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Since the notion of “management style” can be defined in different ways, I need to make clear at the outset how I propose to use it. It is sometimes meant to refer to no more than the manager's personal mode of behaviour—to the ways in which he conducts his immediate social relations with colleagues and subordinates. How does he give orders, seek advice, bestow praise or blame? There is an abundance of literature devoted to what might be called the tactics of face‐to‐face relationships. Much of it is hardly above the level of Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People, but some provide insight that is valuable for anyone involved in leadership and authority relations. I shall, however, refer to it only in passing, not because I want to disparage it, but because I want to use the notion of management style in the much broader sense of an over‐all strategy for organisational design. Under this usage, style refers to management in one of its most fundamental dimensions—namely its responsibility for the design and mode of functioning of the organisation through which management hopes to achieve its purposes.

This paper presents an historical reconstruction of the radicalisation of Alan Fox, the industrial sociologist and a detailed analysis of his early historical and sociological writing in the classical pluralist phase.

An intellectual history, including detailed discussion of key Fox texts, supported by interviews with Fox and other Biographical sources.

Fox’s radicalisation was incomplete, as he carried over from his industrial relations (IR) pluralist mentors, Allan Flanders and Hugh Clegg, a suspicion of political Marxism, a sense of historical contingency and an awareness of the fragmented nature of industrial conflict.

Recent academic attention has centred on Fox’s later radical pluralism with its “structural” approach to the employment relationship. This paper revisits his early, neglected classical pluralist writing. It also illuminates his transition from institutional IR to a broader sociology of work, influenced by AH Halsey, John Goldthorpe and others and the complex nature of his radicalisation.

The 50th anniversary of Fox's Beyond Contract and Man Mismanagement coincides with another vital contribution to the sociology of work from 1974: Braverman's Labor and Monopoly Capital. This article analyses these two scholars' complementary approaches to job design and the extent to which Fox's ideas influenced subsequent labour process thought.

The article's methodological approach is a historiographical reading of Fox and Braverman's thought in the context of their times and later scholarship.

The article demonstrates that despite some noteworthy overlap with Braverman concerning scientific management, Fox's insights were marginal to later iterations of labour process analysis. It delves into the reasons for this relative neglect, providing an understanding of the dynamics at play.

This paper's value lies in its combined industrial relations and labour process historiography. It offers a fresh perspective on Alan Fox's relationship to the latter field of study.

The purpose of the article is to outline the insights provided by Alan Fox in Man Mismanagement in relation to the rise of the New Right political economy and the spread of unitarist managerialism. The article assesses the contemporary work and employment relations implications of mismanagement arising from a “second wave” of the New Right ideology from 2010 in the UK.

Responding to the Special Issue on Alan Fox, the article focuses on Alan Fox's book Man Mismanagement, considering industrial relations developments arising between the 1st (1974b) and 2nd (1985) editions relating to the political rise of the New Right. It reviews various literature that illustrates the contemporary IR relevance of the book and Fox's insights.

The New Right’s ideology has further fragmented work, disjointed labour rights and undermined collective industrial relations institutions, and macho mismanagement praxis is even more commonplace, compared to when Fox wrote Man Mismanagement. The stripping away of the institutional architecture of IR renders the renewal of pluralist praxis, like collective bargaining and other forms of joint regulation of work, a formidable task.

The value of the article relates to the identification of dramatic historical industrial relations events and change in the UK in Alan Fox's book Man Mismanagement, most notably relating to the rise to power of the Thatcherite New Right in 1979. Originality is evidenced by the authors’ drawing on Fox's ideas and assessing the implications of the “second wave” of the New Right in the contemporary industrial relations (IR) context of the 2020s under the conceptual themes of fragmented work, disjointed labour rights and undermined collectivism.

This study investigates the origins and elaboration of the managerial “unitary” frame of reference associated with Alan Fox, focusing on unionised firms: the industrial relations context, intellectual roots, elaboration, adaptation by other writers, and international applicability.

