. A modification (Whitfield and Strauss, 1998:
297) of title might now use the popular term governance to signal at least two things:
the relations of power, politics and contest that are central to the regulation of
employment; and the fact that regulation occurs at many levels including supranational and national regimes as well as what goes on directly in the employment
relationship itself. The governance of employment relations could thus be one label.
This label embraces the proper concerns of writers such as Kelly (1998), that issues
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267

such as injustice and exploitation be kept central, for the employment relationship is
seen as an inherently contested one.
The uncertainties of the contested terrain have been underlined by Nolan (2003;
also Nolan and Wood, 2003) in his analysis of the work of the ESRC Future of Work
Programme. Drawing on a long tradition of scholarship (e.g. Hyman, 1987), Nolan
argues that unidirectional and mono-causal accounts of the evolution of the employment relationship are inaccurate and that there are inherently contradictory tendencies
at work. There are contradictions within any approach to the employment relationship
and between the specifics of employee management and the wider context of firms in
capitalist markets. In relation to the former, the concept of contradictions has also
been applied explicitly by Korczynski (2002: 58) to the analysis of service work, which
is a particularly important case given that IR is sometimes equated with the old world
of manufacturing. Korczynski identifies a series of tensions, some of which are arguably generic to any kind of employment (e.g. between quality and quantity), and some
of which, notably the pressures around the customer, are distinctive to service work.
The wider context has been powerfully highlighted by Thompson (2003: 371), who
points to the interrelated impacts of globalisation, the shift to shareholder value in
capital markets and systemic rationalisation across the whole value chain of firms as
reasons why firms find it hard to keep their promises in terms of high commitment
systems. In short, a perspective informed by the politics of the employment relationship can be applied to developing issues such as the nature of service work and
understanding the effects of globalisation.
Theory and ontology
The strength and weakness of IR is its lack of a closed paradigm. This gives it an
openness to a range of intellectual approaches and sensitivity to day-to-day realities.
But by the same token IR has lacked attention to fundamental issues concerning the
nature and purpose of social science theory and research, as raised in the philosophy
and sociology of science literature (Godard, 1993: 284). Anyone searching for theory in IR would have to be aware of the tacit nature of theoretical statements.
Beckers (1998: 3) fond account of the work of Everett Hughes has strong echoes.
Hughes
always threatened to write a little theory book, containing the essence of his theoretical position. [His
students knew] that we were learning a theory, though we couldnt say what it was. [Hughes never wrote
the book] because he didnt have a systematic theory in the style of Talcott Parsons. He had, rather, a
theoretically informed way of working.

Theory can nonetheless be found. For example, reviewing IR theory in general Dabscheck (1989) found five established theoretical approaches plus a developing one
while Adams (1988) identified nine. Giles (1989: 130), addressing theories of the state
and IR, saw four theories lurking beneath the weight of descriptive writing. A second
consideration is that IR is a relatively specialised field drawing on several disciplines,
so that its theoretical developments should not be compared to those of a whole
discipline such as economics or sociology.
If we look at Godards philosophy and sociology of science one approach seems
pertinent to IR. This is CR. It is laid out clearly by Sayer (1992; 2000), while Godard
(1993) and Fleetwood (1999) are among the few IR scholars to consider it.1 This is
1

