The Evolution of the Modern Workplace

by Edited by William Brown , Alex Bryson , John Forth , Keith Whitfield

• ISBN13: 9780521514569
• ISBN10: 0521514568
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-09-28
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

The last twenty-five years have seen the world of work transformed in Britain. Manufacturing and nationalized industries contracted and private services expanded. Employment became more diverse. Trade union membership collapsed. Collective bargaining disappeared from much of the private sector, as did strikes. This was accompanied by the rise of human resource management and new employment practices. The law, once largely absent, increasingly became a dominant influence. The experience of work has become more pressured. The Evolution of the Modern Workplace provides an authoritative account and analysis of these changes and their consequences. Its main source is the five Workplace Employment Relations Surveys that were conducted at roughly five-year intervals between 1980 and 2004. Drawing on this unique source of data, a team of internationally renowned scholars show how the world of the workplace has changed, and why it has changed, for both workers and employers.

Table of Contents

List of figures	p. ix
List of tables	p. xi
List of contributors	p. xv
Preface	p. xvii
List of abbreviations	p. xx
Researching the changing workplace	p. 1
Competition and the retreat from collective bargaining	p. 22
Trade union decline and the economics of the workplace	p. 48
Employee representation	p. 74
Voice at the workplace: where do we find it, why is it there and where is it going?	p. 97
From industrial relations to human resource management: the changing role of the personnel function	p. 120
High involvement management	p. 151
Conflict at work: the changing pattern of disputes	p. 176
Employees' experience of work	p. 201
Equality and diversity at work	p. 230
The changing use of contingent pay at the modern British workplace	p. 256
Foreign ownership and industrial relations	p. 285
The public sector in transition	p. 307
Legal regulation and the changing workplace	p. 332
Conclusion: the evolutionary process	p. 353
Technical Appendix	p. 359
Bibliography	p. 370
Index	p. 397
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