Agonising over industrial relations: Bringing agonism and dissensus to the pluralist frames of reference

Abstract

The construct of pluralism has allowed us to see a world where parties could pursue divergent interests, sometimes to the point of conflict, and still work together to realise goals. In response to changing models of employment that are threatening many of the values and interests core to workers and society, new readings of pluralism have emerged that we will argue oscillate between antagonism and consensus. In response, we proffer the concepts of agonism and dissensus as bridging different schools of pluralist thought. Our article commences with a review of affordances and limitations of new pluralism. We then introduce the political philosophy of Chantal Mouffe – in particular her conceptualisations of agonism and dissensus – and discuss how these have been employed in consideration of the employment relationship. Next we describe a case salient to our argument, the ready-made garment industry’s stakeholder engagement responses to the Rana Plaza tragedy in Bangladesh, into which we bring an understanding of agonism with the possibilities of dissensual engagement. We conclude with our contribution, the development of a nuanced view of pluralism based on dissensus and agonism, which better accounts for the co-existence of cooperation and conflict.

Towards Worker‐Driven Supply Chain Governance: Developing Decent Work Through Democratic Worker Participation

“…Inherent in this is that differences in interests cannot always be reconciled: In fact, the perspective is based upon the idea that there exists a “structured antagonism” between workers and management in terms that there may never be a reconciling of interests, rather the employment relationship in underpinned by a temporary truce over interests (Edwards, 1990). This has important implications in terms of decent work in supply chains van Buren et al,(forthcoming). While the supply chain perspective sees issues around safety and working conditions in general as technical issues that can be solved through monitoring and/or auditing, the industrial democracy approach sees such issues as part of the social and political struggle over interests within the organization.…”

Pluralisms? Social philosophy, social science and public policy in employment relations and human resource management

“…(3) Van Buren et al. (2021) offer a welcome broadening of the pluralism debate into political philosophy and political sociology.…”

“…Chantal Mouffe’s political pluralism based on agonism and dissensus has been portrayed as another version of radical pluralism (see Bevir and Reiner, 2012: 207–212, on her ‘Difference theory’). I found Van Buren et al.’s (2021) IR application interesting for several reasons. First, Mouffe’s approach is rooted in a brand of Gramscian, Eurocommunist political analysis that has shaped my journey to neo-pluralism (see Ackers, 2014a; Ackers and Payne, 1998).…”

“…Despite all these insights, I question whether this new approach ‘can bridge the chasm between radical pluralist and neo-pluralist frames’ (Van Buren et al., 2021), for a number of reasons. First, there is no ‘chasm’ at the level of empirical social science or even public policy, more a difference of emphasis.…”

Old frames and new lenses: Frames of reference revisited

“…Morrison, 2011), or as an expression of employee self-determination (see also Budd, 2004). In other words, the mainstream management research on employee voice and participation is dominated by a unitarist view of employee intention and behaviour that sees it as being aligned with the interests of the firm (Wilkinson et al., 2020).…”