What is the Scope of Industrial Relations?

The concept of industrial relations is explaining their scope and IR has a very wide meaning and connotation. In the narrow sense, it means that the employer, employee relationship confines itself to the relationship that emerges out of the day to day association of the management and the labor. In its wider sense, industrial relations include the relationship between an employee and an employer in the course of the running of an industry and may project it to spheres, which may transgress to the areas of quality control, marketing, price fixation and disposition of profits among others. Also, learn the Importance of Industrial Relations.

Learn and Study, What is the Scope of Industrial Relations?

The term industrial relations has a broad as well as a narrow outlook. Originally, industrial relations broadly define to include the relationships and interactions between employers and employees. From this perspective, industrial relations covers all aspects of the employment relationship, including human resource management, employee relations, and union-management (or labor) relations. Now its meaning has become more specific and restricted.

Accordingly, industrial relations pertains to the study and practice of collective bargaining, trade unionism, and labor-management relations, while human resource management is a separate, largely distinct field that deals with nonunion employment relationships and the personnel practices and policies of employers.

The scope of industrial relations is quite vast.

The main issues involved here include the following:

• Collective bargaining.
• Machinery for settlement of industrial disputes.
• Standing orders.
• Worker’s participation in management, and.
• Unfair labor practices.

Definition and Scope of industrial relations:

The ultimate aim of any human activity at the socio-economic level should be the minimal use of available resources in achieving the maximum economic and social results, i.e. to be increasingly productive. The productivity of capital, machines, and resources other than human resources can be improved in various ways.

But improving the productivity of human resources is a complex and onerous task, for the simple reason that “labor” stands for both an individual human being and a group of individuals with different perceptions about productivity, motivation and attitudes, and with different needs. In organizations, individuals do not operate in isolation. They interact and react collectively to various issues in which management has an interest, including productivity.

Thus productivity improvement extends beyond the domain of the management of workers and becomes a labor-management or industrial relations issue to be negotiated, settled and implemented jointly by the management and the union. Productivity improvement as an industrial relations issue thus acquires a greater significance in all enterprises where the employees are organized.

“Industrial relations” broadly means the relations arising out of employment. In this broad sense, it covers the area of personnel management or human resources management and labor-management relations or labor relations. In its narrower sense, it refers only to the relations between management and the unions. And in its popular usage, it refers only to labor-management relations.

More things…

Industrial relations in organizations is the total of the management’s attitude to labor and of labor’s attitude to management’s policies and practices that affect the interests of the employees. Industrial relations are, basically, interactions between management and union(s). They involve continuous dialogue between the two sides on various issues of common interest; through such dialogues, the two sides shape each other’s attitudes.

The approach, methods, strategies, and techniques, etc., of management in achieving the desired objectives vary from one organization to another. This is especially true about productivity improvement through industrial relations. It is, therefore, primarily the responsibility of management to develop industrial relations with workers and the unions to promote productivity continuingly.

Another scope of Industrial Relations:

Based on the above definitions, the scope of Industrial Relations can easily be delineated as follows:

1. Labor relations, i.e., relations between labor union and management.
2. Employer-employee relations i.e. relations between management and employees.
3. The role of various parties’ viz., employers, employees, and state in maintaining industrial relations.
4. The mechanism of handling conflicts between employers and employees, in case of conflicts, arise.

The main aspects of industrial relations can be identified as follows:

1. Promotion and development of healthy labor-management relations.
2. Maintenance of industrial peace and avoidance of industrial strife.
3. Development and growth of industrial democracy.