Principles of Employment Relations in Australia Essay

Principles of Employment Relations in Australia - Essay Example Over the past about twenty years, many nations have experienced a wide spread change and as such, the current theories are not a clear conceptual lens of understanding these changes. Australia has also experienced these changes since 1983. Industrial relations researchers have been doing a wonderful job in this sector, making critical observation like the transformation that has been experienced over the past 20 years or so. The theories of the Industrial relations are connected to the real world as they attempt to find logic from the natural human social behaviour and help to comprehend the consistent human real life activities (Allan et al 2008). Each human activity is identified in terms of theory, social context, experience and practice. Theories are perceived differently in the real life situation implying that these could be very different circumstances for instance the work of a shop Stewart and a human resource manager. Basically there are five main theories of industrial relations that have been explained by Industrial relations researchers (Allan et al 2008). These theories include Unitary, Conflict, Systems, and social action. Under this theory, an organization or a firm is v... The organizations management team and the workforce work together to meet the same goals and mutual respect and cooperation are emphasized here (Allan et al 2008). The main feature of this theory is the common purpose that the management and staff work to meet and the mutual cooperation that is emphasised in meeting these objectives. The stronghold of this theory is the fact that the trade union can be rendered useless as the organization has already established loyalty between workers and itself and this relationship is mutually exclusive. The whole industry is visualised as one and not as two sides where any conflict is treated as a disruptive and a consequence of agitators, poor communication and interpersonal problems. The organization is integrated in one harmonious firm and each worker identifies with the common organizational goal. There is not conflict of interest as the owners of capital are partners for effective production, good salaries and wages and good profits as well (Alexander et al 2008) Such kinds of operations have weaknesses in that, the workforce cannot challenge the managers' decision and trade unions are perceived as intruders to the existing unity and organizational structure. The existing trade unions become competitors to the workers loyalty. Unitary theory does not appreciate conflict as this is perceived as interpersonal friction, incitation, failure to understand communality and faulty communication (Allan et al 2008). Neo unitarism is a variant of the unitary theory (unitarism); this theory gets the workers to provide better production by human resource management tactics. Conflict Theory Many scholars believe that the theory of conflict bases its roots on the beliefs of Karl Marx and his Marxism theory. This theory