1992 Research Frontiers in Industrial Relations and Human Resources

Abstract

About every decade or so, the annual research volume of the Industrial Relations Research Association (IRRA) is devoted to an assessment of research in major topic areas within the field. Typically, these volumes have provided lengthy comprehensive research summaries in a few topic areas ( see, for example, Chamberlain, et al. 1958; Ginsburg, et al. 1970; Aaron, et al. 1971 ; Kochan, et al. 1982) .For the 1992 annual research volume, which assesses scholarly work done in the 1 980s, the editors have taken a somewhat different approach, in part because research summaries of specialty areas within industrial relations (IR) have been published with increased frequency in recent years (see, for example, Freeman 1986; Stagner 1981 ; Stieber, et al . 1981 ) , and also because new IR topics have drawn scholarly attention (see, for example, Mitchell and Zaidi 1990; Katz 1991 ) . This last point is perhaps implied by the title of the present volume, which for the first time ( in the IRRA Series ) includes the phrase "human resources" (HR) .