Legal aspects of employment change and their implications for management

• Author: Paul Lewis
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2338.00184
• Date: 01 March 2001
• Published date: 01 March 2001

Industrial Relations Journal 32:1

ISSN 0019-8692

Legal aspects of employment

change and their

implications for management

Paul Lewis

This paper reports research which aims to identify and class-

ify the legal issues raised on appeal in litigation arising from

the management of employment change. It then considers the

implications for management policy and practice. The most

frequent legal issues were unilateral attempts at contractual

change and unfair dismissal for redundancy.

Introduction

Significance and objectives of the work

1

The starting point for the present study is the importance of innovation for national

and organisational success and within this the need to harness the potential of people.

Indeed, the effective management of people is considered as being central to the

UK’s economic performance because it can provide a competitive edge in the market.

(See, for example, Department of Trade and Industry, 1993). The underlying research

problem is the perceived tendency for employment change to give rise to litigation,

with its attendant private and public costs, which delays, restricts or prevents neces-

sary change. The concern is with the legal obstacles to employment change, and their

financial implications, in the context of an attempt to achieve a balance between the

reasonable needs of employers and employees. Employers need quick and cost-effec-

tive solutions to problems of employment change, employees need protection and

security.

The specific objectives of the research were to identify and classify the legal issues

raised in the litigation and to consider the implications of the findings for manage-

ment policy and practice.

2

❒Paul Lewis is Director of Teaching Quality and Senior Lecturer in Business Law at Leeds University

Business School.

1

The writer acknowledges the financial assistance provided by Leeds University Business School,

the University of Leeds Department of Law and the University’s research fund. Thanks are due to

John Hewitt, Susan Butt and Susan Kitching for help with the extraction of data.

2

The study does not engage in temporal analysis or seek to provide any other explanatory method-

ology. It does not set out to measure the volume of employment litigation or to identify variables

which may be related to it. These are subjects for further research.

Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2001, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main St., Malden, MA 02148, USA.

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