ABSTRACT
The importance attached to joint work regulation in industrial relations account is deliberate, because it represents an instrument by which decisions influencing the performance of social relations in the work place are likely to be taken in non-manual as well as manual employment. Industrial relations are mainly concerned with the joint control of organised human labour: exchanging effort for reward by transactions between at least two parties and increasingly within a legislative framework created by the State. Social scientists recognise that organisations such as trade unions respond to such influences. But in this case they will be more concerned with explaining trade union growth as a response to the social needs of working people in large-scale employment and of how far such organisations are valued for the services they provide. Let us take one particular problem for the purposes of illustration: the causes of trade union growth in white-collar employment.
