Discontinuity and change in industrial relations: the struggles over its social dimensions and the rise of human resource management

The development of decentralized approaches to the management of labour in the form of human resource management has been the subject of much debate. Yet there has been less concern with the external political factors and above all, the border social and regulatory legacies and considerations of industrial relations. These still provide a social and political context within which many management strategies have had to develop The more optimistic readings of such developments have failed to address this dimension to change and the way it may condition the practice of new managerial strategies and their sheer cost. The external political and social environment cannot therefore be ignored.