A Multidisciplinary View of Social and Labor Relations: Changes in Management in the U.S. and Russia as Examples

Abstract

The management of social and labor systems requires a multidisciplinary perspective. Academic disciplines focus on different aspects of the social change process and use different methods for describing systems. Systems can be described primarily in terms of variables, ideas, groups, or events. All of these methods can be used to create a richer description of the system of interest. This article describes a theory of social change that uses all of these disciplinary methods. Two illustrative cases are presented: adopting quality improvement methods in management in the United States after 1980 and changing social and labor relations in Russia after 1990.