1 - Introduction: The Enduring ‘Point’ and Value of Industrial Relations Research

Summary

Introduction

Industrial relations (IR) as a field of study principally focuses on the employment relationship and relations between workers and managers, subject matter that is of enduring interest and importance given the dominant role of waged labour in most people's lives (see Hodder and Martínez Lucio, 2021). Despite this, the field has frequently been framed in terms of crises and decline regarding its significance and relevance (see, for example, Strauss, 1989; Ackers and Wilkinson, 2008; Piore, 2011). Undoubtedly, the field has faced significant and ongoing challenges, including: the relative status and position of IR within increasingly marketized, neoliberal universities; the erosion of institutionalized IR, worker representation and collective bargaining within employing organizations; and the increasing influence on both academic and practitioner understandings of the employment relationship, which have to an extent shifted towards related fields of human resource management (HRM), organizational psychology, management studies (critical or otherwise) and similar.

In 2009, the British Universities Industrial Relations Association (BUIRA) published a landmark edited collection, provocatively titled What's the Point of Industrial Relations (Darlington, 2009), which was partly inspired by the dispute over the erosion and planned closure of the long-standing Centre for Industrial Relations at Keele University, where scholars in the field were pushed out of the institution, courses were marked for closure and management were evidently hostile towards, and did not value the field of, study (for an overview of the 2007–08 Keele dispute, see Lyddon, 2008; Seifert, 2009). Featuring contributions from well-known academics in the field and adjacent subject areas, as well as important practitioner contributions from representatives of the Trades Union Congress (TUC) and the Advice, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (ACAS), the collection detailed the various challenges and attacks on the subject area while simultaneously highlighting the enduring academic and more practical importance and relevance of IR.

This book was initially conceived as a means of marking the 70-year anniversary of BUIRA in 2020 and as a follow-up to the 2009 collection. While this has been delayed by several years, in large part, due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the disruption it caused, the challenges identified in the 2009 collection have arguably worsened and intensified.