'Durkheim and the Radical Analysis of 'Disorder' in British Industrial Relations'
Abstract
While the terrain of industrial relations (IR) has been traditionally marked by an inflection of Pluralism in one corner and Marxism in the other, an alternative posture found expression in an analysis rooted in a variant of post-war British sociology. The paper maintains that this tradition could be reconstructed as a Durkheimian position on 'disorder' in British IR: re-training the analytical lens of institutional-pluralism away from the 'problem of order' in the workplace towards acknowledging the anomic consequences of liberal-market societies and the need for cohesive linkages across socio-economic arrangements. The tradition is evaluated and lessons for the contemporary 'problem of order' are drawn.