The volume summarizes the author's central contributions to the establishment of "Industrial Relations" as a social science sub-discipline modeled after Anglo-Saxon examples. Partly newly revised and partly supplemented with a current postscript, the essays reflect on the genesis and development of this field and discuss the nature and function of institutions and actors in the labor market and labor relations. In essence, these are institutions whose origin can be traced back to the contradiction between the status of the legally free citizen on one hand and their social subordination as wage earners and factory subjects on the other, with the function of managing the resulting conflicts. While Karl Marx only saw the "despotism of the factory" with its "wage slaves," Max Weber interpreted the employment relationship as a legitimate power relationship.