UNITARISM, PLURALISM, RADICALISM: AN EPISTEMOLOGICAL MODEL BASED ON ALAN FOX TO STUDY INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS

Abstract

This essay presents Alan Fox's conceptual model of Industrial Relations (IR). Fox was an influential member of the Oxford School in the 1970s and his contributions arguably greatly influenced scholarship on negotiation and conflict and management style. Even today, Anglophonic IR researchers in the international literature present Fox's three worldviews as a paradigm. Although Fox's model is considered paradigmatic in the English-speaking academy and, particularly, in the field of IR, which we translate here in Brazil as Labor Relations, it is practically unknown in the field of Administration in Brazil. Fox's approach frames the notion of conflict between employee and employer in three distinct views based on the concepts of unitarism, pluralism and radicalism. The main points of each approach are discussed and, in the end, we conclude by bringing the discussion to current times, expanding the agenda for future research on IR in Brazil.