"Faith. Hope. and Charity and the greatest of these is Charity. " "Hardware. Software. and Lil'ell'are and the greatest of these is . . . " As information technology ceased to be the prerogative of computer scientists and electronics engineers, those of us from other disciplines had to contend with the jargon which was already in vogue. We learned to live with "hardware" and "software. " We were less enthusiastic about "Iiveware. " Polite and some impolite questioning revealed that "Iiveware" was a euphemism for "people. " We were not amused. As one spirited participant observed, "I refused to go home and tell my children that Almighty God had made liveware in His own image and likeness. " People are too important to be known as anything but people. Moreover, it is the importance of people that is the dominating and recurring theme of this book by Christopher Baldry. He deals with virtually every aspect of the problems concerning men and women and their recourse to the equipment. This could well become the definitive work in the field. In addition to the details of health hazards, industrial relations, new technology agreements and the like, Dr. Baldry grapples with two great underpinning issues.

First published in 1989, this book presents a unique comparative perspective on the relationship between technological change and human resource management. Following a detailed introduction, chapters deal with a variety of issues, including managing change, industrial democracy and employee involvement, gender and structural change. International and well-renowned authors provide an authoritative analysis, which will be of particular interest to students of Business and Management, organisational and technological change, Economics and Sociology.

New technology arguably provided the greatest challenge to industrial relations since the formation of unions. The problems raised led to a whole range of responses - from rejection of the new technology to acceptance fo the change with management and workers making new (and sometimes unheard of) agreements. This book, originally published in 1986 and based on extensive original research, examines the changes in industrial relations which the new technology of the 1980s caused, analysing the implications for the workforce and the reactions of the management and trade unions to the challenges.

Workers, Managers, and Technological Change: Emerging Patterns of Labor Relations contributes significantly to an important subject. Technological change is one of the most powerful forces transforming the American industrial relations In fact, the synergistic relationships between technology and indus system. trial relations are so complex that they are not well or completely understood. We know that the impact of technology, while not independent of social forces, already has been profound: it has transformed occupations, creating new skills and destroying others; altered the power relationships between workers and managers; and changed the way workers learn and work. Tech nology also has made it possible to decentralize some economic activities out of large metropolitan areas and into small towns, rural areas, and other coun tries. Most important, information technology makes it possible for interna tional corporations to operate on a global basis. Indeed, some international corporations, especially those based in the United States, are losing their national identities, detaching the welfare of corporations from that of particu lar workers and communities. Internationalization, facilitated by information technology, has trans formed industrial relations systems. A major objective of the traditional American industrial relations system was to take labor out of competition.