Systems Approach

Introduction• The systems approach has been a combination of

traditions, customs and a web of action, reaction and interaction between parties. The systems approach is given by Prof. John T. Dunlop of the Harvard University (1958) and is also referred as Dunlop’s Approach. Dunlop analyses industrial relations system as a subsystem of the society. He suggested that industrial relations system could be divided into four interrelated elements comprising certain actors, certain contexts, an ideology binding the industrial relations system together and a body of rules created to govern the actors at the workplace.

A simplified version of Dunlop’s Approach to Industrial Relation

Environment

al Forces

1.Market or Budgetary Restraints2.Technology3.Distribution of power in society

Participants in the Syte

m

WorkersManagementGovernment

Output

Rules of workplace

Elements of System Model of Industrial Relation-Dunlop

• The Actors in the system• The Contexts of systems• The Ideology of an Industrial Relations System• The Network or Web of Rules

The Actors in the system

• A hierarchy of managers and their representatives in supervision

• A hierarchy of workers (non-managerial) and any spokesman

• Specialized government agencies (like labour courts) created by the first two actors concerned with workers’ enterprises and their relationships.

The Contexts of systems

• The technological characteristics of the workplace and work community. Changes in technology enhance the employers expectations about the skills of workers. The work processes and methods with modern techniques reduce manual work and workers acquire greater control over work and higher production can be achieved.

• The market or budgetary (economic) constraints also influences industrial relations because the need for labour is closely associated with the demand for the products.

• The locus and distribution of power in the larger society in the form of power centres-the workers, the employers and the government also influences the relationship between labour and management

The Ideology of an Industrial Relations System

• In the words of Dunlop, an ideology is a “set of ideas and beliefs commonly held by the actors that helps to build or integrate the system together as an entity.” Its body of common ideas that defines the role and place of each actor and the ideas that each actor holds towards the place and function of the others in the system. The ideology of a stable system involves a congruence or compatibility among these views and the rest of the system.

The Network or Web of Rules

For Dunlop, the establishment of procedures and rules is the centre of attention in an industrial relations system. These rules may be expressed in a variety of forms:

• the regulations and policies of the management hierarchy.• the regulations, decrees, decisions, awards or order of

government agencies• The rules and decisions of specialized agencies created by

the management and worker hierarchies• Collective bargaining agreements.• The customs and traditions of the workplace and work

community

Shortcomings/Criticism of Dunlop’s Theory

• It is static, not dynamic in time.• It concentrates on the structure of the system

ignoring the processes within it.• It tends to ignore the essential element of all

industrial relations that of the nature and development of conflicts itself.

• It focuses on formal rules to the neglect of important informal rules and informal processes.

• It may not be integrated and it is a problematic whether or not the actors share a common ideology

Shortcomings/Criticism of Dunlop’s Theory

• It fails to give an account of how inputs into the system are converted into outputs.

• It is environmentally biased and provides no articulation between the internal plant level systems and the wider systems.

• It favours an analytical approach based on comparison rather than a problem solving approach built on description.

• It makes no special provision for the role of individual personalities in industrial in industrial relations as the actors are being viewed in a structural rather than in a dynamic sense