What is pluralist perspective in industrial relations?

The priciple assumption of pluralist perspective of industrial relations is that the individuals organisation comprises groups which have their own aims, interests and leadership. These aims and interests often conflict and compete with other groups and give rise to tensions which have to be management.

What is a pluralist perspective?

Pluralists believe that social heterogeneity prevents any single group from gaining dominance. In their view, politics is essentially a matter of aggregating preferences. This means that coalitions are inherently unstable (Polsby, 1980), hence competition is easily preserved.

What is Fox’s frame of reference?

Hence the term ‘frames of reference’, a conceptual device first coined by Alan Fox (1966, 1974) as a means of categorising the different opinions held by people towards such issues.

What are the three perspective of industrial relations?

The three important perspectives on industrial relations are generally known as Unitarism, Pluralism and Marxism. Each offers a particular perception of workplace relations and will therefore interpret such events as workplace conflict, the role of unions and job regulation differently.

What are the advantages of pluralistic perspective?

Some benefits of pluralism are forward planning, orderly and consistent procedures, realistic approach of dealing with unions, increasing flow of information, stability achieved through compromises and the balance of interests of management and staff (Leat 2001 p. 16 – 17).

What is unitarist and pluralist?

Unitarism is a perspective that emphasizes the shared interests of all members of an organization. In contrast, pluralism is a perspective that perceives an organization as being made up of divergent sub-groups having their own legitimate interests.

What is pluralism in the workplace?

The pluralistic approach suggests that there is more than one source of power in the relationship between workers and business leaders. Unions are often a central component to the pluralistic approach that seeks a balance of power between leadership and employees.

What is a unitarist perspective?

The unitarist perspective holds that workplace conflicts are avoidable. According to unitarists, managers may avoid workplace conflicts by bringing all the stakeholders together and making sure that an organisation is managed from a single source of power.

What is the pluralist perspective of Industrial Relations?

The Pluralist perspective of industrial relations is just as the name suggests, they see organisations as constellations of different groups. The organisation is seen as multi-structured in terms of groups, leadership, authority and loyalty.

What is the pluralist perspective on conflict resolution?

The focus in pluralist perspective is on the resolution of conflict rather than its generation; Fox in Blyton and Turbull (2004). Pluralist perspective suggests that employment relationship by nature is full of conflicts which are depicted through the organizational structure, for example.

What is the pluralist approach to organisation?

The pluralist organisation has many source of loyalty and authority in groups, trade unions and other sectional interests. Pluralist organisation approach sees conflicts of interest and disagreements between managers and workers over the distribution of profits as normal and inescapable.

What is the pluralist perspective on trade unions?

For pluralist perspective, the trade unions are legitimate representative organisations which enable employees groups to influence management decisions. Pluralist perspective also accepts that employees have loyalties to organisations other than their own management and that trade unions are a legitimate source of these loyalties.