Full bibliography

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.