ABSTRACT
This paper deals with the interaction between systems of industrial relations and the HRM-policies at company level. It is argued that up till now in Western Europe the human resource management of companies was heavily influenced by the national system of industrial relations. All kind of national laws and regulations had a substantial impact on labour contracts, labour conditions, forms of worker participation, primary and secondary wage conditions, etc. In contrast, the human resource management of companies is nowadays becoming more and more dominated by company specific strategies, which in their turn seem to be inspired by the (alleged or true) impact of the so called globalisation process. This process is most evident within subsidiaries of multi-national companies whose strategies are formed in foreign countries. But also in the shrinking number of purely national companies, strategy has to be adapted to international developments, and so does human resource management. A good example is the ongoing trend toward flexibility that all companies, whether national or multi-national, find they have to follow. In all countries this trend leads to a higher need for the same forms of labour flexibility (internal/external, numerical/functional) regardless of the prevailing systems of industrial relations as formalised in labour legislation (for European countries e.g. Brewster et al., 1997).
