McKinsey, Hilmer and the BCA: The 'New Management' Model of Labour Market Reform

Abstract

This paper will discuss the origins and development of the labour market reform agenda pursued by the Business Council of Australia (the council). This agenda found its initial expression in the attempt to apply the McKinsey 'new manage ment' model of employment relations to the regulation of the labour market in Australia. The 'popular' management works of Fred Hilrner are discussed, as is their relationship to the various reports issued by the council from 1989 to 1993 on the development of enterprise-based employment relations. The paper will assess the extent to which the McKinsey-Hilmer-council discourse influenced the terms of the enterprise bargaining debate in the later 1980s and 1990s. In turn, there will be consideration of tlte extent to which the developments in the council's discourse were influenced by changes to the industrial relations system in the same period and the adoption of the enterprise discourse by other contributors to the labour market debate. The paper concludes that the council was able to take a leading role in establishing the hegemony of the enterprise discourse without necessarily achieving a regulatory regime that matched its 'new management' model of employment relations.