Alan Fox

Alan Fox (born January 23, 1920 in London , † June 26, 2002 ) was a British industrial relations expert and industrial sociologist .

Life

Fox grew up in the East End of London and worked in a film camera factory from the age of 14. During the war he was employed as a photographer in the Air Force.

After the war he was admitted to Ruskin College , Oxford , where he graduated with a degree in public administration. This was followed by studies at Exeter College , which he completed with the degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics (PPE) characteristic of Oxford. He began his career as a Research Fellow at Nuffield College , which made him a Faculty Fellow . 1963 appointed him at Oxford University for lecturers ( senior lecturer ) for Industrial Relations Department in of Social and Administrative Studies.

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Fox saw himself as a sociologist who viewed management worker relations ( industrial relations ) from the perspective of plurality and conflictual interests. One of his most important publications - Beyond Contract: Work, Power and Trust Relations (1974) - is in the tradition of the Durkheim School. Here he differentiates Labor Management Systems according to the analytical categories of "low-trust" and "high-trust" relationships between the actors, which are applicable to both individual corporate organizations and national systems of industrial relationships.

Together with Hugh Armstrong Clegg , Allan Flanders and others, he belonged to the influential Oxford School of Industrial Relations at Nuffield College , which, as left-liberal pluralists , played a central role in the reform policy of the British Labor governments in the 1960s to reorganize and reorganize industrial relations Relationships played. Among other things, Fox was Industrial Relations Adviser in the National Prices and Incomes Board (1965–1971) established by the government of Harold Wilson and author of an expert report - Industrial Relations and Industrial Sociology (Research Paper, 1966) - for the Royal Commission on Trade Unions and Employers' Associations (1965-68). In later years Fox approached more radical positions and criticized pluralism for leaving the power and property relations in society intact.

Fonts

• Industrial Relations and Industrial Sociology . (Research Paper), HMSO, London 1966.
• A Sociology of Work in Industry . Collier-Macmillan, London 1971.
• Industrial Relations: A Social Critique of Pluralist Ideology . In: John Child (Ed.): Man and Organization . Allan & Unwin, London 1973, pp. 185-233.
• Beyond Contract: Work, Power and Trust Relations . Faber and Faber, London 1974.
• History and Heritage: The Social Origins Of Britain's Industrial Relations System . Allan & Unwin, London 1985.
• Man mismanagement . Hutchinson, London 1985.
• A Very Late Development: An Autobiography . Rowe, Chippenham 1990.

Literature on Alan Fox

Stephen Wood: A Critical Evaluation of Fox's Radicalization of Industrial Relations Theory . In: Sociology , Jg. 11/1977, H. 1, pp. 105-125.

Web links

• The Guardian August 6, 2002: Obituary Alan Fox