Critical realism (CR) is also known simply as realism; the label of CR has become the preferred term,
following its introduction by Roy Bhaskar (Sayer, 2000: 7).
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an approach to the philosophy of science that demonstrates that the contrast between
scientism and naturalism is false. One can be scientific without aping the natural
sciences (or to be more exact, a stereotypical view of what the natural sciences are
supposed to be like). CR takes a stance against both positivism and relativist
approaches such as constructivism and most variants of postmodernism. Positivism
is faulted for addressing only empirical regularities rather than the underlying mechanisms producing these regularities; its basis in deductive-nomological approaches
prevents it from asking why things occur as they do. Relativism treats the social world
as wholly socially constructed and neglects the causal influences of structures that lie
outside processes of social construction.
Critical realism argues that there are real, if unobservable, forces with causal
powers and that it is the task of science to understand the relevant mechanisms. The
social world is seen as being different from the natural because it requires human
intervention, but it does not follow that society is wholly the product of human design
or discourse: rules, norms and institutions develop with logics independent of the
choices of individual actors. CR stresses that causal powers are not necessarily activated and is thus very sensitive to the importance of institutional context. It aims to
move beyond the discovery of empirical regularities to understand the mechanisms
that not only produce these regularities but also determine when they will occur and
when they do not.
Critical realism has been advocated in relation to management studies in general
(Ackroyd and Fleetwood, 2000)2 and as an underpinning philosophy for the area of
operational research (Mingers, 2000). The latter example is pertinent, for that field is,
like IR, often seen as simply one driven by practical problems, and yet a deeper social
science base can be discerned. Sayer (2000) gives examples of realist research in
practice. One with resonances with IR debates is drawn from Morgan and Sayer
(1988).
Conventional, taxonomic, approaches use large data sets to seek invariate relationships between
independent factors and performance. But such relationships rarely exist because of the openness of
systems. Morgan and Sayer switched to an intensive methodology, treating firms in causal rather than
taxonomic categories. [E]xplanations as to why firms behaved as they did were in fact easier to come
by than would have been possible through seeking determinate statistical relationships [Sayer, 2000:
24].

A further IR example would be the link between unemployment and union membership. Much UK and US research finds an inverse link, but studies in other countries
found no such link or even a positive one, for reasons to do with their systems of
unemployment insurance; an alternative approach to the links between unions and
the development of capitalist economies then addresses sets of institutional conditions
including the unemployment insurance system (Western, 1997).
The explicit use of CR is, however, rare. Whitfield and Strauss (2000) studied the
methods deployed in articles in leading IR journals between 1952 and 1997. They
identified a shift towards deductive approaches, which would generally but not necessarily be associated with positivism rather than CR. Larouche and Audet (1993)
identified 158 theoretical contributions published between 1897 and 1988 that
2
This book contains six chapters offering illustrations of CR in practice. It admits that three of them,
including the two closest to IR, do not use the language of CR explicitly. The two are an extract from the
work of Peck (1996) on the structuring of labour markets and an article by Rubery (1994) on the British
production model as a distinct societal system.

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addressed what IR is, and mapped them onto the well-known typology of philosophical approaches laid out by Burrell and Morgan (1979). The great bulk (139) fall into
the functionalist group. This group would be largely positivist in orientation, though
some might be consistent with CR.
We may also assess the extent of CR in recent publications, by looking at three IR
journals over a five-year period (19972001). Of the 353 articles reviewed, none used
the term CR but 27 might be seen as clearly consistent with the approach on the
criterion that they are interested in causal mechanisms and underlying causal factors.
In similar vein, Fleetwood (1999: 474), in providing a CR-based critique of economic
models of trade union behaviour, says that something akin to his preferred approach
can be identified in a small number of extant studies. Four illustrations may be given,
chosen simply on the criteria that they appeared in this Journal, that they exemplify
different concrete methods, and that they illustrate context sensitivity.

Ortiz (1998) used case study methods to examine teamwork in General Motors
in Spain. He framed the analysis in terms of largely critical views of teams from
a union and worker viewpoint in the USA and UK and more favourable responses
in Germany and Sweden. He showed that Spain fell between these two extremes,
which he explained in terms of the way in which the IR system allowed negative
features to be contained and positive features to be developed. In CR terms,
teamwork has causal powers of positive and negative kinds, and how they are
actualised depends on specific conditions. Note also that a single case can offer
general lessons because it is placed in the context of other cases so that the ways
in which causal influences operate in different contexts may be analysed.
Grimshaw et al. (2001) compared the gender pay gap in the UK and Australia,
using statistical and institutional evidence on two occupations. They showed that
there was a complex interaction between the national pay-setting regime and
occupation-specific forces. An average pay gap in a country reflects the interaction
of different forces.
Traxler (2003) analysed the nature of national systems of coordinated collective
bargaining. Arguing that many quantitative studies neglect the manifold qualitative differences (p. 196) of coordination, he offered detailed comparison of four
countries that were selected systematically to illustrate different patterns.
Edwards (1987) studied strikes and payment by results (PBR) systems using
survey data. Theory often asserts that PBR tends to promote strikes but in some
circumstances the expected association is absent. The survey identified sets of
conditions such as the size of workplaces and their industrial sector that affected
the operation of the causal powers of PBR systems, and case study research was
used to explain how these powers may or may not be actualised.

