Respected Debi S. Saini, I think there may be various reasons for it. One of the reasons is, all developing countries are in transition. Therefore, their economy is also in transition mode and to boost economy, these countries are focusing on human capital.

Dear Asmat

The question arises, whether focusing on IR by th state tends to be anti-thetical to building human capital. In the past 6 years or so in India, workers have indulged in several cases of violence. Just yesterday, the workers killed the CEO of a Jute mill in Kolkota. In July 2012, the workers of Maruti-Suzuki Ltd., the largest car maker company in India, burnt alive the HR general manager. 147 workers are still in Jail since then. There have been several other such cases of violence, arson, and killings. Will it not impede the human capital formation?

Tough question, Sir. But let me attempt to answer. I think you are already well aware of the fact that gap between rich and poor is widening. This is one of the outcome which you have noted and mentioned, please. Is not it?

is it only in case of developing countries dat IR is neglected????

i think dis is true in cs of UK n US also. i read a few articlez dat talk of industrial unrest in UK n US entering new guild age.

Dear Harshita: Though IR is in crisis world over, but its impact is far more severe in the developing countries. In the developed Europe, though the incidence of unionism has been coming down continuously, since the days of adoption of Thatcherism in 1979, but the IR research output is still substantial, if not the same as in the pre-Thatcher era.. No IR journal has there stopped publishing or got converted to OB/HR like IJIR of the Shri Ram Centre in India. That was my keen concern.

Industrial relations research in developing coutries is becoming almost negligible, because researchers in these countries are researching more about human resource management and organizational behavior.

Probably they have things of more priority to be researched ! Industries too, may be in developing stage, yet not very apt for research?

I think in developing countries, labour rights are weak and many employees are unaware of or little concerned about their rights as long as they can earn a living. I guess governments of some developing countries discourage employess from seeking these rights in fear of damaging the economy. Therefore this is less money to sponsor this kind of research from companies and government.

In China, unions are semi-government organisations funded by state and they are like charities and do not fight for the rights of employees. They distribute aid and provide finanical help to injuired employees. They are part of employer bureaucracy.

totally agree wid u Debi sir

May be lack and/or shortage of resources!

Period!

Dear all: As Jaya has talked about priorities for researchers. But there are Ph.D researches as well, which too is few and far between. I have been involved in faculty selection decisions of some of the top management institutes in India for the last 10 years; but I have yet to find in these interviews a strong scholar in the subject despite its importance in view of the resort to violence by the Gen Y workers.

I am delighted that Huajiang seem to be hitting the nail at the right spot. Governments in the developing countries are less interested in it, and focus more on enhancing the GDP and providing the employer-friendly investment climate. I have seen in the field that state agencies look the other way when labour rights violations are taking place. This is one of the reasons that the hapless workers prefers to keep quire and withstand the unjust situation.

Yes, Dear Kamal. Indeed, industry in these economies is trying to ape the west in its practices; and so are governments in some of their policies. . Social scientists label this tendency as the "modernism discourse." Developing countries think that modernization means becoming like the developed west. They pass laws on the lines of the developed world like unionism and freedom to strike and lockout; and then want to see that the same laws are not enforced due to perceived local power realities. This kind of dualism is prevalent in a large part of the developing world. Every one gets obsessed with production, efficiency, performance, productivity. There are very few who espouse the cause of the powerless. .

main thing is Technology in industry, generally developing country lagging in technology, for example in india Now 3G is here but but see the user of 2G and 3G, a huge difference. So Industries are not taking interest and also not investing for new technology.

@Alexandre Beluco

Really daring and absolutely relevant answer.

Our focus is on things not PEOPLE that is why it is alright for 200 girls to disappear in Nigeria. Research efforts target HOW things work NOT the well being of PEOPLE

Dear Donald

I agree with you entirely. Those managing the state system and institutions look towards their own interests first, and the supposed beneficiaries interest later. There needs to be countervailing power of the working class so as to lead to a balancing of interests ad power. But the irony is that for their survival, workers/unions needs the state support, which is now becoming quite problematic because of clash of goals.

Not only in developing countries but also in developed areas of Indian habitats...

AS THE BASIC NEEDS WHERE GETTING TO BE SATISFIED THE BEHAVIORAL CHANGE TOWARDS SOPHISTICATED LIVING BROUGHT IN THE irrelevance to IR....

However the recent TOYOTA incidence in suburbs of BANGALORE and HYUNDAI in CHENNAI are due to aspirational contentment imbalance....

Can I offer a more generic answer , IR has disappeared or is disappearing because HRM research is more fashionable - have a look at impact factors and starred journals (using ABS) and you see that HRM journals have higher rankings and as such researchers will focus on these for research as it impacts their careers and not the contribution to knowledge - but then this may be through of a lot of fields and not just IR

Paul's answer is depressingly accurate! Individualisation, atomisation and separation as features of the employment relationship are associated with the re-characterization of collective social issues as individual problems, hence the structural or solidaristic approaches embodied in IR are no longer considered relevant. HRM’s unitarist and individualistic focus telescopes issues at the level of the individual.  Gabriel (2005) queries whether in the context of employment,  the decline of collective representation effectively eliminated the lever, or brake, that labour power, as a collective, could exert in the face of capitalism? See Gabriel's "Glass Cages" article,  Organization, 2005, Vol.12 for a thoughtful consideration.

Thanks to Prof. Debi S. Saini for it’s really an interesting question and very useful to me for got a new idea in HRD practices please. I am strongly agreed with the answers of Prof. Huajiang Ouyang , Prof. Kamal Eddin Bani-Hani & Prof. Paul Davis.