ABSTRACT
The brewing industry is shown to be particularly suited to the introduction of microelectronics, with the type of investment perfectly feasible in most sized companies. The financial stability of the industry and its unusual structure have made it an especially interesting area of study and, unlike much of the rest of British industry, financial constraints and crises have not had such an influential impact on the process and direction of technological change. Management expressed great reluctance to 'pay' for technological change, in terms of either money or a reduction in hours and in only a few cases, mainly those involving major projects, were any of these benefits achieved. Greater union involvement, either in an integrative or distributive bargaining capacity, occurred in relation to issues such as pay and grading, redundancy and health and safety. For the union sample, such variables were highly correlated with the degree of integrative bargaining but were not significantly related to distributive bargaining.
