Book excerpt: Originally published in 1992, this book examines the development of employers' human resource management and industrial relations policies in Britain. It adopts a broad historical perspective, beginning with the inheritance from the nineteenth century and ending with an analysis of human resource management policies. It focuses on how managers organise the employment relationship, how they control work relations, and how they deal with trade unions and industrial relations. The author examines these in the context of the market within which the firm operates, and the strategy, structure and hierarchy of industrial enterprise. The book shows that historically British employers tended to adopt market-based strategies rather than internal ones.