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

Output
Environmental Forces

Participants in the Sytem

1.Market or Workers Rules of
Budgetary Management workplace
Restraints
Government
2.Technology
3.Distribution
of power in
society
 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