ABSTRACT
Formal co-operation between workers, unions and employers is hardly new. Yet it is apparent that during the past twenty years social partnership, as a form of labourmanagement co-operation, has acquired a new prominence both in industrial relations policy debates and in academic research. The term itself, as this collection demonstrates, is contentious on many different levels. Cutting across the various debates, however, is a way of thinking about partnership which rejects the assumption that the term has a single meaning, necessarily inscribed in some inner logic.
