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This article addresses debates in contemporary industrial relations about practical application of pluralism. We compare the potential efficacy of ‘radical-pluralism’ and ‘neo-pluralism’. Data comes from analysis of employment relationships in two unionised public transport sector organisations, in the comparative country contexts of the UK and Republic of Ireland. It is argued that radical-pluralist framing of the employment relationship is better equipped than neo-pluralism to provide deeper and contextually sensitive understandings of the realities of unequal employment relationships. Desired (pluralist) democratic values differ from real world application of joint regulation (praxis). This raises implications regarding constraints on state regulation and public policy goals institutionalising pluralism as fluid and uneven praxis.

This paper is among the first to fuse Social Exchange Theory (SET) with Boundary Theory (BT) to expand the knowledge of HR scholars and practitioners on the repercussions of macroturbulence for the management and experience of work. In‐depth interviews were conducted with 102 academics from UK universities to examine the nexus between COVID‐19 and changes to work at meso and micro levels. The findings extend SET and BT by elucidating how complex internal and external social exchange relationships interact more intensely and provoke tensions with a wider array of work‐life boundaries during a profound global crisis. Based on these findings, we advance a new analytical framework which provides a deeper and more integrated theorisation of the interrelationship between macroturbulence and changing work‐life boundaries. Moreover, we identify implications for practice, which have widespread and ongoing significance given that different types of macro‐level change will continue to disrupt working lives.

Few contemporary studies of change in industrial relations use Carter Goodrich’s classic concept of the ‘frontier of control’ (FoC), especially in cross-national comparative research. Our study maps FoC struggles in two public transport organizations in the UK and the Republic of Ireland. Qualitative methods generate significant insights into complex day-to-day workplace control patterns in these two cases. Despite changes in the frontier of control in both organizations over time, it is observed that employment relations in the Irish case are more cooperative than in the British. The frontier of control still matters, because workplace control regimes shape managerial ability to secure worker consent and are always potentially contestable terrains.