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The ideologies of Canadian industrial relations (IR) scholars are analyzed. At the descriptive level, it would appear that a considerable majority of the scholars, perhaps as high as 70%, adhere to beliefs consistent with either a liberal-reformist or a radical ideology, even though there is widespread support for many of the arguments associated with the "new cooperativism." It would also appear that, whatever the content of ideology, its structure remains by and large one-dimensional. The findings also suggest that scholars who report that they specialize in IR or are affiliated primarily with an IR school tend to be more left-wing than their counterparts in economics and management. This would appear to reflect an ideological partitioning of the field among different schools. In turn, ideology would appear to have important implications for the pedagogy of scholars and the orientation they are likely to convey to future decision makers.
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In the study of industrial relations (IR), a growing preoccupation with managerial strategies has been accompanied by 2 related developments: 1. a growing integration of the human resources management (HRM) literature into the study of IR, and 2. a movement away from the deterministic approach characterizing much IR research in the 1970s. These developments suggest a normative shift. Two assumptions seem to underly this shift. A critique of these assumptions is developed, arguing that underlying sources of conflict inherent to work organizations and employment relations limit the effectiveness of progressive policies and practices and that the extent to which these policies and practices are economically rational and hence likely to be adopted varies in accordance with firm and industry-level structural variables. Survey data collected in 1980-1981 from 100 unionized firms in Canada are used to explore the effectiveness of and structural variation on progressive managerial practices.
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This paper addresses: (1) the extent to which changes appear to have occurred in managerial strategies and labour and employment relations in Canadian firms, and (2) the role of the state relative to anonymous economic forces in accounting for Canadian developments. The general findings are that, while there have been a number of significant changes, these have been more moderate than expected by ‘transformation’ theory; furthermore, the Canadian case is consistent with the argument that state actions play a major role relative to more anonymous economic ‘forces’ in accounting for developments in labour and employment relations. It also suggests an alternative model to that typically assumed by transformation theory, one in which state policies and economic conditions are considered to be important not only for their direct effects on employer policies, but also for their indirect effects, through their implications for worker expectations and union militancy. Although these conclusions are tentative and call for more systematic, comparative research, they are consistent with arguments by Burawoy and others that state actions can serve as an important source of labour regulation at the level of the firm.
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This paper adopts a critical sociological approach to analyze how labor law shaped a 23-day strike at a western Canadian university in the fall of 1995. A chronology of the strike is provided, followed by a brief analysis of how both economic and sociological models contribute to understanding the rationale of the strike. The implications of specific labor laws for this rationale are discussed, with an extension of the critical legal studies tradition by an establishment of how legal biases against unions shape strike activity.
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The article reviews the book, "New Forms of Work Organization--Can Europe Realise its Potential?," by EPOC Research Group.
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- Journal Article (5)