Industrial relations

Industrial relations

  • Submitted By: jars
  • Date Submitted: 04/29/2015 9:18 PM
  • Category: Business
  • Words: 2212
  • Page: 9

 3) Essay: 30% (due Monday 23 September) Length: 2,000 words

Unitarist, pluralist and radical perspectives portray the workplace differently. Describe the three perspectives and highlight the distinctiveness of each approach to the employment relationship.
(You must use some of the readings from Week 4 to prepare your paper).


Farnham and Pimlott (1979), p.xi) state, “Employment relations is inevitably a site of competing ideas. It represents an area of social relations that affects everyone who works and about which almost everyone has an opinion, and often those opinions differ, leading to conflict” (Kaufman, 2011, 16). Thus with respect to ideological positions such as Pluralist, Unitarist, and radical perspectives, it is important to acknowledge that the foundation of employment relations revolves around different views on the most effective ways to manage the relationship between and organisation and its representatives. These approaches reflect also give insight into the culture and nature of an organisation and society as a whole.

Employment relations, is a term which describes a practice which involves all individuals who derive an income through work, or who become involved in the organisation and management of employees at work. The ‘efficiency’ and ‘equity’ of employment relations, and relationships can play a major role in the effectiveness of the overall organisational performance (Kaufman 2011, 14; Edwards, 2003). Dunlop’s model suggests that all industrial relations systems are comprised of three main parties (state, employer and employee) who contribute to an overall generated set of rules and regulations within an organisation. Thus these rules have a primary influence of the employment relations and rule making behaviour within the system (Kaufman, 2011, 14).

A pluralist’s perspective highlights that the potential for conflict is inevitable within employment relationships. Pluralist’s take the view that an enterprise consists of...

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