Note that a CR approach is wholly consistent with quantitative methods; it is not

statistical modelling to which CR objects but the weak model of causality that is
sometimes displayed in this area (Godard, 1993: 292; Mingers, 2000: 1266). The
Traxler study is notable in this regard, for it builds on a previous meticulous largescale quantitative analysis (Traxler et al., 2001).
I am not arguing that all IR researchers are critical realists without knowing it, still
less that research articles should rehearse their ontological assumptions. It is reasonable to claim, however, that context-sensitive institutional research does fit a broad
CR programme. CR is useful at minimum in giving a grounding to the instincts of
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many IR researchers who shy away from positivism and interpretivism. More constructively, it encourages researchers to think about different levels of causal powers
and about the kinds of arguments that they wish to address. For example, when
different outcomes are identified under different institutional conditions, what reasons
are adduced?

Empirical progress
A previous review identified illustrations of research reflecting empirical advance in
areas including managerial strategy and IR in small firms (Edwards, 1995; 2003b).
Further development can be detected in both areas, for example, in the analysis of the
complex ways in which strategies are devised and implemented and in the study of
new organisational forms (e.g. Beynon et al., 2002) and the improved understanding
of employment relations in small firms (Ram and Edwards, 2003). The following
illustrations also highlight a context-sensitive theoretically informed way of working.
In the area of total-quality management and teamwork much research has tended,
to use the terms of Wilkinson et al. (1997), to offer bouquets (extravagant praise) or
brickbats (extreme condemnation). IR research has, first, contributed to improved
conceptualisation of these practices by studying them as interventions in the contradictions of the employment relationship. They may be understood as ways of managing
the inherent tensions between control and consent, and hence, as strategic interventions that, as Ortiz (1998) implied, have their effects in the context of a wider set of
relationships (Geary, 2003). Empirical studies have also located teams in a theoretical
view of the workplaceseeing them, in the words of Geary and Dobbins (2001), as
new elements of the contested terrain and, hence, as neither wholly new nor simply
part of an unchanging struggle for control. Second, therefore, it has been possible to
show that teamwork has a number of forms. Several dimensions have been proposed
including contrasts between lean production and socio-technical work designs
(Frhlich and Pekruhl, 1996). The teamwork dimensions model identifies three
dimensions, the technical, governance and normative, through which to understand
different types of team and their linkage to wider aspects of IR (Findlay et al., 2000;
Thompson and Wallace, 1996). Finally, research has identified sets of conditions that
are likely to shape the results of teamwork experiments (e.g. Marchington et al., 1994).
The outcome is that it is possible to grasp two key and apparently puzzling results.
Overall, the use of teams seems to have no observable effect on employee commitment
or autonomy (Harley, 2001) while under certain conditions it can bring specific, if
limited, benefits to workers (Geary, 2003). The explanation is that, overall, the language of teams covers many things, with rhetoric often being stronger than substance,
but that under given conditions there may be negative (work intensification) or positive (autonomy and job interest) results for workers (Edwards et al., 2002). It can of
course be debated how far such insights depend on or are peculiar to an IR approach.
But it can reasonably be claimed that the perspective that it brings to bear, stressing
the uncertainties of managerial strategies and the importance of context, has helped
to develop an explanation of teams that would otherwise have been the weaker.
Looking upwards to cross-national issues, development is also clear. Early research
on corporatism devoted a huge amount of effort to the measurement of the degree of
centralisation of IR systems, and was never able to deal with the anomalies that this
approach produced (e.g. Calmfors and Driffill, 1988). An alternative approach focused
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on coordination rather than centralisation and indicated the causal powers of systems
of coordination in countries such as Germany (Soskice, 1990). The work of Traxler
et al. (2001) developed this idea through rigorous theoretical analysis and detailed
quantitative testing. As noted above, this research has subsequently been deployed to
address the embedded nature of bargaining coordination.
It is also now clear that certain initial expectations, for example, that global forces
will erode national distinctiveness, have been rejected. Research has pointed to the
mutual shaping of global and national forces and to the significant extent of sectoral
and local variation. To take two examples, comparative research on the car industry
has shown how production systems vary between countries and indeed companies and
plants (Kochan et al., 1997). Studies of multinational companies (MNCs) have shown
that they are not the bearers of fixed home country characteristics but instead interact
actively with their home and host country environments:
the globalisation dynamic is intrinsically played out through the medium of interacting, internally
heterogeneous, nationally rooted MNCs, seeking to draw their international competitive advantage
from the distinctive and variegated institutional configurations, including systems of employment
relations, in which they are embedded [Ferner and Quintanilla, 2002: 249, emphasis original].

