The mercurial nature of Australian HRM under enterprise bargaining

Abstract

The period of industrial relations change in Australia since the early 1990s has become typified as an era of enterprise bargaining. Notwithstanding controversy over its meaning, debate concerning its theoretical foundations, and its evident managerialism, this period has seen the concurrent ascendance of human resource management (HRM). Drawing on survey data from the mid-1980s to the present, this paper sketches the mosaic of changes in regard to HRM in Australia during the era of enterprise bargaining. The paper reveals that past turmoil over terminology, that is, HRM versus industrial relations and employee relations, has abated. It shows that the shift of enterprise bargaining and HR activity to the workplace level was underway prior to the much touted workplace relations legislation of the Coalition government. Further, it suggests that HRM has both burgeoned and fractured, the latter characteristic imbuing it with a mercurial nature which creates difficulty in comprehensively characterising HRM in ...