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It is now commonplace to hear about the re‐forming potential of new
employment practices such as employee involvement, TQM, empowerment,
teamworking, and HRM. There are arguments that these have contributed to
organizational success, and a feeling that these are all things to be
welcomed. But not all analysts agree that these are as widely practised
as the glowing reports would have us believe, and there is a contrary
view that these approaches lead to greater work intensification and less
satisfied employees. Many of the gurus who write about these issues
implicitly assume that all can be improved by a wave of the magic wand
and the slaying of a few "evil" characters along the way.
Reality, of course, is much more complex. The argument here is that
there are no instant solutions, but the process and achievement of
change are difficult since so much depends on the quality of
employee‐management relationships at the workplace.

Discussions about the position of British trade unions under Thatcherism continue to interest scholars and practitioners in the UK, and a variety of theories have been put forward which suggest that unions are becoming increasingly marginal to workplace employee relations. Three of these are focused on, namely, the roll‐back of union organisation, the separation of collective bargaining from strategic decision making, and the impact of employee involvement on union activity. These ideas are evaluated against data from a longitudinal study of four multi‐plant private sector organisations, each of which has high levels of union density and some forms of employee involvement. The data, which were collected in the late 1980s, suggest that simple monocausal correlations – such as employee involvement is directly undermining trade unions – are not robust enough to cope with the reality of organisational life. Much more credence needs to be given to the environmental and more broader managerial context within which employee relations takes place.

The issue of union power never seems to be far from the centre of political debate and, indeed, during the last year, its prominence would seem to be more marked than usual. For example, the Social Contract and the Concordat between the previous Labour Government and the TUC have been used as illustrations of the way in which union power was influencing and, to a large extent, determining national policy over a wide range of subjects. The familiar cartoon of James Callaghan asking the advice of Jack Jones and Moss Evans bore witness to this. Similarly, industrial democracy—principally the idea of workers on the Board—has been regarded by many industrialists as a basic attack upon the traditions of private enterprise and a way in which trade unions will infiltrate the decision‐making processes within companies.

Investigates the devolution of human resources (HR) responsibilities to the line within a large food manufacturing company. A total of 13 senior/board level line managers took part in this study. Records questionnaire and interview data with reference to line manager perceptions of their involvement in HR activities. Of interest is the finding that the line managers claimed to be satisfied with the HR responsibilities that have been devolved to them and are keen to take on activities that relate explicitly to the development of their team. Most line managers report working closely with their HR counterparts and see the configuration moving towards a partnership. The line managers' main concern is that a lack of support from HR during the delivery of the service can detract from the overall effectiveness. They also note that junior level line managers are likely to feel less supported by HR and comment that it is merely their high level position that drives the HR‐line partnership in their situations. Suggests that this research will act as a first step in exploring the relationship between varying levels of line managers and their HR counterparts in order to ascertain whether the higher your status in the organisation, the better your relationship is with HR.

Over the years, there have been a number of attempts to construct typologies of workplace industrial relations. Each of these typologies has been useful in helping us to differentiate between workplaces, but we have doubts about the comprehensiveness and applicability of these typologies, and concerns that authors do not justify why they have chosen to focus on certain variables to the neglect of others. The aim of this paper is to offer a review and critique of some of the most widely quoted typologies of workplace industrial relations, before putting forward our own ideas. We have constructed a typology for understanding and predicting how the process of industrial relations change will proceed at workplace level, which is illustrated by examples from our own research. It is hoped that this paper will stimulate further discussion about the nature of typologizing as well as contribute to our understanding of workplace industrial relations.