Voices
from the Shopfloor: Dramas of the Employment Relationship
Anne-Marie
Greene
Voices in Development Management Book
Series
The
quantitative approach dominates the industrial relations field. As a
consequence, we contend that the industrial relations literature for developing
countries is severely underdeveloped as a consequence of the rigid hold of
quantitative industrial relations paradigms over the discipline. In addition,
many developing countries do not have the statistical bases or the resources to
build the statistical bases, which would generate industrial relations
literature within the prevailing paradigm. Ethnography is an appropriate
methodology for exploring industrial relations. This volume thus opens the gate
to industrial relations voices from the developing world by establishing the prestige
and current contribution of ethnographic methods within this policy and
academic domain. It makes links between the analysis presented and its
methodology with a model for industrial relations research within the
developing world context. The volume makes use of an ethnographic account of an
occupational community based around the lock manufacturing industry in England,
plus a number of ethnographically-informed industrial relations accounts from
the developing world. This is in order to illustrate the vitality and richness
of the ethnographic method, connecting such accounts to emergent themes, which
have relevance for industrial relations in the developing world and attempting
to break down the existing binarism which rigidly separates developed and
developing world contexts.