The Dynamics of Employee Relations

Paul Blyton and Peter Turnbull. The Dynamics of Employee Relations. Macmillan: Basingstoke, 2nd edition, 1998. 404pp. ISBN: 0-333-67985-7.

This is the second edition of a book which first appeared in 1994 as part of the Macmillan Management, Work and Organisations series. As such it claims to be a textbook aimed at postgraduate and post experience courses but also suitable for final year undergraduate modules. The authors have updated their case material, statistical data and large sections of the text to 1997, as well as refining their arguments from the first edition. One major change since the first edition has been the election of a Labour government in Britain, which the authors believe has "placed employee relations at the heart of its agenda".

The authors prefer the term employee relations to industrial relations as a way of circumventing prior mis(conceptions) that industrial relations is solely about trade unions and strikes, and moreover only about male manual full time workers in manufacturing or extractive industries. Through employee relations Blyton and Turnbull wish to convey the study of the employment relationship and the need to examine this across the full range of industrial sectors, covering both sexes, varying hours of employment and both unionised and non-unionised employees. However, by continuing to focus on the collective aspects of the employment relationship the authors distinguish employee relations from personnel management and human resource management with their focus on the individual at work. They seek to examine...