Alan Fox

Alan Fox DFM (23 January 1920 – 26 June 2002) was an English industrial sociologist, who revolutionised the separate discipline of industrial relations.

Biography Fox was born on 23 January 1920, to machine enameller and World War I veteran Walter Henry, and Rhoda Fox (née Rous), and grew up in Manor Park, London. He failed his eleven plus examination and — like most British working class children of his generation — left school at the age of 14. He worked first as a laboratory assistant at a grammar school and then in a photographic film factory.

When the Second World War broke out, Fox joined the Royal Air Force (RAF) and applied for aircrew training, but was rejected due to poor eyesight. The first, for which Fox coined the name "unitary" (later unitarist), denies that the interests of employers and employees were significantly different from each other. For the other perspective, he used an existing term from political science: "pluralist", a perspective which suggests that multiple parties are involved in decision-making. However, Fox himself was strongly influenced by a third major theoretical position: the "radical" perspective, especially Marxism.

With Allan Flanders and Hugh Clegg, Fox became prominent in a group of scholars known collectively as the "Oxford school of industrial relations". Although the Oxford school was frequently associated with pluralism, during the 1970s Fox adopted an overtly radical position. In "Industrial relations: a social critique of pluralist ideology" (1973) and Beyond Contract (1974), he suggested that unitarism and pluralism, in practice, were often combined and/or difficult to distinguish.

Major works Industrial Sociology And Industrial Relations (1966) "Industrial relations: a social critique of pluralist ideology" (1973), in Child, John, 1973 Man and Organization: The Search for Explanation and Social Relevance, Allen and Unwin, London. Beyond Contract (1974) History and Heritage: the Social Origins of the British Industrial Relations System (1985) A Very Late Development (1990; autobiography)

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