The Tracking of the Evolution and Extension of the Employment Relation

黄与橙 彭若寒

【Abstract】The employ relation is a popular subject that focus on analyzing the labor market and the mechanism in employer-employee’s relations in the past century. Using the discussion about the dominant factors in the labor market as clew,the following article introduce the evolution of the employ relation and interaction between the human resource management and industrial reaction.Finally,concluded by observing the problems that exist in the research, the anticipation is being mentioned of the future development and the destination of the research in this subject in the future.

【Key words】Labor economic; Industrial relation; Human resource management; Employ relation; Trade union

【作者簡介】黄与橙，男，福建武夷山人，法国SKEMA高等商学院，管理学硕士，研究方向：企业人力资源管理，人力资源信息化运用等；彭若寒，厦门大学外国语学院。

The employ relation,a subject that well developed in the last century,gradually plays an important role in the modern management theories in both company and society’s perspectives. The evolution of the labor relation in the 20thcentury deeply affect the western labor market.In acknowledging the develop of the employ relation would help us to have another perspective about the China labor market.

1.The Birth of the labor economic

Often being regarded as the extension of the neoclassical economics,the labor economic majorly focuses the operating principles of the external job market of the enterprise.the preset of the theories is assuming that both the enterprise, employees and customers are following the reasonable man doctrine and seek to reach the most effective solutions follow the marginal benefit principles.The labor resource,which being regarded as the equivalent of the commodities,would follow the classical principle of economic rules.

As the neoclassical labor economists view the firm as a function of production, the labor resource,same as the capital and field,plays a factor of production,would follows the force of supply and demand to determine the price of the labor resource to reach the optimal allocation.

Figure1:The closed loop of ideal economic model

According to the circular-flow model on the labor market,this economic system is based on the circulation within householders and firms.This model is based on the idealistic background in describe the flow into two categories:Markets for goods and services and the Market for factors of production.

In factor markets,households and firms play different roles in the market for goods and services.The households provide labor force to firms,they can be thought as the sellers of their time of work in production,the two types of markets form a closed loop. The traditional labor economics regards the available labor force as one kind of commodity,which leads to a domination position of the employers and would potentially cause the conflict within the employee-employer’s relation.

2.The origin of labor relation

The continued researches in recent years find that most of the labor resource of company isn’t flowed through the external labor market.On the contrary,the majority of the labor resources are allocated through the internal labor market of the enterprise.The analyzation of Edward Lazear shows the competition of the external job market would force the enterprise to reform the structure of company, however, acknowledging the role of the competition within the enterprise,he still disapproves any intervention on the institution level toward the inner employee relation of the company.

The main subject of the industrial relation research had been altered in the 30s,Kaufman use the original industrial relation and the modern industrial relation in dividing the two different periods.The original industrial relation mainly researches on the employment relation in generalized perspectives, the latter,however,concentrate more on the collective employment. This differentiation marks the milestone of the development of the subject and shows up the change of the industry in the first decades of the century.

Rather than regarding the labor force as one of the factors in the prefect competition market,the industrial relation treats the labor as one of the exchanges in the employment relationship,which is part of the imperfect competition market and hierarchical enterprises.The price of the work,though affects by the external job market,determines in fact by the contracts which negotiated individually or collectively.Therefore,the assumption about the model of supply and demand can’t be established,and this ideal hypothesis of labor economics has been abandoned by the researcher who support the industrial relation.

3.The Interaction with Industrial Relation and Human Resources Management

The majority of researchers believe that the industrial relation has little concern with the development of the human resources management.The gap between the two subjects is quite clear while the industrial relation refers multi-subjects in different fields,the human recourse management,however,shows only interests in the employer-control and adopting the employee relation.the industrial relation,on the contrary,majorly research in the employment relation in the narrow sense,but with the power of the trade union decreased in 80s as the expand of the globalization, the industrial relation was no longer being seen as the frontline of policies-making and research.Facing this tough situation,there is no doubt that this field must be reformed.

As part of the attempts to reform the study of industrial relation,researchers try to refocus on the generalized employer-employee’s relations.The collective negotiations become more and more rare in the job market and the theories of the human resources management are quickly adapted by the society and the company. Especially in most recent years,the concepts of the human resources management have significant developed and widely adapted by the enterprise.It develops the interpersonal behavior approach has therefore been created. Rather than discussing the key factors that influence the employees’behaviors in internal or external labor market.This subject is built on social exchange theory and Incentive-contribution theory.According to the resource-based view theories,the superiority of the company in the market is based on the resource within rather than external factors or environment.

In fact,the human resource management was always regarded as part of the industrial relation until the 60s.Entering the new century, the industrial relation and the industrial relation share more connection in the cross fields.On the one hand,the behaviorism developed the theories like Organizational Citizenship Behavior in analyzing how individual affects the organization.On another hand,the Cooperate social reputation theories explain the how attitude of the employees toward the organization being affected by the behaviors in treating the shareholder.The interaction has gradually become more and more frequent as the scholars mention to build up a field both contain human resource management and the industrial relation (HRIR).

4.The Research in China and Future Development

Although both the industrial relation and the human resource management are developed as addendum of the labor economic,these two theories haven’t able to point out others factors that could strongly affect the choice of the employees.The industrial relation acknowledges the mechanism of internal labor market and collective negotiation, the human resource explains the employees’requirement and how their behavior could affect the company.Both fields refer to the personal development of the individual and the social motivation of the employees while choosing a company,but how those factors affecting the individual when entering the job market still remain unexplored.

The earlier research toward the labor economic and the HRIR in China generally focus on the structure-building level,more precisely,the current research mainly study the evolution of the of the labor relation and the solution in the policy-making level and analyzing the labor law to make suggestion by making rules in generalized perspective.Those researches,however,somehow ignore the intervention of the government.This negligence would certainly lead to the misunderstanding of the mechanism of the market.Also,the lack of fundamental theorical framework would lead all associated research fall into the dilemma of misinterpret the market itself while the solution based on the incorrect basic would certainly prove to be unrealistic.

Witness the growing demand of labor force in China in the recent year,the researcher in the employ relation should move their focus on the micro-level perspective,In fact,as the lack of full anticipation in the labor market,a model in anticipating the professional value of the employees would certainly be required in helping the company to grow up a more competitive recruitment policy.Though the geographical and industrial difference certainly exist in different culture background,a generalized model in describing the value of the career development in each factor would likely be a destination of research in the future.

References：

[1]Thomas S. Kuhn. The Structure of Scientific Revolution[M].Chicago: The University of Chicago Press,1970:15-16.

[2]Edward P. Lazear, The Future of Personnel Economics[J]. Economic Journal,2001,Vol.110,No.467:611-639.