Introduction

Since it was first introduced by Alan Fox in the 1960s, ‘frames of reference’ has been an enduring concept within the field of industrial relations. It refers to the broad interpretations of the nature of the employment relationship held either by actors in the real world of industrial relations – workers, employers and policy makers – or by academic commentators. In his first use of the term, Fox (1966) drew a distinction between a unitary frame of reference – grounded in the belief that the employment relationship was essentially cooperative and that employers and employees shared common interests whose advance was best secured through the exercise of management prerogative – and a pluralist frame, which recognized that conflict was integral to the employment relationship and that, as a consequence, employees needed independent representation through trade unions and collective bargaining to safeguard their separate interests. In a later formulation, Fox identified a third, radical frame, which emphasized the exploitative nature of employment within capitalist societies and was critical of the pluralist perspective for promoting employee accommodation with this prevailing system (Fox, 1974).

In the period since Fox was writing, researchers have continued to use the frame concept both to analyse the beliefs of industrial relations actors and to identify and reflect upon competing traditions within the academic field (Heery, 2016; Budd et al, 2021; Dobbins et al, 2021; Kaufman et al, 2021). Later writers have often labelled frames differently and have sometimes identified more frames than the three sketched by Fox, but they share his concern to identify broad perspectives on the employment relationship that include both analytical and normative claims grounded in very different assumptions about the relative interests of workers and their employers (Budd and Bhave, 2008; Godard, 2017; Barry and Wilkinson, 2021). In what follows, there is an attempt to demonstrate the continuing relevance of the frame concept and to show how unitary, pluralist and radical/critical perspectives remain identifiable within the academic field of industrial relations.

Frames of reference

Frames of reference are rooted in competing interpretations of the relative interests of employers and workers, and can be placed on a continuum along which the interests of the two sides are fully congruent at one end and absolutely conflicting at the other.