John T. Dunlop

The Task of Contemporary Wage Theory

The high purpose of these sessions is symbolized by a passage from Michael Polanyi: Science is not conducted by isolated efforts like those of the chess players or shellers of peas and could make no progress that way. If one day all communications were cut between scientists, that day science would practically come to a standstill. … The co-ordinative principle of science … consists in the adjustment of each scientist’s activities to the results hitherto achieved by others. In adjusting himself to the others each scientist acts independently, yet by virtue of these several adjustments scientists keep extending together with a maximum efficiency the achievements of science as a whole.1

Retailing and supply chains in the information age

Abstract This article describes how information technologies have reconfigured retailing and in turn the operation of a core US manufacturing industry, apparel. “Lean retailers” exchange point-of-sales information with their suppliers and require them to replenish orders quickly based on actual sales. This shifts part of the risk arising from changing consumer tastes from retailers and onto suppliers. In response to this shift in risk, we argue that manufacturers must reshape planning methods, cost models, inventory practices, production operations, and sourcing strategies. We then show that suppliers that adopt comprehensive changes to their manufacturing processes perform better along a number of dimensions compared to firms that have not.

The Information-Integrated Channel: A Study of the U.S. Apparel Industry in Transition

THE POPULAR PROGNOSIS for the U.S. apparel industry is bleak. Citing increased import penetration in many product segments and the concurrent erosion of domestic employment, many analysts regard apparel manufacturing in the United States as a dying industry. I The Department of Labor concurs, projecting a significant reduction in employment in the domestic apparel industry during the next decade. Under its most optimistic scenario, the department predicts employment will drop from a 1990 level of 839,000 to 649,000 in 2005; under its most

Policy Decisions and Research in Economics and Industrial Relations

Examines policy problems in manpower programs and explores the relationship among wages, unemployment, and prices. Relation of unemployment and wage inflation; Relation between wages and price standards; Human capital and manpower and education programs. (Abstract copyright EBSCO.)

Dispute Resolution: Negotiation and Consensus Building.

John Dunlop is one of the worlds outstanding figures in the theory and practice of industrial relations. In this book he advocates a better means to resolve disputes. He stresses that each side must work out its own internal accommodation as a necessary prerequisite to across-the-table resolution.

Framework for the analysis of industrial relations: Two views

Presents views on the framework for the analysis of industrial relations behavior. Interaction of the systems of communication in labor and management organizations; Relationship between union representatives and management representatives; Origins of a collective bargaining relationship. (Abstract copyright EBSCO.)

Price Flexibility and the “Degree of Monopoly”

Introduction: two approaches to the problem, 522. — I. Rigidity as a relative concept, 522; as a characteristic of the total system of prices, 524; as an indication of the degree of monopoly, 525. — Measurement of the degree of monopoly, 526. — II. The method employed: average prime costs vs. marginal costs, 527. — The statistical technique, 529. — Analysis of the data, 530.

Evaluation of Factors Affecting Productivity

Productivity is the end result of a complex social process including: science, research and development, education, technology, management, production facilities, workers and labour organizations. These factors may be under private or public direction, or they may reflect varying combinations of private and public activity. Productivity cannot be increased in any country or under any social system by simple decree. An increase in output per man-hour or output per capita for a country reflects the energy and ingenuity of its whole people. A century of increasing productivity involves contributions from all industrializing mankind.

U.S. Industrial Relations: The Next Twenty Years.

features of these two chapters, for they too contain much of value. A book like Industrial Relations Systems, which sets itself so ambitious an aim and is so all-embracing in the scope of its material, is bound to invite pungent criticism, not least when it betrays some obvious signs of haste in bountiful printing errors and repetitions in the text. It would be a great pity if the really important and fresh insights which it contributes to our understanding of industrial relations should be overshadowed on this account. The need for systematic thought is so great that we should welcome it with open arms and ask for more. The feeling of regret, that I began by expressing, is mingled with a feeling of gratitude that someone of John Dunlops stature, with his immense experience and acute mind, should take this task in hand.

Industrial Relations Systems.

In this revised edition, John T. Dunlop updates his general theory of industrial relations, describing it as a set of tools for practitioners that can be used to develop new industrial relations systems or to reform existing ones. He also discusses the transformation of the industrial relations systems of the former Soviet Union. Since the initial publication of this work in 1958, a substantial literature has grown up around Dunlops theory, which provides a framework for analyzing and interpreting the vast and growing body of information about labour relations. This book is the inaugural volume in a new series, Harvard Business School Press Classics, which will bring back into print works widely recognized as having significant impact on management practice and research.