ABSTRACT
It is commonly accepted that the management of employee relations has undergone unprecedented change since 1980, when our survey series began. Although a large management literature has focused on the role of employee relations managers as initiators of change, they have also been the subject of change as organizations have sought to respond to new competitive pressures in product and labour markets (see Bach and Sisson, 1999, for a discussion). Changes in corporate structure and strategy create new demands of employee relations managers, as well as shaping the function itself. Often, developments in employee relations management represent ‘not so much a new departure within personnel, as a set of movements from outside it’ (Storey, 1992:274). Continually seeking to reorient itself to these changing circumstances, employee relations management has been variously characterized as in crisis, in transition, and increasingly on the periphery of corporate decision-making, which is now dominated by financial rather than employment considerations. As long ago as 1987, Tyson warned of the ‘balkanization of the personnel role’:
The territory which could once have been delineated as personnel country, is being invaded, sold-off, subdivided and put under lease to consultants, sub-specialist and line managers, whose cross-cutting alliances do not correspond to a coherent separate function.
