Bargaining Power examines the balance of power between management and unions, showing why some managementsDSand some trade unionsDSare more powerful than others. Bargaining power has long been recognized as central to industrial relations, but no previous work has taken the issue as its central focus. Using both sociological and economic evidence, the author shows how managements and unions approach negotiations and how they use power to achieve their bargaining objectives. In turn he analyses different perspectives on power, negotiations, the industrial relations context, and human resources management. The book concludes with an examination of the changing position of trade unions in Britain in the 1980s, arguing that union bargaining power remains more significant than suggested by the decline in union membership.
Readership: Undergraduate and graduate students of industrial relations, industrial sociology, and business and management studies. Managers, especially those in personnel.
Roderick Martin, Professor of Organizational Behaviour, and Director, Glasgow University Business School
Introduction: Definitions, measurement, and model 1: with Philip Beaumont: The development of bargaining theory 2: with Andrew Thomson: Environmental influences on bargaining power 3: Values, beliefs, objectives, and bargaining power 4: Bargaining power inaction 5: The influence of bargaining power on the outcomes of collective bargaining 6: Bargaining power in changing contexts: hotels and catering, motor vehicles, and local government 7: Trade Union power at the beginning of the 1990s: secular decline or terminal collapse? Bibliography Index
