ABSTRACT
Europe is the continent with, by a long way, the largest proportions of members in free trade unions in the world. The wide range of systems of employment relations and significant differences in union membership and paying particular attention to the way that the Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries have adapted their employment relations to the different options offered in Western Europe. Financial participation in Europe is an associated theme, explored by three of the world's leading experts: Erik Poutsma, Eric Kaarsemaker and Paul Ligthart. Europe has arguably been one of the regions of the world that has developed the constraints on managerial autonomy and has worked the hardest to find new ways of being flexible. Richard Croucher shows that whilst there has been a reduction in collective employee representation in Europe that has been adopted enthusiastically by employers in some of the CEE states, it remains a significant feature of the Human Resource Management (HRM) landscape in Europe.
