Close to the Customer: Employee Relations in Superstores Available to Purchase

There is little doubt that the economic, political and legal context within which employee relations takes place has altered substantially over the course of the past decade. What is more interesting is whether or not this has actually produced changes in individual employing organisations and workplaces, and if so why this has occurred. Much of the discussion about the existence of an enterprise culture is highly polemical, rather stronger on rhetoric than reality, and is often based on publicised initiatives or interviews with senior managers. Clearly, from such data, it is easy to over‐exaggerate the extent of change, and to assume that real and lasting adjustments have been put into effect. What is required therefore are more in‐depth investigations of recent developments in specific organisations which can be used to tease out whether policy initiatives have led to changes in practice (see, for example, MacInnes, 1987; Marchington and Parker, 1990).