Professor Peter B.H. Ackers
BA, Oxon; MA, Warwick; Mphil, PGCE, PhD, Wolverhampton
Professor of Industrial Relations & Labour HistoryHuman Resource Management and Organisational Behaviour Research GroupPublicationsP.B.Ackers@lboro.ac.uk |
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Peter Ackers is Professor of Industrial Relations & Labour History in the Human Resource Management & Organisational Behaviour group at the Business School, Loughborough University, UK. He studied Politics (including Sociology) and Philosophy (PPE) at Oxford University, followed by an MA in Industrial Relations from Warwick University. His PhD was a biographical study of the link between Protestant nonconformity and trade union leadership in the Lancashire coal industry. Peter's intellectual interests centre on the sociological and historical aspects of the employment relationship and how this affects ordinary people and society at large. He co-edited Labour History Review (the journal of the British Society for the Study of Labour History) from 2000 to 2004 and was on the Editorial Board of Work Employment & Society (a journal of the British Sociological Association) from 2002 to 2004. He has co-edited two research collections: Ackers et al (1996) The New Workplace and Trade Unionism (Routledge); and Ackers & Wilkinson (2003) Understanding Work and Employment: industrial relations in transition (Oxford). He is currently joint co-ordinator of the International Industrial Relations Assocation Study Group: Industrial Relations as a field and Industrial Relations Theory.
Peter's current research follows three main, inter-linked themes.
First, he is working on the History of British academic Industrial Relations, since 1945, as this links social science developments to public policy practice. The centrepiece of this is a biography of one of the leading figures for Ashgate. His 'Collective Bargaining as Industrial Democracy: Hugh Clegg and the Political Foundations of British Industrial Relations Pluralism' was the British Journal of Industrial Relations 'Best Paper' for 2007'.
Second, he continues to publish on Worker Participation and employer/ labour Partnership. He has collaborated on research studies on New Developments in Employee Involvement (UK Employment Department 1992) and Management Choice and Employee Voice (Chartered Institute of Personnel Development 2001) with Mick Marchington, Adrian Wilkinson, John Goodman and Tony Dundon. He made an early contribution to the UK Partnership debate, with Ackers & Payne (1998) 'British Trade Unions and Social Partnership', International Journal of HRM, 9:3. and Ackers (2002) 'Reframing Employment Relations: The Case for Neo-Pluralism', Industrial Relations Journal, 33:1. A recent joint work in this stream of publication is Johnstone et al (2009) ' The British Partnership Phenomenon: A Ten Year Review ' , HRMJ, 19:3.
Third, he has developed new research on Indian Industrial Relations. He was a Leverhulme Study Abroad Fellow at the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta for five months in 2005/6 and is now editing a special edition of the Industrial Relations Journal on India (with Debashish Bhattacherjee).
Several other areas of publication are currently dormant: coal-mining social history (including working-class religion and especially the Churches of Christ) - where he has published in Social History, International Review of Social History and the Journal of Ecclesiastical History - as well as employer paternalism; business ethics; and gender and family-friendly policies.
Peter is Study Leave until February 2010.
