The Origins & Evolution of the Field of Industrial Relations in the United States

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Cornell University Press, 1993 - History - 286 pages
Bruce Kaufman provides a detailed exploration of the historical development of the field of industrial relations. He identifies two distinct schools of thought evident since the field's origins in the 1920s, one centered in the study of personnel management and the other in the study of institutional labor economics. The two schools advocate contrasting approaches to the resolution of labor problems. Kaufman traces their development from a golden age in the 1950s through a period of gradual decline that accelerated in the 1980s. He contends that, in the process, the field narrowed from a broad-based consideration of the employment relationship to a more limited focus on collective bargaining.
 

Contents

The Origins of Industrial Relations
3
The Schism in Industrial Relations
19
Industrial Relations in the Interwar Years
45
The Institutionalization of Industrial Relations
59
The Golden Age of Industrial Relations
75
The Hollowing Out of Industrial Relations
103
Industrial Relations in Decline
137
Industrial Relations in the 1990s and Beyond
157
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
187
NOTES
199
REFERENCES
253
INDEX
281
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About the author (1993)

Bruce E. Kaufman is Professor of Economics and Senior Associate of the W.T. Beebe Institute of Personnel and Employment Relations at Georgia State University and Research Fellow at the Center for Work, Organization and Wellbeing at Griffith University. His most recent book, also published with Cornell, is Managing the Human Factor: The Early Years of Human Resource Management in American Industry; other books include The Global Evolution of Industrial Relations; What Do Unions Do: A Twenty Year Perspective; and Theoretical Perspectives on Work and the Employment Relationship (a LERA Research volume).