Industrial Relations in Continental Europe

Abstract

Abstract This chapter compares the disciplinary traditions of industrial relations in continental Europe and Anglo-Saxon countries and argues that industrial relations has not become an independent academic discipline in continental Europe, that this work is undertaken by various social sciences, mainly by industrial sociology, and that it has significantly different characteristics compared to Anglo-Saxon research. Cross-country differences in industrial relations research have hardly been problematized in the literature partly because of the undisputed dominance of Anglo Saxon (i.e., American) research. However, in the face of the current gloomy prognoses of our discipline (Jarley et al. 2001) it might be useful to explore a possible alternative to the quantitative methodology and human resource management topics which increasingly dominate Anglo-Saxon research, and that is the political tradition of industrial relations research in continental Europe.