G'day
After hearing about our live Conversation, Questions & Answers with Emeritus Professor Sir George Bain , several people asked to see a recording. Click on the hyper-links above and below to access the recording.
Professor Peter Turnbull (Bristol University) President, British Universities Industrial Relations Association (BUIRA) introduces the Webinar and moderates questions, following reflections by Professor Melanie Simms , Glasgow University. The Webinar is hosted by Professor Stewart Johnstone , Strathclyde University. "Yours truly" was lucky enough to conduct the initial conversation.
In brief, George Bain, a leading IR academic, has made major contributions to policy, practice and university leadership. George is a Canadian-British academic born and raised in Winnipeg. After studying economics and political science at the University of Manitoba, a Commonwealth Scholarship took him to Oxford in 1963 to obtain his doctorate in IR under the supervision of Hugh Clegg and Allan Flanders.
Following a Research Fellowship at Nuffield College, University of Oxford, he became (at age thirty) the Frank Thomas Professor of IR at the University of Manchester. He gave up his chair to become the Deputy Director and subsequently Director of the IR Research Unit as well as the Pressed Steel Professor of IR at the University of Warwick. He contributed much to BUIRA including serving as its secretary and organising conferences.
His research interests have been mainly concerned with white-collar employees and their organisations; the theory of union growth; public policy relating to union recognition and union security, collective bargaining, employee participation and industrial democracy; and the bibliography of IR that resulted, among other things, in the creation of the Modern Records Centre at Warwick, Britain’s leading archive for union and employers’ association records.
In 1983, he began to move away from teaching and research to academic leadership. Under his leadership, the School of Industrial and Business Studies at Warwick was transformed into Warwick Business School, which became one of the leading business schools in Europe; the London Business School enhanced its reputation from being the best British business school to be one of the world’s top-ten business schools; and when he was its Vice-Chancellor, the Queen’s University Belfast was revitalised into a much stronger, diverse, and pluralistic institution after thirty years of “the Troubles”.
Although primarily an academic, his interests and activities have extended far beyond the academy. In addition to being a mediator and arbitrator in more than 70 industrial disputes, he has engaged extensively in public service, particularly by being a member of and chairing numerous government commissions and inquiries, including: the Bullock Committee on Industrial Democracy, and the Low Pay Commission, which introduced the UK’s National Minimum Wage.
To see the video, please click on this link.
Please forgive cross posting and share this with anyone else who might be interested.