Various Approaches of Industrial Relations

1. K.C.Sekar

2. ●UNITARY APPROACH is grounded in mutual
cooperation, individual treatment, team work and
shared goals.
●Work place conflict is seen as temporary aberration,
resulting from poor management, Employees who do
not mix well with organization culture, Unions do
not cooperate with the management.
●Management’s right to manage is accepted because
there is no ‘we they” feeling.
●Underlying assumption is that everyone benefits
when the focus is on common interest and promotion
of harmony based on reactive strategy.

3. ●PLURALISM(CONFLICT APPROACH )Pluralism is belief in
the existence of more than one ruling principle, giving rise to
a conflict of interests.
●The pluralist approach to IR accepts conflict between
management and workers as inevitable but containable
through various institutional arrangements (like collective
bargaining, conciliation and arbitration etc) and is in fact
considered essential for innovation and growth.
●It perceives organizations as coalitions of competing interests
, where the management’s role is to mediate among the
different interest groups.
●It perceives trade unions as legitimate representative of
employee interests. It also perceives stability in IR as the
product of concessions and compromises between
management and unions.

4. ●MARXIST APPROACH Marxists like pluralists also regard
conflict as inevitable but see it as a product of capitalistic
society where as pluralist believe that the conflict is
inevitable in all organizations
●For Marxists IR has wider meaning. For them conflict arises
not because of rift between management and workers but
because of the division in the society between those who own
resources and those who have only labor to offer.
●Marxist approach thus focuses on the type of society in
which an organization functions.
●Industrial conflict is thus equated with political and social
unrest. Trade Unions are seen both as labor reaction to
exploitation by capitalists, as- well-as a weapon to bring
about a revolutionary social change.

5. ●The system approach was developed by J. P. Dunlop of
Harvard University in 1958.
●According to this approach, individuals are part of an
ongoing but independent social system.
●The behaviour, actions and role of the individuals are shaped
by the cultures of the society.
●The three elements of the system approach are input,
process and output.
●Society provides the cue (signal) to the individuals about
how one should act in a situation.
●The institutions, the value system and other characteristics of
the society influence the process and determine the outcome
or response of the individuals. The basis of this theory is that
group cohesiveness is provided by the common ideology
shaped by the societal factors.