Workplace Cooperation: Important, But Difficult

A recording of a lecture Professor John Budd prepared for the Melvin Lurie Labor-Management Cooperation Prize ceremony, October 5, 2020. This presentation highlights the connections between balanced employment relationships and workplace cooperation, and the difficulties of achieving and sustaining meaningful cooperation. It includes a presentation of the cooperation curve first developed in Mark Bray, John W. Budd, and Johanna Macneil, “The Many Meanings of Cooperation in the Employment Relationship and Their Implications,” British Journal of Industrial Relations 58 (March 2020), https://doi.org/10.1111/bjir.12473.

The Melvin Lurie Labor-Management Cooperation Prize honors the memory of Melvin Lurie, a Professor of Economics at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and founder of what is now its Master of Human Resources and Labor Relations (MHRLR) program. The prize is intended to continue and enhance Professor Lurie’s legacy of promoting the practice and further the development of cooperation between labor and management.