Industrial relations at the millennium: Beyond employment?

This essay explores the current state of the field of Industrial Relations. The first part of the essay traces the emergence of IR out of the general concern with the "labour question" to form a distinct field of study and re search in the Anglo-American countries. The second part argues that the fie ld has been plagued by a profound crisis of relevance in the 1980s and 1990 s, registered by a decline in its importance within universities, a shrinki ng of its academic associations, a loss of interest on the part of its trad itional audience, increased isolation from other disciplines, and a theoret ical incapacity to come to grips with the sweeping changes that have occurr ed in labour markets, the workplace, and the wider political economy. This situation is leading to a redefinition of the field as "Employment Relation s." In the third part of the essay, this drift towards Employment Relations is criticized for moving the field more squarely into the area of manageri al science, for leaving it incapable of analyzing future waves of collectiv e mobilization, and for its continued adherence to a geographically and his torically constricted conceptual foundation. A better strategy, it is sugge sted, would be to go beyond employment by reconceptualizing the field in te rms of "work relations."