Working leather : the fusion of formal and informal industrial relations in a Durban shoe factory.
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Date
1995
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Abstract
The thesis concerns the persistent coupling of formal and
informal industrial relations within a particular manufacturing
company. At first, the company's formal structure of industrial
relations was heavily tempered by the operation of informal cross
cutting ties. The resultant system of industrial relations was
one that might be regarded as a hybrid, integrating formal and
informal networks of relationships within the organization of the
factory. The quite discernible ethos of informality or
paternalism remained largely unchallenged by the rather
facilitating political conditions that prevailed at the time.
However, the political climate has, in the last decade or so,
been subject to considerable pressure that has resulted in some
far reaching and fundamental changes to the political order of
the country.
The emergent political conditions have enforced upon the company
the need for change. The essence of such changes were perceived
to hinge upon the transformation of the company's system of
industrial relations. The transformation entailed the
establishment of a more overtly formal system of industrial
relations, separating the formal and informal relations which had
becomes inextricably entwined. However, the objectives of such
changes were never quite achieved. The distinction between the
formal and informal industrial relations remained submerged in
the melee of intergroup contestation. The various interest groups
in the factory context appropriated the division between formal
and informal industrial relations, enabling these groups to
phrase their industrial strategies within an idiom most
contextually appropriate. What emerged was an extension of this
tendency to merge formal and informal industrial relations.
Description
Thesis (M.A.)-University of Natal, Durban, 1995.
Keywords
Industrial relations--Durban., Leather industry and trade--Durban., Leather., Work satisfaction., Theses--Anthropology.