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The Oxford Institute for Employee Relations (OXIFER) is a small research and teaching community based at Templeton College, Oxford. It aims to link advanced research with teaching and the widespread dissemination of findings, focusing primarily on the role of management in employee and industrial relations and examining aspects of employee relations. Four research projects are currently under way. The first, Development and Dissemination of the Industrial Relations Audit, involves identifying an organisation's existing industrial relations practices and comparing and contrasting these with the desired position as perceived by senior managers or a joint body of senior managers and union representatives. Line Management of Industrial Relations uses data from the audits conducted in the first project to study the industrial relations role of line managers. The Management of Employee Relations in the Multidivisional Company focuses on the strategic choices open to senior line managers and personnel management. Management of Change and the Contribution of Industrial Relations Training aims to gain a better understanding of the process of change in a variety of organisations with particular reference to the contribution which industrial relations training in its broadest sense can make to change. Common themes running through the projects are methodology, employment relations and the management of change and the apparent current managerial concern with quality.

The purpose of this paper is to reconceptualize the notion of relations underlying performance measurement models (PMMs) and explicate the ample exciting research opportunities that this reconceptualized viewpoint offers.

This is a conceptual paper, which primarily builds on and extends the contemporary research that challenges the traditional viewpoint that cause-and-effect relations are a necessary element of every PMM.

The reconceptualized viewpoint suggests that a PMM can be built on any combination of cause-and-effect, finality and logical relations, as opposed to only cause-and-effect relations. This paper presents several exciting research opportunities that the reconceptualized perspective offers.

The different types of relations underlying PMMs and their appropriate validation techniques are a relatively novel concept and also, a complex phenomenon which has received very limited attention in the accounting literature. This paper extends this nascent literature by outlining the research implications of this novel concept.

An empirical study is reported which examines the relationships between industrial relations climate and variables reflecting the state of the firm's performance, industrial relations structure, and overall effectiveness in 28 manufacturing companies. In addition to reporting the patterns of association between each of these aspects, multivariate analyses are employed in order to (i) ascertain the direct and indirect influences of industrial relations climate and other variables under study on company effectiveness, and (ii) examine the assumptions about the direction of causality between industrial relations climate and effectiveness. The results highlight the relationships between the above variables and emphasise the importance of conceptualising industrial relations climate in such a way that can adequately reflect the attitudes and behaviour of industrial relations actors. Path analysis suggests that the pattern of causality is not a simple one but involves reciprocal and feedback relationships. However, the mprovement to the explanatory power of company effectiveness by including the notion of industrial relations limate in research, is clearly demonstrated.

A general lack of agreement on the meaning of the term “industrial relations” has been acknowledged for some time. Moreover, although ideology is seen as a powerful influence on the behaviour of industrial relations practitioners, that is, those working or studying in the field, a general imprecision surrounds the current terminology. This article examines briefly the more well‐known understandings of what is meant by “industrial relations” and compares these with the views of some managers expressed in a recent research study. It proceeds to analyse ideologies normally referred to in the field of industrial relations. From this analysis, an alternative approach and framework is proposed for considering industrial relations ideology.

Explores relationships between the popular perception of public relations; the Grunigian paradigm, its distortion by UK teachers and a way forward to a more soundly‐based teaching about the communications of organizations. The first part is about public perceptions of public relations in the UK and how these influence attitudes on the campus. The second part is about shifting the emphasis of teaching away from a communication science perspective and towards a political studies one. Concludes that this shift could lead to a better connection with modern thinking about persuasive information flows in modern, liberal, industrialized societies.

The concept of an Industrial Relations Centre is relevant in the UK today, in the light of the report ‘Management Training in Industrial Relations’, published by the National Economic Development Office, in June 1975. That report is the product of a Working Group on Industrial Relations Training for Managers, set up by the Management Education Training and Develop‐ment Committee of NEDO. It includes the recommendation: ‘…that an Industrial Relations Training Resource Centre should be established. The central aim of such a centre would be to assist companies and other institutions who wished to provide improved industrial relations training for managers…’ (‘Management Training in Industrial Relations’ 1.24)

The Industrial Relations Training Resource Centre was set up in 1977 as a national resource to provide focus and co‐ordination to the whole area of management training in industrial relations. ‘The central aim of such a centre would be to assist companies and other institutions who wished to provide improved industrial relations training for managers ……’ This was the main recommendation of a report, published in June 1975, produced by a working group on industrial training for managers, set up by the Management Education, Training and Development Committee of NEDO. In this article the Director describes the purpose of the Centre and reviews progress to date.

The Commission on Industrial Relations' (CIR) report on industrial relations training was published on 13 December together with a short practical guide for unions and employers. The CIR had been asked in 1970 by the Secretary of State for Employment to inquire and report on the facilities for training in industrial relations available to those in management, unions and employers' associations, and to employees generally. John Purcell is a senior industrial relations officer at the Commission and has been a senior member of the team carrying out the inquiry. In this article Mr Purcell concentrates on one of the themes of the report: planning training for change in industrial relations.

Academics in industrial relations have for many years been attempting to define their field of study. Recently, we were asked, by a client interested in training, to find out how practitioners (managers and shop stewards) would react to a systems model of industrial relations. Their responses are reported here and suggest an approach to industrial relations training which may be helpful in clarifying, improving and changing practice.

The planning and formulation of a management training course on industrial relations presents the specialist with a problem. It has been previously well publicised that formal industrial relations policies are rarely, if ever, set out clearly and in writing. Moreover, the subject of industrial relations has also received publicity on the ambiguity which the subject contains and the lack of consensus on what industrial relations means. This contributes to the difficulty in establishing the content for an effective industrial relations training course, since corporate industrial relations goals are often unclear at the outset. This article examines one company's effort to establish a useful industrial relations course for its line managers who deal directly with trade union representatives.