Introduction: The British Industrial Relations Tradition-Formation, Breakdown, and Salvage

Abstract

Abstract Industrial Relations (IR) is perhaps the oldest and best established of those specialist social science disciplines that feed into business and management studies, with roots going back to the Webbs in Britain and to the intellectual origins of the New Deal in America. Long before Business Schools had appeared on the British academic land scape, strong IR groups had formed at Nuffield College, Oxford, London School of Economics and Warwick, Glasgow, and Cardiff Universities. Prestigious masters and doctoral courses were established, and the discipline founded two leading journals, The British Journal of Industrial Relationsand Industrial Relations Journal, as well as a subject body, the British Universities Industrial Relations Association (BUIRA) with an annual conference. Parallel developments took place in the United States and Australia. In post-war Britain, the pluralist school of Allan Flanders, Hugh Clegg, Alan Fox, and others was a major influence on public policy, notably the 1968 Donovan Royal Commission on Trade Unions and Employers Associations.