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Industrial relations on the British pattern have always been, and probably always will be, a messy area — a complex mish mash of institutions, systems and procedures interlaced with the variances of human behaviour and organisational structure and control. And this situation persists even though it is becoming increasingly apparent that successful industrial relations are vital to British industry. Already well aware of the urgent need for clarity many trainers, like others concerned with industrial relations, are now extremely concerned about their own role in terms of recent developments in industrial relations, especially relating to worker participation, codetermination and the control of industry. It seems to me that such a trainer has two options. Either he can try to ignore the changes until the day when he finds himself in a situation he can neither control nor avoid, or he can forearm himself before entering the arena. It is the aim of this article, the first of a series, to pose a few of the fundamental questions that trainers should be asking themselves if they are to make a positive contribution to industrial relations developments. Subsequent articles will discuss how the trainer can make a start by formulating an appropriate overall strategy, and will describe some of the techniques the trainer can use.

Actions speak louder than words, goes the saying. But in management training this belief can be a short route to disaster, says Malcolm Leary, senior training adviser with the Food, Drink and Tobacco Industry Training Board.

In the first two articles in this series we covered the development of a joint training strategy and gave an account of that strategy in practice. In that account we outlined the areas that we covered during the two sets of courses—separate/parallel training and joint training. In this the concluding article on the development of joint training strategies we cover the key elements of the training design in more depth and provide examples of the methods that we use.

In the first article in this series we defined joint training; explained why it may be appropriate in industrial relations training, particularly as a problem‐solving approach, and then covered the issues that arise when considering its use and the development of a suitable strategy. In the development of a strategy we referred to the key phases:

Reintroduces the concept of an integration phase in an organization′s social system to bring together its economic and technical sub‐systems, and to synthesize individual and organizational needs. Details the basic principles and values inherent in such a phase, relates it to business‐led learning, TQM, lean production, the learning company, work structuring, and the “greening” of organizations. A major change of consciousness lies behind “integration” – to externally oriented, perception consciousness focused on the needs of people and groups. Warns against the shadow side of over‐commitment to integration.

There is an increasing interest in Industrial Relations training — and joint training in particular. In this series of articles, based on the authors' experiences of several in‐company projects, the following questions will be answered:

Introduction The importance of the power and influencing process as a feature of organisational life has long been accepted. This process however has very rarely been traced through to a specific area and given a clearer organisational focus. And it is unusual to find studies in this area that have been honed down into a point where they are of use to those operating in the field.

Recently a large food manufacturing company approached the Food Drink and Tobacco Industry Training Board's advisers who specialise in industrial relations training for assistance in setting up a training programme for their junior management. Its purpose was to help them influence more effectively the industrial relations situations with which they were faced. Like many other organisations this company was meeting more pressures from the shop floor, union initiatives and ever increasing uncertainty and doubts on the part of junior management, who were responsible for playing a positive and constructive role within a changing industrial relations environment.

In the first article of this series I posed some of the fundamental questions which I felt that trainers seriously concerned with industrial relations should ask themselves. This article moves on to more practical considerations, particularly those related to the actual planning of industrial relations changes and the design of appropriate training strategies.

In a recent essay for the German news magazine Der Spiegel, Rolph Dahrendorf, head of the London School of Economics, as something of an “outsider” to the British IR scene, stated: