ABSTRACT
Introduction Management in employment relations was dominated in the 1990s-2000s by human resource management (HRM). For some, this was part of a new, all-embracing approach to employment relations. For others, HRM drove a wedge through the subject matter of employment relations that required rebuttal, as HRM was perceived to undermine the signifi cance of the core unit of past employment relations, the trade unions. In the extreme, HRM has been seen as an overt anti-union management strategy or as increasing workers’ satisfaction such that their need for unions is reduced. Moreover, its benefi cial effects on organizational performance should ensure workers’ receive wage increases and other non-pecuniary gains. At the other extreme, HRM is centred on enhancing the direct involvement of workers, in contrast to the Taylorist model of management, with its tight division of labour and narrowly designed specialized jobs, which was the bedrock for much of the development of collective bargaining in the twentieth century. There is no reason why, as this bedrock changes, trade unions should not have roles, if only in ensuring that the benefi ts from performance gains are shared fairly. Given these competing perspectives, varied associations of HRM with unions and assumptions about positive performance effects, this chapter fi rst outlines the nature of HRM, and then focuses on whether it is associated with performance, job satisfaction, trade unionism and national employment systems. In so doing, we aim to show how a comparative perspective can aid our understanding.