Particularly notable here is the work of Locke and Thelen (1995), who lay out the
method of contextualised comparisons in explicit contrast to that of matched comparisons. The latter typically compares an issue such as industrial restructuring in
two or more countries. But it tends to assume that external forces are of similar import
in different economies. Yet countries differ in their position in the international
division of labour, so that such shocks will be experienced differently. (One might add
that subsequent contrasts between coordinated and liberal market economies have
been overly impressed with some structural similarities within each group, to the
neglect of different ways in which such liberal economies as the UK, the USA and
Canada are inserted into the global economic system.) Moreover, the same issue has
different meanings depending on context. Comparisons of industrial restructuring
may conclude that the issue is central in one case and not another, and conclude that
the latter reflects successful institutional responses to global challenges. But such
challenges may arise in other domains. On the basis of analysis of four such domains
across four economies, the authors demonstrate that seemingly different, nationally
specific conflicts are in fact analytically analogous (p. 359).
This article does not, however, explicitly ground itself in a CR perspective. Its
approach also works well when we are comparing distinct national systems with
reasonably known characteristics. How far it could be sustained when the unit of
analysis is the company or workplace, and when issues might not fall into neat sets,
is less clear. The approach is none the less a powerful illustration of explanatory
possibilities.
Moving up to another level, we have the question of supra-national systems of
regulation. What in particular does European integration mean for IR? There seems
to be a reasonably distinctive IR contribution in this area, an emphasis on bottomup rather than top-down issues. Political science tends to offer the latter, addressing,
for example, state decision making. IR complements this by considering what happens
on the ground: not only the extent to which top-level initiatives are frustrated by issues
of implementation but also the active importance of bottom-level processes in creating new sets of demands and in contributing to the processes of multilevel governance (Sisson et al., 2003). In this context, an IR perspective has a particular strength,
because it is sensitive to the politics and uncertainty of negotiation.
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ANALYTICAL CHALLENGES
Challenges within the field of IR
A CR-informed perspective can help us grapple with the issue of broadening the scope
of IR, as underlined by Whitfield and Strauss (1998) and Ackers (2002). One key
example is the fields responsiveness to the study of gender relations, for gender is
evidently central to understanding employment relations and yet its neglect has been
amply demonstrated (Greene, 2003; Wajcman, 2000).
Wajcman points to the development of theoretical perspectives in other fields of
study. This is true, but it is also true of other areas relevant to IR such as theories of
power or the nature of the capitalist state. We should not set the impossible task
of generating wholly new social theories of work. What it is reasonable to expect is
that IR analysis should throw light on the distinctive ways in which gender works
within IR institutions such as trade unions. It should thus be able to inform and
develop core theories of gender relations rather than merely apply them (just as an
analysis of workplace power relations should inform theories of power).
If IR is opened to gender perspectives, is there an answer as to what other influences
such as ethnicity and family origins need to be addressed? One possible answer is that
IR is concerned with the politics of the employment relationship and not social identity
more generally. In pursuing this concern, it should be attentive to the resources that
are brought into the process, recognising that in the past it tended to neglect some of
the most important of these. In the language of CR, it neglected their causal powers.
Perhaps the clearest argument remains that of Emmett and Morgan (1982) in discussing the Manchester ethnographies. They showed that in some workplaces, for example,
engineering workshops, religious identity had little salience, whereas in the clothing
sector such identity played a significant role in the construction of workplace solidarities. They argued that the walls of the workplace are a semi-permeable membrane
filtering out some external influences and allowing others through.
A more exact statement would be in terms of mediation or interaction, for it is not
a case of external influences simply entering the workplace unchanged, but of their
being constituted through workplace processes, which in turn reflect back on external
relations. For example, Westwood (1993) demonstrates the gender solidarity and space
that women factory workers are able to generate, while Glucksmann (1990) shows how
women semi-skilled workers were constituted in social class terms through the interaction of workplace and other processes. It then becomes part of the task to consider
in particular cases how the politics of the employment relationship are shaped by
influences such as gender and ethnicity.
How, then, might one develop a research programme informed by gender? A CRinformed approach stresses the need to ask what aspects of gender relations interact
with IR processes, and under what conditions. IR is, for example, centrally concerned
with worker mobilisation and the extent to which, and conditions under which,
solidarity emerges. We might thus begin with this level of analysis and ask when gender
and ethnic resources generated in the wider society contribute to the process. For
example, the gender resources of workers may tend to provide a basis of social
cohesion; such gendered cohesion has been noted in studies of female workers, as in
the studies just mentioned, and also male workers (Collinson, 1992). Yet the causal
power of these resources is not fixed by the mere fact of gender characteristics; workers
who have developed certain identities through schooling may operationalise the
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resource in different ways from those with different educational experiences. Moreover, the use of the resource will be shaped by the workplace context, so that gender
solidarity may mean one thing in a manufacturing context and quite another in a
managerial environment, and the nature of the solidarity may be variable (e.g. when
workers identify around ethnic divisions, and thus define solidarity through the exclusion of others).
We might then ask to what extent workers in modern employment conditions define
themselves in gender terms and why might some workers do so more than others. We
might then proceed to ask about the consequences, for example, for the kinds of issues
that reach the surface as specific bargaining issues. Appropriate contextualised comparison could address such questions.

