ABSTRACT
This chapter offers a review of some key research traditions and empirical trajectories in the field of employment relations. It first traces the broad historic traditions seeking to understand the institutional regulation of employment relations and how intellectual enquiry evolved as both regulatory context and locus changed. More contemporaneously, the chapter moves to consider key empirical trends in the field given the context of the Great Recession and its protracted aftermath. Finally, the chapter concludes by recalling how the original ‘problem of order’ associated with industrial strikes, which first propelled the field of study into life, has largely dissipated in advanced economies. The possibility that injustices originating in the field of employment relations now find voice in the political rather than industrial sphere is considered.
