Industrial Relations Problems Research Articles

Problem-Based Learning: Providing Students the Opportunity to Solve Real-World Industry Problems in the Safety of the Classroom

The heart and soul of Problem-Based Learning (PBL) is the problem. Conceptualizing problems that can be digested by students is another matter altogether; it takes an inordinate amount of time and effort to write just one. Worse still, one is hard pressed to find a bank of problems that can be referenced to cut the time it takes to write them unless teaching a health- or sciences-related course. This article describes a technique that was developed to condense the time it was taking to write problems for an undergraduate hospitality and tourism sales course. The technique involves inviting industry professionals into the classroom to personally share a sales-related problem that their business is experiencing. Student teams then develop their proposals and submit them to the client who then ranks (for grading purposes) and returns them to the students. This technique has been a tremendous benefit to students because it gives them a chance to work on real-world, industry-related problems in the safety of the classroom.

On the Move: Córas Iompair Éireann 1945-95

The beginning of the railways in Ireland is the starting point for this major work on a significant Irish institution, Coras Iompair Eireann - the national public transport organisation. The troubled stories of the railways is outlined, through to the political controversy that attended CIE's birth in 1944. The rise of the motor car and the privately-owned lorry affected the demand for public transport and the author describes CIE's struggle with an inherently conflicting mandate which required it to serve an undefined 'national interest' while meeting sometimes arbitrary financial targets. Conversion of railways from steam to diesel power, unsuccessful efforts by the Dublin and Belfast governments to preserve the Great Northern Railway, bitter protests at various railway closures, the saga of the canals and of CIE's hotels, are all recorded. Bus operations also feature, including the Van Hool and Bombardier stories, the success of Expressway, growing urban traffic congestion and industrial relations problems, particularly concerning one-person bus operation.

アメリカ産業における安全運動の波及と労使関係管理の生成

The passage of workmen's compensation laws in 1910 and the succeeding years gave a powerful impetus to the efforts of specialists in the area of industrial safety. In this environment the “Safety First” movement, which was an organized effort in accident prevention led by chief safety inspectors who were more commonly known as “safety men, ” extended all over the country. Many safety men were not engineers, so there were some critical views to the movement from engineers who had much training and experience in mechanical engineering and systematic management.At the beginning of the movement safety men and engineers had totally different viewpoints in approaching industrial safety. Engineers insisted that industrial accidents could be prevented by safety devices and in no other way, and that designing the safety devices was an engineering problem. Whereas safety men preached that only a few percent of accident cases could be reduced by guarding dangerous places, and that the prevention of the vast majority of accidents was possible through educational methods eliminating the carelessness of workmen.One of the most important features of the educational programs was the safety committee, which was sometimes composed entirely of foreign speaking workmen for “sowing seeds of caution” among them. The effectiveness of the educational methods was gradually accepted by some engineers, especially members of the Association of Iron and Steel Electrical Engineers. And the Association supported projects of safety men in the steel industry to found a national organization for disseminating the movement. From these efforts the National Council for Industrial Safety was founded in September, 1913 (one year after renamed the National Safety Council).It is interesting to note that in the course of every-day accident prevention work on the shop floor, safety men realized that any safety work would not gain fruitful results without resolving the problems of industrial relations. In order to organize the communication system between employer and employee they enlarged step by step the functions of the safety committee, at last which became in fact the prototype of the employee representation plan. Arthur H. Young, a prominent safety man, recalled that one of the by-products of the safety movement had been the growth of the industrial relations movement.

Industrial relations in the UK prison service

Industrial relations problems in the UK Prison Service are part of the wider crisis within the penal system over the past 30 years, from the era of the Mountbatten Report of 1966 to the Woolf Report of 1990, and beyond. Incidents and disputes, concerning both industrial relations and the problems of prison regimes, attract wide media reporting, not all of it accurate. Attempts to redress this selectivity, and to demonstrate the complex linkages between industrial relations and the administration, management and reform of the penal system. Focusing mainly on the Home Office Prison Service (HOPS), and on the three main trade unions, highlights the differing political goals of the prison service, and the perpetual turmoil without clear purpose in which the principal actors seem to be enmeshed.

Waterfront Reform in Britain and Australia—In Practice and in Principle

In 1989 industry-wide employment arrangements in Britain's docks and on the Australian wharves were abandoned in favour of company- or enterprise-level arrangements. In both countries waterfront reform was a response to industrial relations problems and economic inefficiency, but there the similarity ends. In Britain the abolition of the National Dock Labour Scheme has unleashed a cost-cutting exercise of unparalleled proportions, with massive job losses and new working practices implemented almost literally overnight. This has produced a short-term fillip to productivity, but has failed to address many of the industry's underlying problems. In contrast, the three-year In-Principle Agreement negotiated in Australia has produced less spectacular changes but has laid the foundations for long-term structural reform.

