Allan Flanders

Allan David Flanders (born July 27, 1910 in London , † September 29, 1973 in Edinburgh ) was a British sociologist. He was one of the most influential British Industrial Relations experts and - together with Hugh Armstrong Clegg and Alan Fox - founder of the so-called Oxford School of Industrial Relations , a mindset that scientifically that of John Dunlop justified System Theory of Industrial Relations close stands and politically the pluralism attributed becomes.

Flanders had a remarkable academic career. Although without a degree or university degree, he was appointed to a newly established university position as Senior Lecturer in Industrial Relations at Oxford in 1949 . In 1964 he became a Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford . The University of Manchester appointed him professor in 1969 and the University of Warwick / Coventry in 1971 as a reader at the School of Industrial and Business Studies. He took up his last position as one marked by paraplegia .

Since 1951 he was married to the German-born Annemarie Klara Laura, née Tracinski, a former labor judge in Berlin . The marriage remained childless.

Ethical socialist

Flanders gave up his original study plans after graduating from school and was committed to an ethical variety of socialism . As a teenager, he went to Germany in 1929, where he became familiar with Leonard Nelson's philosophy , which was shaped by Immanuel Kant and Fries, in the adult department of the Walkemühle Landerziehungsheim near Kassel . The socialist ethics established by the Göttingen professor served "reasonable self-determination" and " Socratic dialogue "; it represented anti-clerical, anti-militarist and anti-nationalist values ​​as well as a vegetarian way of life.

Flanders became a member of the International Socialist Fighting League (ISK) founded by Nelson . After the adult section of the Walkemühle was closed in 1931, the teachers went to Berlin and tried to avert the threat of National Socialism, among other things with the daily newspaper " Der Funke " founded by the ISK . The ISK's “ Urgent Appeal ” published here in the summer of 1932 for an electoral alliance between the SPD and the KPD was unsuccessful. Flanders went back to England and headed the Socialist Vanguard Group , whose journal Socialist Vanguard (renamed Socialist Commentary in 1941 ), he initially edited responsibly and actively supported until his death.

Political reform work

In post-war Germany, Flanders played an important role because of its knowledge of Germany. In 1946 he was appointed head of the political department of the British Control Commission for Germany , where he also influenced the form of organization chosen during the rebuilding of the German trade unions: Instead of the all-encompassing unified organization with only internal subdivisions desired by Hans Böckler and other German trade union representatives, the British Occupation Authority announced their desire for autonomous industrial unions.

A scholarship from the Whitney Foundation made it possible for Flanders to study industrial relations in the USA before he took over the lectureship at Oxford in 1949.

He then held several influential political advisory positions on commissions and advisory boards. In 1965 he was appointed as a full-time “Industrial Relations Adviser” in the “National Board for Prices and Incomes” newly established under the Labor government of Harold Wilson . The “Royal Commission on Trade Unions and Employers' Associations” under Lord Donovan asked him for an expertise on the state and possible reform of the British system of industrial relations. He noted a chaotic structure ("largely informal, largely fragmented and largely autonomous") and recommended its reform, which the final report (Donovan Report) of 1968 took up as recommendations for the political administration. In his writings on the reform of collective bargaining, he blamed British management for many grievances.

Scientific impact

The Oxford School of Industrial Relations , which he co-founded , also included: Hugh Clegg, Alan Fox and Otto Kahn-Freund . After its incubation period in the 1950s , it reached its peak from the mid-1960s during the time of the Labor governments and with the Industrial Relations Research Unit founded in 1970 at the University of Warwick / Coventry , where Flanders and Clegg taught.

For Flanders, industrial relations are not only a mechanism for conflicting interests and distributing income, they also guarantee a right to participation rights and human dignity. For him, unions are organizations that not only represent daily interests (“bread and butter questions”), but also contribute to social justice. Similar to HUGO SINZHEIMER he understands the negotiating parties as "private legislators" and the bargaining system (collective bargaining) as a method of the common control ( "joint regulation" ) of employers and employees or their organizations.

Fonts

• Trade Unions , London 1952 (Hutchinson).
• The System of Industrial Relations , Oxford 1954 (Blackwell) (together with Hugh Clegg).
• The Fawley Productivity Agreements , London 1964 (Faber).
• Industrial Relations: What is wrong with the system? London 1965 (Institute of Personnel Management).
• Collective Bargaining: Prescription for Change , London 1967 (Faber).
• Management and Unions: The Theory and Reform of Industrial Relations , London 1974 (Faber).

Literature on Flanders

• John Kelly: Social Democracy and Anti-Communism: Allan Flanders and British Industrial Relations in the Early Post-war Period. In: A. Campbell, N. Fishmann and J. Mcilroy (Eds.): British Trade Unions and Industrial Politics. Volume 1: Consensus and Boom, 1945-64. Aldershot 1999 (Ashgate), pp. 192-221, ISBN 0-7546-0017-3 .
• John Kelly: Ethical Socialism and the Trade Unions: Allan Flanders and British Industrial Relations Reform . Routledge, London 2010, ISBN 978-0-415-87848-7 .
• Chris Rowley: Allan Flanders. In: Michael Poole and Malcolm Warner (Eds.): The IEBM Handbook of Human Resource Management. International Thomson Publishers, London 1997, pp. 660-665, ISBN 1-86152-166-9 .

Web links

• Prof John Kelly: The Academic Study of Industrial Relations: Allan Flanders and the Cold War. (PDF; 16 kB) London School of Economics, April 2003, accessed on January 19, 2009 (English).