John T. Dunlop and the 50th anniversary of Industrial Relations Systems

This paper addresses John Thomas Dunlop's Industrial Relations Systems,a book that has exerted enormous influence on research concerning employment relations in the Anglo-American industrial relations tradition in the last 50 years. Following a note on the author and commentary on the academic context in which the book emerged, the paper revisits "employment relations system" as a key concept and presents the elements of such a system according to Dunlop's analytical framework. Two brief sections complete the paper, one inquiring into the lack of references to Dunlop by Brazilian researchers and the other drawing some essential lessons from the book.