| Abstract | As Paul Edwards has argued, ‘conflict is one of the major underlying principles of relations between managers and workers’ (1995: 434). A representative survey conducted by the CIPD in 2014 (and discussed in Chap. 4 of this book) found that 38% of people in the UK had experienced some form of conflict at work in the previous 12 months and 28% had ‘ongoing difficult relationships’ (CIPD 2015). Managing conflict is also clearly a central part of the day-to-day activities of employment relations practitioners. In the Workplace Employment Relations Study 2011, more than nine out of ten British HR practitioners reported spending time on disciplinary and grievance issues, a greater proportion than training, diversity, appraisals and pay. Similarly, discipline and grievance were the most common issues to which trade union representatives devoted attention (van Wanrooy et al. 2013). |
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