Employer and management strategies in the private sector

Abstract

In this chapter we look at changing employer industrial relations attitudes and strategies in the 1980s. One of the major academic debates during the decade was whether or not there had been a major shift by employers towards policies of ‘macho-management’, unitarism and anti-trade unionism. There has also been an extensive debate about Human Resource Management (HRM) — what it means, how widely it has been adopted, and what its implications are for traditional industrial relations and personnel management. These debates are in a sense part of the still wider question as to whether a ‘new industrial relations’ has developed in the 1980s. These issues are addressed in this chapter, although a final assessment is not made until Chapter 12.