Bridging industrial relations and critical management studies: Work, resistance, and alternate imaginings in late capitalism

Abstract

The study of work is central to understanding how changes in organizations and their environments impact lives and livelihoods. While industrial sociology and its concern with the organization of work are foundational to management and organization studies, scholars have bemoaned the waning interest in work and its evolution within these fields. In this article we seek to re-energize this tradition, arguing that Critical Management Studies (CMS) and Industrial Relations (IR)—two disciplines whose core interests concern work and its changing nature—have much to gain from further cross-fertilization. As Organization becomes a recognized platform for scholarship on the organization of work, we submit that more could be done to bring IR’s intellectual legacy into CMS approaches, and that doing so will yield mutual benefits. We focus here on IR’s core concerns with rules and regulatory frameworks, and collectivities over individualities. Similarly, IR can benefit from integrating and building on insights developed in CMS. We argue that CMS as a whole offers lessons for IR in at least three ways: (i) the emphasis on cultural dominance over workers; (ii) recognition of social and identity-based fault lines that define life and work experiences; and (iii) attention to the social construction of subjectivities. In closing, we suggest four areas that cross-fertilization between IR and CMS is likely to greatly contribute to: resistance in late capitalism, alternative organizations, inclusion, and the “future of work.”