Conflict at work

The analysis of workplace relations is in a confused and unsatisfactory state, elucidated neither by recent theoretical speculation nor by empirical studies. Taking conflict the basic organizing principle of workplace relations - as his central focus, Paul Edwards develops a rigorous 'materialist' theory in which different levels of analysis are deployed to identify different aspects of conflict. Edwards goes on to consider the forms conflict assumes, and demonstrates by the use of three levels of analysis (the mode of production as a whole, the social formation and the workplace) that workplace relations are not just the consequences of a logic of control; they have a certain autonomy. As part of this overall project, detailed attention is given to a question largely neglected in the labour process debate: the role of the state in regulating relations at the point of production.

By developing a perspective on relations between capital and labour that challenges Marxist and non Marxist orthodoxies, this book will be of interest to social theorists as well as to specialists in industrial sociology, industrial relations and labour history.