Industrial relations and social science

Turning to IRs links with social science, the need for interdisciplinary analysis is
widely noted (e.g. Grimshaw and Rubery, 2003). IR research has profound messages
for mainstream disciplines. These have been spelt out several times. They include:
the substantial amount of IR research on pay structures, that reveals processes that
are captured at best very imperfectly in labour economics (see Rubery, 1997); research
on the psychological contract and the employment relationship (Guest, 2003); and
studies of workplace relations that address sociological theories of power, the labour
process and patriarchy (Armstrong et al., 1981; Pollert, 1996). But the impact has not
been impressive. For example, a special issue of an economics journal on the effects
of the national minimum wage (NMW) contained no reference to institutional IR
research (Oxford Bulletin, 2002). Yet, as a key article remarked, the low wage labour
market is more complex than the straightforward text book model would have us
believe (Metcalf, 2002: 580). And there is now institutional research both in general
(as reviewed by Rubery, 1997) and in relation to the NMW (Gilman et al., 2002) that
suggests how the labour market can be understood.
Yet there is also evidence of some openness to institutional research. In the USA,
the National Bureau of Economic Research developed its pin factory initiative (see
http://www.nber.org/programs/pr). The objective was to persuade economists to
engage in field research, drawing on Adam Smiths archetypical pin factory, in order
that they can understand the dynamics and complexity of concrete cases. Discussing
the benefits, Helper (2000: 228) remarks that understanding the setting can help
explain differences in findings between cases, by making clear the mechanism by which
variables are linked, thus touching on a theme widely rehearsed by IR researchers
and also unconsciously expressing a core tenet of CR.
As to how to improve impact, some modest suggestions may be made. First, we
might keep spelling out the distinct contribution, for example, in showing how the
NMW has variable effects within firms. Second, IR researchers may be able to help
themselves by sharing experience as to attempts to make connections that seem to
work and any noticeable impact. Third, the pin factory example points to scholars in
related areas who may be open to institutionally informed IR analysis. It may, for
example, be possible to use journal special issues or edited volumes rather than cold
submissions to journals to promote an IR view. Perhaps particularly constructive,
though also difficult, would be an attempt to move beyond general perspectives to
empirical projects that address puzzles faced by cognate fields that might be resolved
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with an IR view. Crucially, we would be seeking analyses that count as explanations,

rather than as simply interesting empirical facts. IR may thus not advance any freestanding theory but can contribute to theoretically informed inquiry by showing how
its approaches help to address theoretical gaps left by core disciplines.

