The concept of a 'structured antagonism' in the workplace, introduced in 1986, is revisited and extended. Part of the revisiting clears up misunderstandings about the idea which have arisen as a result of its being cited without always being fully understood. The core idea, that the SA exists...

Organizational neuroscience (ON) is a rapidly emerging sub-field. Criticisms of its reductionism are common. Yet it is possible for practitioners and critics to engage. Such engagement is facilitated by realism. It agrees with the practitioners of ON that brain functions can in principle be...

Huw Beynon's Working for Ford achieved celebrity when published in 1973. An assessment 40 years later identifies the lasting value of the book. Though written from a clearly stated point of view, it did not present a biased account, and it included much information permitting alternative...

Does the use of HRM practices by multinational companies (MNCs) reflect their national origins or are practices similar regardless of context? To the extent that practices are similar, is there any evidence of global best standards? The authors use the system, societal, and dominance framework...

Pay determination in small firms is widely expected to follow the dictates of the market. Research on 81 firms in three competitive sectors finds, instead, loosely defined and variable pay structures. This variability is explained in terms of the interplay between labour and product markets,...

The introduction of the National Minimum Wage (NMW) had potentially significant implications for small firms. Orthodox economic theory predicts adverse consequences, though institutional analysis points to potential efficiency as well as fairness effects. Using longitudinal data on 55 firms,...

Books reviewed in this article: Peter A. Hall and David Soskice (eds.), Varieties of Capitalism: The Institutional Foundations of Comparative Advantage Robert E. Goodwin, Bruce Headey, Ruud Muffels and Henk-Jan Dirven, The Real Worlds of Welfare Capitalism Francine D. Blau and Lawrence M. Kahn,...

This paper defends a materialist analysis of employment relations against two recent critiques, by Peter Ackers and Patrick McGovern. 'Radical pluralism' is Ackers's preferred term. The critiques are useful in exposing some ritualistic uses of terms such as conflict, contradiction, and...

Industrial relations (IR) in the UK are often seen as being in a state of some disarray. Yet analytical advances can also be detected. This article takes one part of IR, context-sensitive research, to suggest ways of building on such advances. Its focus is the intellectual core of the subject,...