Importance of History in ER

Whether we are studying employment relations in one country, comparing employment relations in more than one country, or analyzing global phenomena across countries, we will be trying to describe and explain employment relationships and the systems in which they operate.

In Part 1 of this topic, we considered the important concepts of ‘context’ and ‘agency’. Another factor very important to describing and explaining employment relations is history. Indeed, according to Kochan (1998: 35-36), a defining feature of the academic discipline of employment relations is the importance it places on history.

History is important because it influences the attitudes and behaviors of the parties to the employment relationship. All nations and employing organisations are affected by what happened in the past. The notion of ‘path dependency’ is another way of saying that employment relations systems are not re-created on a daily basis but are built incrementally on the past; that is, historical features or patterns are often repeated (Kaufman 2004, p. 59). Thelen (1999, p. 387) explains that institutions, once founded, ‘continue to evolve in response to changing environmental conditions…but in ways that are constrained by past trajectories.’

The effect of history on employment relations can perhaps most easily be seen in Britain, where the employment relations system evolved gradually from the 19th century through the 20th century and into the 21st century without civil wars or invasions or any significant breaks or sudden changes. But history is also important in countries that have seen radical changes at some point in time. For example, radical changes in employment relations systems occurred in the USA after the great depression, Japan and Germany after WWII, Australia as a result of the Work Choices laws in 2005 or China in the last 10 years.