Abstract
The International Labor and Employment Relations Association European Conference, held in Amsterdam in June 2013, concluded with a plenary session entitled ‘the future of employment relations’. This session featured two stimulating and well-received presentations which we are delighted to be publishing in the Journal of Industrial Relations.
Peter Boxall (Auckland University) examines the future of the field from the perspective of human resource management (HRM), arguing that the interests of industrial relations and human resources do overlap. He redefines ‘human resources’ as the resources within a human being. He argues that situating them socially allows for an ambitious reframing of the discipline and practice of HRM, allowing it to contribute to what he calls ‘social solidarity’. Boxall concludes that we can meet the challenge of allowing humans fully to realise their potential not only in the immediate term, but ‘in ways that are sustainable across generations’.
Guglielmo Meardi (Warwick Business School) forcefully contests claims about the growing irrelevance of employment relations. He shows that these claims are neither new nor convincing. Rather than relying, as others have done, on assertions that the discipline simply should be considered important, he shows how three challenges – individualism, flexibility and globalisation – have played out in specific contexts in Central Eastern Europe, Southern Europe and emerging economies. Meardi argues that the core concerns of employment relations are actually fundamental to understanding diverse and complex experiences in these settings.
Taken together, these articles should encourage a general reappraisal of the field of employment relations, as well as signalling particular lines of research investigation which might ensure that the claims made for the future of employment relations can be realised.