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The purpose of this paper is to perform a systematic cross-country comparison of key features of industrial relations in Europe in a context where consolidated post-war institutions are under attack on many fronts. The author discusses a number of key similarities and differences across the countries of Europe, and end by considering whether progressive alternatives still exist.

This paper draws upon academic literature and compares the contributions to this special issue in the light of common problems and challenges.

The trend towards the erosion of nationally based employment protection and collective bargaining institutions is widely confirmed. In most of Central and Eastern Europe, where systems of organised industrial relations were at best only partially established after the collapse of the Soviet regime, the scope for unilateral dominance by (in particular foreign-owned) employers has been further enlarged. It is also clear that the European Union, far from acting as a force for harmonisation of regulatory standards and a strengthening of the “social dimension” of employment regulation, is encouraging the erosion of nationally based employment protections and provoking a growing divergence of outcomes. However, the trends are contradictory and uneven.

This paper contributes to an updated cross-country comparative analysis of the ongoing transformations in European industrial relations and discusses still existing progressive alternatives.

Purpose – The chapter aims to provide a descriptive and analytical conceptual framework of critical approaches to globalisation and summarises the main debates in the area.Design/methodology/approach – This chapter is based on an extensive literature review.Findings – This chapter summarises diverse critical approaches to globalisation from a multi-disciplinary perspective. It presents theories explaining the negative consequences of globalisation on working opportunities, conditions and relations, and the negative consequences of globalisation at the economic, cultural, social and political level (particularly the perceived decline in state influence).Practical implications – This chapter provides an overview on the debates on globalisation. This chapter could contribute discussions at the classroom level, and different managerial learning circles.Originality/value of chapter – This chapter contributes teaching material for international business, trade and development, and corporate social responsibility

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.

Through a survey of 200 employees working in five of the thirty establishments analysed in previous research about the microeconomic effects of reducing the working time (Cahier 25), the consequences on employees of such a reduction can be assessed; and relevant attitudes and aspirations better known.

Much current debate on the experience of trade unionism in the 1980s and its prospects for the 1990s involves the clash of simplistic generalisations. The problems of numerical decline and lack of internal cohesion are widespread, but not universal afflications. Individual unions, and different national movements, vary considerably in the efficacy with which they have responded to changes in the economic and political environment and in the nature of the workforce. To understand such differences we need to develop subtle analyses of what are complex and contradictory tendencies; and to propose credible scenaries of the next decade we need to be able to separate cyclical (and potentially reversible) from secular trends in the environment of industrial relations. Comparative research is only beginning to suggest the basis for a more scientific approach to the questions discussed above.

This chapter explores the notion of the European Social Model (ESM) and examines the EU-level social policy reforms that have taken place since the 1950s. ESM is taken to be distinct from but intimately related to the web and patchwork of rules explored in this volume. After sketching out the development of ESM since the 1950s, up to and including its near-death experience in the context of the Great Recession and the EU's turn to austerity, the chapter considers the social and political consequences of the EU's lurch to austerity as well as the consequences this might have for the web and patchwork of rules. The chapter ultimately reflects on whether another ESM might be possible in the context of the EU's response to the economic and social consequences following the onset of COVID-19, particularly in the context of the EU's Next Generation EU programme whereby the EU provides financial assistance directly to the regions worst affected by the pandemic.

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 Industrial Relations Research Unit of the Social Science Research Council was set up at the University of Warwick on 1st March 1970. Professor Hugh Clegg, Professor of Industrial Relations at Warwick was appointed to be Director, and Professor George Bain, Professor of Industrial Relations at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST), was appointed to be Deputy Director. The Unit's Advisory Committee, consisting of four representatives of the Social Science Research Council, three from the University of Warwick and three assessors, one each from the Trades Union Congress, the Confederation of British Industry and the Department of Employment, gave final approval to the proposed programme of research in June 1970, the majority of the staff appointments being made to take effect from 1st October.