MAKING IT WORK: METHODOLOGICAL CHALLENGES

A key methodological challenge is, in line with CR, that of developing plausible causal
accounts and then developing a research programme of cumulative analysis. Consider
the debate on trade unions and productivity: once it was recognised that the linkage
between the two depends on context (Freeman and Medoff, 1984: 179), it was hard
to proceed much further with conventional techniques. CR would argue that the
solution lies, not in more and more refinements to surveys or individual case studies,
but in identifying relevant causal mechanisms and then using an appropriate mix of
methods to elucidate their operation. In certain areas such as the analysis of teamwork
an implicit cumulative programme has emerged, but there is now a need to be more
systematic.
The method of qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) as laid out by Ragin (1987)
and also Becker (1998: 182194) has some potential here. QCA is a complex method
involving the use of Boolean algebra but in essence it is quite simple, as Ragins own
example (which as it happens is an IR one) shows. Suppose that an analyst wants to
know whether strikes are successful or not. Three possible conditions are identified:
a booming product market, labelled A; the threat of sympathy strikes, B; and a large
strike fund, C. The various combinations of A, B and C are related to strike outcomes,
and it can be shown whether, for example, success depends on both A and B being
present but not C, or whether C alone is sufficient. The value of this way of thinking
is that it encourages the analyst to identify logical possibilities and then go through
the evidence systematically to see what combination of factors is necessary and sufficient for a given outcome. It also invites development of new research. In this case, it
may be that information is not available on all the logical possibilities of the combination of A, B and C, so that research should then seek out missing cases.
The qualitative comparative analysis has generally been applied to macro questions
such as differences between nation states. In this context, Goldthorpe (2000: 51)
identifies three problems. First, the approach is highly deterministic, with prior conditions always being required to produce one outcome or another. Second, it reduces
complex characteristics to simple binary yes/no attributes. Third, analysis is highly
dependent on the correct coding of a country, with a single change of classification
having potentially major effects.
These are key points, and QCA is not a magic solution. But it has the merit of
helping thinking about a given case in the light of others. Suppose that a researcher
conducts a study of teamwork and concludes that it has failed. The first need is to
have clear criteria of failure rather than the rather vague accounts that can be found
in the literature. Second, what factor or combination of factors seems to account for
the failure? Is there a systematic causal account of the case itself ? Third, how does
this account marry with others in the literature? For example, if middle management
resistance is identified, where is the evidence of this phenomenon in the case, does it
appear in other cases, and does it seem to be important in itself or only when other
conditions exist? Finally, further case study research can then be armed with clear
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expectations, for example, that middle management resistance seems to have been
important where teamwork had one form rather than another, so that new research
would seek cases where the relevant phenomena varied in key ways and where new
explanations might thus be developed. The recent article by Roscigno and Hodson
(2004) is instructive here. This takes Hodsons database created by developing quantitative indicators from a set of workplace ethnographies and deploys QCA along with
more conventional methods. It relates patterns of conflict to characteristics of workplace regimes and then identifies three distinct types of regime.
A key issue in relation to individual cases is to try to select them with a clear view
in mind, ahead of time, as to what lessons can be drawn. What is the answer to the
question, what is this a case of, that is, from what class of things is this case drawn,
and hence what does it tell us about processes in this class of things? If we look, for
example, at the mass of recent work on call centres, we need to move beyond the
starting point of holding up reality against some model such as the electronic sweatshop to ask whether particular results are, say, specific to non-union call centres in
Scotland, or likely to hold in all non-union cases, or relevant to non-union cases where
the work has a quasi-Taylorist form but not where a more high skills vision is
pursued. If this is done with precision, then a single new case can have important
wider lessons.
A second aspect of methodology relates to different levels of analysis. A wellestablished point about much IR case research is that the focus has been on concrete
events at micro level rather than the wider structural conditions that shape behaviour
(Purcell, 1983). Thompson (2003) underlines the point in identifying a small number
of case studies that examine the different levels at which employment restructuring
occurs. Linking workplace experience to other levels of change is a key route forward.
Turning to issues of research technique, it may be an appropriate time to look at
the tried and trusted method of interview-based case studies. They have limitations in
terms of process and outcomes. In relation to process, they rely on reports rather than
direct observation of behaviour and they tend to depend on retrospective accounts
that may be coloured by events. OMahoney (2000) conducted by contrast a longitudinal study in which he reports that respondents claimed, after a new system of work
organisation was in operation, that they had always been in favour of it, whereas
interviewed earlier they had been highly sceptical. Bonazzis (1998) observational
study of supervisors is also instructive, for it asks about the impact of changes on their
work not by asking for their accounts but by observing what they did and thus
showing how their tasks had changed. In relation to outcomes, reports have obvious
limitations. Some studies carefully collect outcomes data, but more can be done to
identify the outcomes of interest and ways of measuring them. Considered attention
to the design of ethnographic studies will also contribute to the integration of gender
perspectives, for, as Greene (2003: 313) notes, the relevant processes in organisations
are hidden and thus require in-depth qualitative research.
In relation to international comparisons, we know in broad terms that global forces
are shaped in numerous ways. We now need to show more exactly how and why one
sector differs from another, and thus develop causal explanations of the ways in which
such shaping takes place and the conditions leading to one form rather than another.
The issues of research design here are very large, for they embrace differences between
countries, sectors and companies, and interactions between all three. Yet, as argued
above, research has progressed considerably, and there is no reason why further
development cannot be made.
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THE CHALLENGE OF RELEVANCE