Piecework and Industrial Relations Problems in ‘Other Manufacturing’ in Northern Ireland

British Journal of Industrial RelationsVolume 28, Issue 2 p. 271-276 Piecework and Industrial Relations Problems in ‘Other Manufacturing’ in Northern Ireland Brian Tipping, Brian Tipping Senior Research Officer, Labour Relations Agency, BelfastSearch for more papers by this author Brian Tipping, Brian Tipping Senior Research Officer, Labour Relations Agency, BelfastSearch for more papers by this author First published: July 1990 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8543.1990.tb00368.xCitations: 1 AboutPDF ToolsExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume28, Issue2July 1990Pages 271-276 RelatedInformation

Employee Attitude Surveys in Historical Perspective

The history of employee attitude testing in American industry is presented as an example of how behavioral science has been used by management as a tool for solving industrial relations problems. Developed in the twenties, worker attitude surveys were widely used during the late thirties and after World War II to improve employee relations and employee loyalty. Problems associated with surveying, including the inexperience and naiveté of the survey takers, led industry to form close ties with academic behavioral scientists.

An approach for negating the view that technology ‘competes’ with humans

SUMMARYEngineers have traditionally invested in Advanced Manufacturing Technology (AMT), such as FMS, Robots, CAD/CAM, CNC and MRP to achieve a reduction in the labour force. Similarly, government incentives for introducing AMT, have also placed an undue emphasis on the ‘need to replace labour with technology’. This policy creates severe industrial relations problems and leads to the view that technology, especially robots, ‘competes’ with human beings for employment. Research at U.M.I.S.T. has shown that AMT is much more viable when the objective of the investment is to increase a company's overall competitive ability, thereby generating increased sales which, in turn, necessitates an INCREASED labour force. The paper discusses various aspects of AMT and in each case it is shown how the acceptability of the investment is improved when the new technology is viewed ‘company-wide’. When this occurs, technology is viewed as being ‘complementary to’ and not ‘instead of’ humans.

OR Practice—Computerized Vehicle Routing in the Soft Drink Industry

This paper examines the use of microcomputer-based vehicle routing software in the soft drink industry. In general, the construction of vehicle routes is a complicated task due to the size of the fleet, the number of customers, difficult real-world constraints, and the fact that such routes must be constructed in a relatively short period of time. In the past several years, microcomputers have become more powerful and less expensive, thus enhancing their attractiveness to potential users. Not surprisingly, the marketplace has witnessed rapid growth in the number of vehicle routing packages that are commercially available. In this paper, we review some of the critical vehicle routing issues in the soft drink industry and present several case studies that highlight the ways in which software packages have been able to cope with these concerns and other industry-related problems. The case studies focus on the interfacility transfer of soft drink products, the delivery of products that have been ordered in advance by customers, and the delivery of soft drink products that are sold by drivers to customers.

Innovation and Management Control: Labour Relations at BL Cars

This book contributes to our knowledge of the social and economic implications of the adoption of new technology, on the basis of a detailed study of the process by which BL cars, in financial crisis in 1975 and with a history of several industrial relations problems, launched the first of its new model range in 1980. It draws on substantial data from the company itself and describes the emergence of a new management strategy which emphasised the right to manage on the shopfloor, and the consequences of this for trade union organisation, the role of shop stewards, and the organisation of work. It emphasises the importance of labour relations reform in securing the success of the new model, and the relationships between innovation decisions and changes on the shopfloor. It then discusses the wider implications of, and the theoretical and policy conclusions to be drawn from, the development of such labour relations strategies.

Towards a microscopic analysis of industrial innovations: From diffusion curves to technological integration through participative management

This paper traces the development of ever more microscopic analyses of the industrial innovation process and presents these as progressive stages in a gradual coming to terms with the real-life complexities of this process. Begining with the macroscopic, diffusion perspective inherited from rural sociology, it reveals how more user-centred models have emerged. The changing image of the user is traced from “passive adopter” to “managerial problem solver” and finally, to “innovative designer”. The paper then turns to the difficulties involved in understanding the nature of the firm's infrastructure and the implications it has for innovation management and industrial relations problems. Research in this area is identified as a crucial source of the new management tachniques that are required to solve the growing problems of resistance to technology implementation. A socio-psychological analysis drawing upon the concepts of the ethogenic approach is proposed and seen to recommend a participative management style similar to that used so successfully by the Japanese.

