Exploring the nature and extent of workplace conflict

Abstract

Recent decades have witnessed some substantial changes in both the nature and the extent of workplace conflict in the UK. The number of collective disputes has declined significantly, but those that do take place are increasingly large in scale. In contrast, claims to employment tribunals have grown rapidly, with volumes heavily influenced in recent times by claims from groups of employees, rather than individuals. In spite of this changing picture, there do not appear to have been dramatic changes in the quality of employment relations inside the workplace, even though the UK has just experienced the longest recession in living memory. This suggests that the visible signs of conflict are shaped not only by the scale of underlying tensions but also by the available mechanisms for their expression (see Dix et al. 2009, for one discussion).