REVIEW ARTICLE: Industrial Relations and the Capitalist Labour Process

Abstract

During the last 2 decades, there has developed a considerable literature which calls into question many of the taken for granted assumptions of leading scholars. Significantly, the field of industrial relations has not been immune to these investigations, and arguably the most damaging indictments have been served by Hyman (1978), Fox (1973), and Goldthorpe (1974), against the advocates of pluralism, and Wood et al, (1975) against systems theorists. These authors have exposed many of the functionalist assumptions implicit in the mainstream paradigm of industrial relations.