Study title

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.The aim is to identify and describe how employers are restructuring work and human resource practices under conditions of persistent environmental turbulence. This climate of change in the workplace has been interpreted as the response of employers to environmental changes in competition, technology and regulation. In the 1980s and much of the 1990s, the dominant external pressure was the rapid increase in international trade and finance, and hence in competition. Salient responses by employers included rationalization, downsizing, de-layering and methods of work intensification and labour cost reduction. It is now widely perceived that this phase has been progressively replaced, since about 1995, by one in which the dominant external pressures (and opportunities) come from new technology (ICT). The scope for business innovation is widening in the wake of the Internet and e-commerce, and organisations are searching for the creative and technical talent, which will permit them to make the shift from cost-competition to knowledge-competition. The regulatory environment has also changed over this period. In the 1980s and early 1990s, the British Government favoured deregulation (or where regulation was increased, as in the case of trade unions, this was to the advantage of employers); and there was strong opposition to the efforts of supranational authorities to regulate the workplace and the employment relationship. In the latter part of the 1990s, however, new regulation of these areas again became prominent, with the national minimum wage and the working time directive being the best-known but by no means the only examples. The re-emergence of regulation reflects the desire of European governments to maintain control of social and employment policy in the face of global competitive pressures and the growth of global businesses. The sample includes establishments with 5 or...