The above reflections have a strong practical relevance. From 1979 until the mid-1990s,
the relevance of IR research may have seemed small. Managements confidently pursuing what Kessler and Purcell (2003) characterise as the dominant cost-minimisation
strategy would have had little time for employee relations. The government agenda
was also largely deregulatory. Yet we now see two lines of development.
First, cost minimisation may have reached its limits. Evidence points to a widespread sense of insecurity (Heery and Salmon, 2000) and to growing employee awareness of extensive and increasing use of monitoring and performance targets (Felstead
et al., 2002; Green, 2001). One recent study finds that pressures to attain targets are
substantial even for managers (Ogbonna and Wilkinson, 2003). As Green (2003: 145)
concludes, intensification of effort is hardly viable as a long-term strategy for sustainable growth.
Second, consideration of alternative views is illustrated by the TUC and CBI
agreeing that a climate of mutual trust between managers and employees is essential
to organisational success (CBI-TUC, 2001) and by growing interest in partnership.
We might also place IR in the context of major debates about corporate governance
and corporate social responsibility. As a recent symposium (BJIR, 2003) on the former
shows, these bring to the centre of attention such questions as the rights of stakeholders (including employees), the ethical responsibilities of firms, and the degree of
transparency of decision making and systems of auditing. Such debates are evidently
ones in which IR concerns with employee voice could play a part. Adding to the
company perspective are the external context and the position of employees. The most
obvious of the former are new information and consultation requirements. But there
are also wider arguments about competing models of capitalism and the benefits of
coordinated market economies. Governance is indeed multilevel, and there is a growing need for clear analysis of the linkages between levels.
There is thus a context in which critical analysis, that is one that is aware of
contradictory pressures rather than proffering immediate solutions, has a role to play.
Consider, for example, the following aphorisms (Becker et al., 2001: 32, 39): HR
performance drivers are unique to each firm; and strategy implementation, rather
than strategy content, differentiates successful from unsuccessful firms. IR academics
are particularly well-placed to elucidate the important truths in these remarks. The
wealth of research on why performance-related pay or total-quality management often
do not work in practice speaks volumes about the importance of implementation,
consistent messages, trust and, above all, understanding change programmes in the
context of past history and the socially structured expectations that shape responses
to new initiatives. An understanding of the contradictions of the employment relationship may be of particular value to practitioners struggling to make sense of a
complex world and doing so moreover when their own employment situations are
increasingly affected by pressures of rationalisation and restructuring.

