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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.

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.

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.

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.

The quality of management is the greatest single determinant of industrial performance. Its impact is felt as much in the social as in the economic sphere, in terms of the quality of life in an organisation as in profitability. Given the much publicised shortcomings of industrial relations which are damaging to industry and to the economy, the case for ensuring that managers are adequately trained is not merely compelling, but almost self‐evident.

The primary objective of this paper is to understand the extent to which Australian industrial relations academics took up the different heuristic frameworks from USA and U.K. from the 1960s to the 1980s. A second objective is to begin to understand why, and in what ways ideas are transmitted in academic disciplines drawing on a “market model” for ideas. It is shown that in the years between 1960s and 1980s a modified U.S. (Dunlopian) model of interpreting industrial relations became more influential in Australia than that of U.K. scholarship, as exemplified by the British Oxford School. In part this reflects the breadth, flexibility and absence of an overt normative tenor in Dunlop’s model which thus offered lower transaction costs for scholars in an emergent discipline seeking recognition and approval from academia, practitioners and policy-makers. Despite frequent and wide-ranging criticism of Dunlop’s model, it proved a far more enduring transfer to Australian academic industrial relations than the British model, albeit in a distorted form. The market model for the diffusion of ideas illuminates the ways in which a variety of local contextual factors influenced the choices taken by Australian industrial relations academics.

This paper proposes a definition of industrial relations policy and suggests an analytical framework to help towards an understanding of such policy. The framework draws on three crucial distinctions: that between the “espoused” policy and the “operational” policy; that bet ween the different roles management may play in in dustrial relations policy as instigators, implementers and facilitators; and, finally, between the “content” and the “features” aspects of policy. Case study material il lustrates these distinctions in both on‐going and change situations. Finally, some conclusions are drawn from the analysis.

Reports the results of a study examining the relationships between organizational structure (formalization, specialization, participation, and centralization) and human resource practices, (training and internal labour market (ILM) with the state of the firm’s industrial relations. The data were collected by means of extensive interviews with managers and union/employee association representatives from 51 Canadian organizations. The results show that decision‐making centralization has a negative impact on a firm’s industrial relations situations (both from the union’s and the management’s point of view), while training has a positive effect on the quality of a company’s industrial relations. The ILM, on the other hand, did not appear to have a major impact on the firm’s industrial relations. Given the current arguments about the changing nature of industrial relations, and that they are influenced by other aspects of a firm’s operations, our preliminary study has reinforced the need to study in more detail the impact of training and organizational structure on industrial relations.

Senior managers of industrial relations in large multi‐plant companies are faced by both centrifugal and centripetal forces and ask: “How can we achieve the benefits of decentralisation while at the same time maintaining centralised control?” In response to these countervailing pressures, senior managers create the appearance of autonomy for plant managers but in reality exercise centralised authority over major industrial relations decisions. To achieve this, managers at head office promote an ideology of decentralisation while actually practising central control. Local managers' autonomy on major industrial relations issues is largely a myth, perpetuated by formally decentralised management and bargaining structures, and techniques designed to enhance the independence of each plant. Central managers' authority is exercised by making all major decisions at head office and by co‐ordinating plant industrial relations through a variety of measures. Two factors are examined to explain this inconsistency between the levels of decision making over important issues and the level at which collective agreements are made—first, the changes in bargaining structure, and in particular the move towards single‐employer bargaining, and, second, developments in organisational structures and control techniques, especially those associated with divisionalised organisations.