Comparative Patterns of Labor-Management Relations: Great Britain, the U.S., and Japan

Business history has traditionally tended to neglect the management of labor and has been primarily concerned with the commercial, organizational, and technological aspects of the firm. Individual company histories touch on labor relations briefly and almost as an aside, often dealing with only the most superficial aspects. Only in recent years have there been signs of a growing interest in various aspects of labor management [25, 17, 13, 24, 12]. Labor history, for its part, has traditionally tended to overlook the role of management, concentrating on either labor union development or broader aspects of working-class experience. Similarly, however, there are signs of a new interest among labor historians in the role and policies of management [18; 271.