CONCLUSIONS
Industrial relations traditional inductive and problem-oriented approach has been its
strength and its weakness: a strength in addressing concrete questions without being
confined to a particular discipline, but a weakness in lacking explicit theory and in at
best responding to rather than driving forward new intellectual agendas. This article
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has focused on the context-sensitive aspects of IR to argue that there have been
analytical advances, and hence, that the weaknesses are not as disabling as is sometimes claimed; offer some lines of future development around philosophical bases and
methodological approaches; and suggest that such development has an affinity with
IRs practical focus, which focus may also be of growing salience. It would be fanciful
to suppose that there is an agreed research paradigm or that practical relevance will
be readily demonstrated. Yet it is also true that there is more potential than is
sometimes realised.
Within IR itself, the integration of a gendered perspective remains an issue, and one
way forward in this area is comparative analysis, for example, of different conditions
promoting or retarding gender-based solidarity. IR research has developed a research
programme in such areas as the nature of teamwork, but it has not been a planned
one. For the future, a more careful selection of comparative cases, together with
attention to the kinds of data collected and the research techniques used to generate
them, is a key issue. Such points also pertain to the issue of international research.
Here, advances have been made in showing how new forms of work organisation vary
on national, sectoral and individual company lines. Yet the next challenge is substantial: to move beyond showing that there are such variations towards a stronger explanation of just how and why they exist.
As for demonstrating the potential of IR traditions, two complementary routes
suggest themselves. One is to work with scholars from related areas in business studies.
Some researchers on call centres, for example, argue that if we are to place labour
relations issues in their context we may need to work with people from operations
management, the better to understand the technical division of labour and, hence, its
links with the social. The second is to work with researchers in mainstream social
science disciplines to tease out the theoretical contribution of IR. This is not just a
question of using IR to solve puzzles for the disciplines, for such intellectual arrogance may seem presumptuous. It is a matter of contributing to debates while also
taking from the disciplines new themes from which IR can learn.
Industrial relations research can look back with a degree of satisfaction, in particular, in the light of the obvious and varied challenges that it has faced. We do
not need a major rethinking of our fundamental views of the subject, and indeed
some of the core themes of Commons and the Webbs seem as relevant as they ever
were. As noted at the start of the article, Kaufman identifies several intellectual and
institutional challenges to IR. Yet, in his assessment of the Wisconsin School, he
identifies in that school a broad and inclusive stance that was committed not to any
particular concrete model of IR but to general principles of efficiency, equity and
human well-being; he argues that such an approach can continue to inform the
current agenda (Kaufman, 2003b). It is more a matter of reinvigorating the field by
developing methods and theories so that we can explain the ever-changing world of
work in a way that is intellectually convincing and also (indeed, hence) of relevance
to policy.
The challenge of showing research relevance in business schools was mentioned
earlier. Yet one interesting indicator emerges from a study of journal publications in
the 2001 UK Research Assessment Exercise (Geary et al., 2004: 101). This identified
the 20 most frequently cited journals in Business and Management. Nine of these
cover the field of work and employment; they accounted for 613 of the 1,551 publications in this group (40 per cent). They are listed below, together with the total number
of citations, the mean RAE rating for the business school returning publications in
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Paul Edwards

the journal3, and the number of times cited in submissions from schools with the top
5 and 5* ratings. They include, in order of number of total submissions:
Journal
Total
British Journal of Industrial Relations
84
Human Relations
78
International Journal of HRM
76
Organization Studies
75
Work, Employment and Society
64
Human Resource Management Journal
64
Industrial Relations Journal
60
Personnel Review
57
Organization
55

Mean
5.3
5.2
4.9
5.3
4.9
4.6
4.7
4.2
5.4

Returned by 5 and
5* departments
40
35
32
37
24
16
13
9
26

In addition, Employee Relations is just outside the top 20 journals by submission (48,
4.5, 9), with 19 submissions from New Technology, Work and Employment, 14 from
the European Journal of Industrial Relations and 11 from Historical Studies in Industrial Relations. Students of the Industrial Relations Journal, in particular, can conclude
that it came fourth among the targeted IR/HR journals. There are three other conclusions: there was no dominance of journals focusing on either IR or HRM; IR/HR
journals feature prominently in top submissions; and a wide range of such journals,
rather than a clear elite, was represented among such submissions.
The challenges of linking theory and empirical research, in particular, in international comparison, face social science as a whole. To expect IR in and of itself to
resolve the relevant issues would be unrealistic. It is none the less well-placed to play
its part. It is very hard, however, to say whether such an intellectual programme is
itself sufficient, in a context of intense academic politics and, more importantly,
changing definitions of employment relations.
Acknowledgements
I am particularly grateful to Keith Sisson and Paul Marginson for their advice. Thanks
also to two anonymous referees, Peter Ackers, Ardha Danieli, Steve Fleetwood, John
Godard, Anne-Marie Greene, Bruce Kaufman, Mari Sako and Mike Terry. The article
reflects work as a senior fellow in the Advanced Institute of Management Research,
funded by the Economic and Social Research Council.
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A rating corresponding to the seven-point RAE rating scale. RAE rating 5* = 7.

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