ABSTRACT
First of all, we must commence with a seemingly naïve clarifi cation. Europe, as a whole, is a continent consisting of dozens of independent countries, with many different languages, legal regulations, cultures, history, and, indeed, employee selection frameworks (Shimmin, 1989; see also Myors et al., 2008). Just for illustrative purposes it must be taken into account that Europe has more countries than North, Central, and South America combined. The situation, therefore, is totally different from that in the United States in relation to the cultural, legal, and national infl uences upon employee selection procedures (Shimmin, 1989). Nevertheless, in spite of this heterogeneity, there was an important exchanging of ideas across Europe during the 20th century. Three basic mechanisms were used for this exchange. The Congresses of the International Psychotechnics Association (later called International Association of Applied Psychology) were the fi rst and most important mechanism. The exchange of national journals was the second mechanism. Finally, research visits to the psychotechnical laboratories across Europe was constant during the fi rst 30 years of the 20th century.
