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This paper reports the results of a follow‐up study to two linked articles appearing in earlier issues of this journal. It examines the relative influence of factors affecting the approach of supervisors or managers to dealing with disciplinary or grievance incidents. For discipline the most influential factors are identified as: the inconvenience of the employee rule transgression and the length of an employee’s service, with comparatively minor effects for employee gender, manager gender, prior training and experience in handling issues, and whether an organization is unionised. With grievance the most influential factors are: the challenge to management authority of an issue, length of employee service, employee gender and to a lesser extent the age and gender of the manager, and whether the organization is unionised. Implications for future research and the training of supervisors and managers are then outlined.

Argues that because of a number of significant changes in the last ten years, individual issues such as grievance and discipline should now become more prominent concerns of industrial relations research. Some important differences which distinguish discipline and grievance are identified, and a conceptual model of the potentially complex internal dynamics of discipline is given. This is used to highlight a number of important implications for the formulation of disciplinary policies, and for the training of those responsible for handling procedures. Finally, the model is used to develop a research agenda which identifies some of the more pressing topics on which information is required to help to unravel the complex nature of discipline.

Presents the first of two reports which research into the handling styles of supervisors and managers when dealing with disciplinary and grievance situations. Compares the handling styles that they use when dealing with discipline and grievance situations and finds that differences exist in the styles used for the two types of issue. The less serious disciplinary cases seem to attract a fairly prescriptive autocratic style, whereas those which are potentially more serious to the organization tend to be handled with less prescriptive approaches that involve the employee to a greater extent, and it is this approach which theory suggests is more likely to bring about the desired change in the behaviour of the employee. With the exception of cases which pose some threat to managerial authority, the general pattern that emerges for grievances is that they tend to be explored in a less prescriptive way. Describes the research methodology and sets the scene for a further research report.

Examines the relative influence of a number of factors that can affect the approach (handling style) of a supervisor or manager when dealing with a disciplinary or grievance incident. Uses the same data set as the earlier paper in the same series. Finds that, for discipline, the most influential factors are the inconvenience for the manager of particular employee transgression and the length of employee service, with additional but comparatively minor effects for employee gender and the manager’s prior training and experience in handling issues. Identifies the most influential factors with grievance as the extent to which an issue challenges the authority of the manager, the length of employee service, the employee’s gender and, to a lesser extent, the gender of the manager handling the issue. Outlines the implications of these results for future research and for the training of supervisors and managers.

At the passing of the Fair Trading Act, 1973, and the setting up of a Consumer Protection Service with an Office of Fair Trading under a Director‐General, few could have visualized this comprehensive machinery devised to protect the mainly economic interests of consumers could be used to further the efforts of local enforcement officers and authorities in the field of purity and quality control of food and of food hygiene in particular. This, however, is precisely the effect of a recent initiative under Sect. 34 of the Act, reported elsewhere in the BFJ, taken by the Director‐General in securing from a company operating a large group of restaurants a written undertaking, as prescribed by the Section, that it would improve its standards of hygiene; the company had ten convictions for hygiene contraventions over a period of six years.