Purpose – Given the emergence of new legal initiatives for union recognition, declining levels of union membership and the growth of alternative forms of employee representation, this paper aims to examine the management of employee voice in non‐union firms. Design/methodology/approach –...

British industrial relations has changed greatly over the past decade. A central development has been management′s sponsorship of new, direct forms of employee involvement (EI) such as team briefing, quality circles and profit sharing. In many larger manufacturing firms new schemes now...

Uses a longitudinal case study approach to analyse changes in industrial relations in a chemical company over the last decade. The authors argue that the concept of “waves” can be used to help understand developments during this period. The first wave related to the crisis of the early 1980s...

This paper presents the findings of a case study undertaken in a UK utility company, referred to as Energy Co. The main aim of the study was to assess how the agreement of a partnership arrangement in 1995 had affected the conduct of employment relations. The study found that partnership was...

Examines the implications of total quality management for the management of people. The implementation of TQM requires the development of a high commitment employee relations strategy and involves an attempt to build a culture of continuous improvement among employees. Argues that employee...

Increased control of the process through, for example, reduction of special and common causes of variation, is fundamental to total quality management (TQM), yet this is one of the main areas targeted by its critics. However, there appears to be much misunderstanding between those from the...

For companies striving towards total quality management and continuous improvement it is important to be sure that employees are receiving the right messages. A new non‐scoring audit tool, developed in work with UK companies, assesses whether human resource policies are integrated with quality...

Over the past decade, the establishment and growth of quality awards has stimulated organizational self‐assessment using the award models. Four new methods developed from fieldwork in the UK can be used not only to support the gathering of data required by the models, but also in stand‐alone...