Tracing the above requirements through contemporaneous sources.

Fox’s designation of the unitary frame needs to be understood in its 1960s’ context, particularly the promotion of “productivity bargaining”, and its furthering through management training and education. Fox’s specific contribution is identified. Subsequent UK writers have underplayed the importance of the legal dimension of managerial authority, especially relevant in the US context, while other extra-economic factors bolster the managerial unitary frame in authoritarian societies such as China.

The use of Fox's neglected 1960s’ writings; tracking how Fox developed the unitary frame concept and how it was funnelled into the narrow parameters of non-unionism by subsequent writers; identifying its applicability beyond the UK (with the USA as a historical example and China as a contemporary one).

This paper focuses attention upon the current public policy debate on employee participation in managerial decision‐making before the publication of the Bullock Report and, in particular, the apparent resurgence of popularity for the concept of joint consultation. In view of joint consultation's relatively unsuccessful history it may be that the implications of this development have been largely unrecognized. Current attitudes towards participation as exemplified in certain of the more important policy statements of management, unions and political parties are analysed in terms of the role allotted to joint consultation within them. Similarly, European experience with joint consultation is considered for its relevance for developments in Britain. The paper closes with discussion of the future role joint consultation could play as a vehicle in the development of employee participation and the key issues involved.

It is now widely accepted, perhaps with some qualifications, that the dominant British school of industrial relations in recent years has been the liberal‐pluralist or volutaristic‐pluralist school. Its centre has been Oxford and its main members have included Hugh Clegg, the late Allan Flanders, W E J McCarthy, G S Bain and A Fox. The influence of this group has been exhibited in its impact not only on industrial relations teaching and research, but also on policy, especially through the Donovan Report. Indeed, several writers have chosen to characterize it as a problem‐solving rather than a theoretical approach. However, it is important to acknowledge that a practical orientation may not in itself constitute an a‐theoretical position. Hyman and Fryer thus, for example, use the label ‘pragmatism’ to describe a component of the theoretical orientation of the ‘Oxford school’, thus recognizing that while its ‘theory may be only semi‐articulated and ….. partially developed’, the work of the school is not a‐theoretical.

In carrying out the process of financial statement analysis, the analyst is confronted both with problems stemming from the function itself as well as problems caused by particular accounting practices. In this paper a selected few of these issues will be examined.

Since the first Volume of this Bibliography there has been an explosion of literature in all the main areas of business. The researcher and librarian have to be able to uncover specific articles devoted to certain topics. This Bibliography is designed to help. Volume III, in addition to the annotated list of articles as the two previous volumes, contains further features to help the reader. Each entry within has been indexed according to the Fifth Edition of the SCIMP/SCAMP Thesaurus and thus provides a full subject index to facilitate rapid information retrieval. Each article has its own unique number and this is used in both the subject and author index. The first Volume of the Bibliography covered seven journals published by MCB University Press. This Volume now indexes 25 journals, indicating the greater depth, coverage and expansion of the subject areas concerned.

Following six years consideration of the problem, and the production of at least two widely circulated early versions of the proposed exposure draft, the ASC formally published ED 29 in October 1981. ED 29 deals with accounting for leases, but excludes contentious lease contracts concerning rights to explore for or to exploit natural resources and similarly it does not cover licencing agreements for films, patents, copyrights etc. The exposure draft requires capitalisation of finance lease contracts in the accounts of lessees, is broadly consistent with the American, Canadian and International standards and compatible with, but more restrictive than, the Australian exposure draft (which permits, but does not require, capitalisation). In spite of the gestation period, the prior consultation with interested parties and the restricted coverage of the ED, its proposals are controversial and have provoked reaction from both lessors and lessees in the UK. Lease accounting, clearly, is not a simple matter. Indeed leasing arrangements raise many questions which encompass fundamental conceptual issues in accounting and finance. Any resolution of these issues, such as ED 29, in turn gives rise to problems of application.