Industrial Revolution: Industrial Relations

Industrial relations have its roots in industrial revolution. At the time of the economic “boom”, several different problems turned up on the newly opened markets. Such as low wages, long hours, dangerous work…etc. These problems lead to big employee turnovers and strikes amongst the workers.
If we are talking about industrial relations we definitely have to mention John R. Commons name, who was an industrial economist and he is known about firstly improving the condition of labour. And also he contributed almost all of the social and labour legislations in the 20th century.
Another important name that we have to mention is John D. Rockefeller, Jr. who came into the picture after a very serious strike in their coal mine in Colorado. (One of

These were showing contrast in their understanding of workplace relations. The ultimate goal of IR is the maintenance of industrial peace (throughout of avoiding industrial actions).
We have to also say a few words about the difference between HR and IR. The main difference is that the role players are limited only for employers and employees if we are talking about HR. In the other hand if we are mentioning IR (or ER) we are talking about additional role players, trade unions and the government in addition to employers and employees. There are some factors affecting industrial relations. We can mention:
• Institutional factors: government policy, legislations, and collective agreements…etc.
• Economic Factors: the structure of labour force, demand and supply of the labour force, competitors…etc.
• Technological Factors such as automatization.
• Social Factors: race and ethnic groups, cultures…etc.
• Political Factors: political system in the country, involvement in trade unions.
There are 3 main perspective worth to mention; unitary, pluralism and the radical theory. Each of them has a different view of workplace relations and each of them interprets differently the conflicts, and the role of

Weaknesses: This trend might portray some power imbalance, managers often abusing their power over employees, and employees tend to accept the decisions because of the managers perceived power, as there is no opposite power in the form of unions. Trade unions are not seen as essential to manage conflicts, as there are basically no conflicts. Or if there are any conflicts arise they perceived negatively; they are destructive for the organization, so this perspective disregards the usefulness of conflicts.
If a union is recognized, its job is to improve the communication.
Policies in a place like this are designed to unify the work force, organizational objectives are communicated, a clear reward system is in place and every employee has their own personal objectives. Everybody encouraged to make their own voice heard.
Strengths: This perspective is uniting the employers and employees together. The role of the management is leadership, and in this trend the authoritarian (paternalistic or materialistic) management style is most common. This theory is about constant win-win