Incomes Policy and Wage Differentials

Periodic incomes policies have by now become a feature of most Western economies. It has also become clear that there is a trade-off between the features of an incomes policy that make it initially acceptable and the features that make it ultimately effective. For example, most British incomes policies of the 1970s have provided higher permissible proportionate wage increases for low-wage than for high-wage workers. As we argue in Section II below, the primary advantage (and perhaps cause) of such policies is that they can more readily secure the ex ante support of a majority of workers for any specified overall increase in the wage bill or inflation target. If they are effective, however, such policies also result in the narrowing of wage differentials, and this results in new problems. Some economists consider such wage equalization the inevitable cost that an economy must bear for the sake of an effective incomes policy. Others believe the arbitrary narrowing of wage differentials creates industrial relations problems that ultimately cause the incomes policy to fail. In either case, it is important to know how much equalization has been caused by the actual incomes policies and how this compares with what would have been expected from strictly adhered-to policies. In consequence, the first (and major) part of this paper contains a simple analysis of the movement of differentials in Britain in the last decade. Most incomes policies have been explicitly equalizing, but how much equalization occurred, compared with the equalization that would have occurred if the policies had been explicitly adhered to? We show that the 1973 formula of ?1 plus 4 per cent was associated with the full equalizing effect it implied, but the 1975 ?6 a week was largely submerged in other changes and was associated with less than a third of the equalization implied by the formula. Indeed, such mild equalization as occurred between 1975 and 1977 may be explained partly by the lower inflation rate, which reduced that part of the inequality of instantaneous earnings that is caused by different groups of workers settling at different times of year. Against this, higher unemployment may have been tending to increase inequality at the same time. In 1974 threshold payments were associated with an effect of about one-half of their predicted level. The main force that offset the equalizing nature of the threshold formula and the ?6 a week was, we believe, the pressure of employers bidding up the relative earnings of the more skilled workers. Having looked at the overall picture, we then examine more closely which groups have gained and lost from recent changes in relative wages, and what equalization has occurred within the different groups. The groups are defined by occupation and by collective agreement. Our general conclusion is that, however finely the labour force is subdivided, equalization between groups has played a very small role in the overall equalization and the main changes

The management of redundancy

The management of redundancy has always posed difficult industrial relations problems. As the recession has deepened these problems have of course become far more widespread. This article explores aspects of redundancy from the standpoints of employers and employees.

Competition in the UK automobile market: An empirical study

Profiles the changing face of the UK automobile market 1978‐80. Examines the changing fortunes of the four major British producers – BL, Ford, Vauxhall and Talbot – in the light of political and economic factors and the emergence of increased competition from imports. Outlines methods used by Western Europeans and the Japanese to establish themselves in the UK market and subsequently increase their share of the market. Highlights the weaknesses of UK manufacturers – the limited size of UK plants, a tendency for model overlap and industrial relations problems. Explores the nature of competition in the UK market and the effectiveness of advertising. Concludes that UK manufacturers need to launch products perceived as modern, value for money and reliable if they are to combat the ever‐increasing threat from foreign competitors.

Social psychology and training techniques for industrial negotiators

While it is accepted that social psychology has much to offer in the understanding of industrial relations problems and the development of negotiating skills, is there any hard social psychological evidence as to the usefulness of particular techniques of negotiation? In this article the author attempts to answer this question.

What is Good Industrial Relations?

The emergence in the post‐war period of industrial relations as a rapidly growing field of study was a consequence of the subject becoming increasingly defined as a “problem”. During the 1950s and 60s the increasing level of strike activity, especially unofficial and unconstitutional strikes, attracted widespread attention. Low labour productivity and wage inflation were also widely seen as important industrial relations problems. These problems attracted the attention of academics from a wide variety of disciplines who developed the study of industrial relations in a way which largely reflected this preoccupation with problems.

Introducing productivity incentives in the British coal‐mining industry

Some of the more important industrial relations problems facing the British coal‐mining industry arise from the wage payment system. The industry has had three major shifts in its wage structure since nationalisation. In this article Paul Clark traces these developments and assesses the 1977–78 Area Incentive Scheme.

Industrial Relations Climate: A Case Study Approach

The industrial relations climate of a steelworks was investigated through a programme of structured interviews with shop stewards and managers at all levels. Interviewees were asked how often they handled different types of industrial relations issues, how often they interacted with their opposite numbers at different levels to solve those problems, how satisfied they were with the way each of the problems were handled and, how satisfied they were with their opposite numbers' handling of industrial relations problems generally. Results shows that there was union‐management agreement about the nature of the local climate, but that the climate differed across departments in accordance with data from independent sources. The findings also indicated that in this plant the climate was more ‘issue‐centred’ than ‘person‐centred’. It was concluded that the technique could be similarly useful in other settings for the speedy appraisal of industrial relations at plant level, but that more comparative research on industrial relations climate was needed.

Industrial relations problems—OR's contribution

This paper considers the contribution which OR (Operational Research) can make to solving some of the problems in the industrial relations field. It first discusses the characteristics of industrial relations problems, categorising them according to the degree of conflict involved. The kinds of contribution OR can make are then discussed, first in a general way and then for each category in turn. The paper draws particular attention to the need for OR work in much of the industrial relations field to take account of the existence of conflict and of the game-like nature of the negotiating process. Some of the problems this presents to the OR worker are mentioned. Directions for future developments in the field are proposed. Finally there is a brief discussion about whether the issues raised in the paper are relevant to OR's contribution in fields other than industrial relations.

Aspects of collective bargaining

These views epitomise the problem of industrial relations, collective bargaining and wage determination in the UK. They are not new. Indeed, they have occupied the economic stage since 1946. And it is unlikely they will wither away, as Marx predicted the capitalist system would, so long as the capitalist mixed economy exists. The reconciliation of the public interest, as defined by the Government, with the level of pay settlements negotiated by employers and trade unions is one fraught with considerable difficulty. The Government is technically an intruder to the processes of collective bargaining when it imposes guidelines for wage bargaining. Wage bargaining in such circumstances is not free since, if observed, it may not serve the interests of the immediate parties to an agreement.