The fallible manager: The critique of management within pluralist industrial relations

Abstract

This article uses the work of Willy Brown, John Purcell, Linda Dickens, and Keith Sisson to identify the critique of management within pluralist industrial relations. The notion of the ‘fallible manager’ captures the essence of this critique. Within the pluralist tradition, fallible managers are identified as the source of industrial relations problems and are also deemed incapable of reversing the harms they cause in the absence of supportive state intervention. While managers are deemed fallible in the pluralist tradition, however, management typically is not regarded as illegitimate and in a reformed institutional context is capable of managing for the common good, to generate ‘shared value.’