Negotiating Skills Training and Industrial Relations Development

Abstract

The last 15 years have seen an upsurge of writings, research and debate in the field of industrial relations. Allan Flanders in the early 1960s, the Royal Commission on Trade Unions in the late 1960s, the Training Boards and the Commission on Industrial Relations in the 1970s, have all emphasized the need for increased industrial relations training. In this paper it is intended to consider only one aspect of this training — the development of negotiating skills. The paper will be concerned with the elements that go to make up negotiating skills, the methods of training, and thereafter look at the limitations of these methods, based as they are on ‘manager development’, as opposed to developing more effective industrial relations policies — that is, ‘industrial relations development’.