Collective social dialogue skills: a field of studies for researchers and practitioners

The skills of the actors are often considered by researchers and practitioners in industrial relations as determining factors in the quality of social dialogue. These skills are often studied and considered from an individual angle, and to a much lesser extent from a collective angle. Moreover, they tend to be analysed for trade union players and very little for employers and their representatives. Similarly, practitioners rarely talk about the skills that these players can share to make social dialogue effective. This is not a subject for research either. Yet these shared collective skills can form the foundation of a social dialogue based on a constructive confrontation of points of view. The aim of this paper is to show why it is important to, and how to consider these shared and collective competencies of social dialogue both for social dialogue practitioners and for researchers. Firstly, we show that research on social dialogue skills has focused mainly on negotiation, with less emphasis on other social dialogue activities, union skills and too little on managerial skills, and individual and organizational skills, but not enough on collective skills. Secondly, we highlight what is at stake for researchers and practitioners alike in analysing collective social dialogue skills, and how they can be highlighted through a field study.