All Change at Work? British Employment Relations 1980‐98, Portrayed by the Workplace Industrial Relations Survey Series

Citation

Thompson, P. (2001), "All Change at Work? British Employment Relations 1980‐98, Portrayed by the Workplace Industrial Relations Survey Series", Employee Relations, Vol. 23 No. 2, pp. 207-214. https://doi.org/10.1108/er.2001.23.2.207.1

These two books represent the fourth of the Workplace Industrial Relations Surveys, the first examining the results from the most recent, 1998 survey, while the latter attempts a full picture from 1980. The authors argue that debate should be “guided by numbers as much as narratives”. They confidently refer to reliable, representative, verifiable and authoritative data. In an academic world where to speak of facts is to invite contempt from the massed hordes of deconstructionists, this is refreshing. Yet industrial relations has been under periodic attack for the “predominance of fact finding and institutional description” (Kelly, 1998, p. 23) long before the current vogue for excessive epistemological scepticism.

So, how much can we learn from the surveys about the past, present and future state of British employment relations? The basic answer to this is quite a lot as long as you do not expect too much. It is impossible to summarise the findings of something as richly detailed as the 1998 survey. The things that stick in the mind tend to be those that go against the grain, particularly of popular managerial, business or political wisdom. Included in this category would be: the continued employment dominance of the large workplace; the limited job autonomy of work teams; the declining decision‐making powers of local managers; and the move away from performance‐related pay.

Some of the most interesting material comes from the changes made to structure and content – a serious rethink of the framework was undertaken in a number of areas. The scope of the questions was enlarged to include areas such as equal opportunity and family‐friendly employment policies, and data were collected from small workplaces and from employees for the first time. The latter is of particular methodological and theoretical significance. Results from the survey are mixed. Employees are revealed as relatively satisfied on measures such as sense of achievement and respect from managers, but sceptical of their bosses’ claims of consultation. Though I did observe with some amusement the finding that job satisfaction was greatest among those that did the least work (less than ten hours a week)!

Any particular survey is, as the WIRS team recognises, just a snapshot. Herein lies the value of the second book, which can draw on a larger time frame, and particularly on time series data from the panel of workplaces. The authors note that the four surveys cover a unique time period that, by happy coincidence, is more or less coterminous with the Conservative’s period of office: “the most distinctive political era in British history” (p. 10). Amongst all the understandably careful language and circumspect claims, a core argument does emerge. That is that this period really does justify the term “transformation”, though it does not entirely resemble that proclaimed by the professional optimists in and beyond the HRM ranks. As some of the IR pessimists of the 1980s began to predict, there has been a progressive destruction of the institutional fabric of collectivism. As joint regulation and some of its institutional offshoots, such as Joint Consultative Committees, have declined, we have seen the rise of direct participation and communication. But this is neither a coherent, alternative system, nor is it as effective as an employee voice mechanism. Tellingly, they find that, “only union‐based channels were positively associated with greater perception of fair treatment by management. No form of direct participation produced this effect” (p. 230).

Again, understandably the team keeps any political sympathies under wraps. But they follow the above quote by a pointed reference to “fairness at work”, highlighting the language of the current government. Having identified the intent and impact of Conservative policy as a vital but not sole source of change, the implication is that any new rules of engagement could have potentially significant effects. However, there is a hint of scepticism about whether a focus on individual employment rights will be sufficient to restore voice and protect against the excesses of managerial power.

This discussion takes place in the final chapter, “Verdict and prospect”. It must be said that this was somewhat disappointing. Frequent references throughout the book to the need to explore further, or leaving it to the reader to judge, are not really taken further. The emphasis is still on summary rather than deeper explanation. To what extent is this in the nature of the exercise? Survey material is best when dealing with trend hypotheses, identifying patterns and the link between factors of influence. When the empirical leverage is strong, this can be very revealing. For example, the fact that the time series data allow the study to identify continuing, joining and leaving workplaces, means that it can move beyond aggregate patterns of change towards potential causal influences at the micro level. “Joiners” are thus associated with a number of new practices, compared to the stability among continuing workplaces.

However, there are inherent limits to the explanatory power of survey data of this type. The section on “The management of employees” examines roles, status and composition, but is narrow and descriptive, lacking any conceptual means to identify relations of control. When terms such as “managerial regime” occasionally crop up, it is out of nowhere. The books sometimes try to fill the explanation gap by using strongly assertive quotes or concepts such as psychological contract and acquisitive individualism from other studies, but against the descriptive and cautious terrain, they appear speculative and unconvincing.

While the core argument about the decline of collectivism is well supported from the data, it remains under‐conceptualised. In this respect, industrial relations, as Kelly (1998) notes, needs to be able to understand the definition and mobilisation of interests, and an absence of theory means that it is harder to draw causal influences from underlying processes and mechanisms. Causal explanation in areas such as labour market flexibility is also potentially more robust when comparisons across national and other boundaries are available (Clark, 1995, p. 598).

These points are not so much criticisms of the studies as reminders of what they cannot or find it very difficult to do. As the authors make clear, it is up to the research community to make use of the data and take it further. While more detailed and sophisticated exploration of WIRS data will be valuable, it is not enough on its own. In‐depth qualitative accounts remain indispensable, for example, in understanding the nature, depth and experience of “new management practices”. The WIRS studies are indeed authoritative, but we need to also grasp the limits of that authority in order to develop complex accounts of the transformation of employment relations.