Theories of Industrial

Relations
Learning Objectives
 Discuss about Dunlop’s theory

 Discuss about Globalisation theory

 Discuss about Strategic choice theory

 Discuss about Labor process theory

 Dunlop’s theory

 John Dunlop in the 1950s

 three agents – management organizations,

workers and formal/informal ways they are

organized and government agencies.
 These actors and their organizations are located

within an environment – defined in terms of

technology, labor and product markets, and the
distribution of power in wider society as it
impacts upon individuals and workplace.
 Dunlop’s theory
 Within this environment, actors interact with each
other, negotiate and use economic/political power in
process of determining rules that constitute the
output of the industrial relations system.
 employers, labor unions, and government– are the
key actors in a modern industrial relations system.
 none of these institutions could act in an
autonomous or independent fashion. they were
shaped, by their market, technological and political
contexts.
 industrial relations is a social sub system subject to
three environmental constraints- the markets,
distribution of power in society and technology.
Globalisation Theory
 Spread and connectedness of production,
communication and technologies across the
world.
 IMF, World Bank
 Shift in power from the nation state to MNC’s
 Anthony Giddens (1990: 64) has described
globalization as ‘the intensification of
worldwide social relations which link distant
localities in such a way that local happenings
are shaped by events occurring many miles
away and vice versa’. This involves a change
in the way we understand geography and
experience localness. As well as offering
opportunity it brings with considerable risks
linked, for example, to technological change.
Strategic choice theory
 Child (1972)
 role that leaders or leading groups play in

influencing an organization through making

choices in a dynamic political process

 formed part of an organizational learning

process that adapted to the external
environment as well as the internal political
situation.
Labor Process Theory
 Thompson, P. and Newsome, K.J. (2004)
 the process whereby labour is materialized or
objectified in use values.

 Labour is here an interaction between the person

who works and the natural world

 the work itself, a purposive productive activity;

second the object(s) on which that work is
performed; and third, the instruments which
facilitate the process of work.[