ABSTRACT
Employer interests in industrial relations may be promoted by individual firms or undertakings acting singly, by a group of enterprises acting together via an ad hoc body, or by a permanent association of employers to represent their collective interests. It is therefore necessary to consider on a cross-national basis for industrialized market economies the genesis and evolution of employers' associations, external to the firm or enterprise, which have typified collective bargaining arrangements with unions in most Western European countries. The historical development of associations concerned with the employment relationship during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries may be explained as a negative response on the part of employers to accommodate the external challenges which confronted them on the basis of three broad sets of factors. In this chapter, the authors have examined comparative aspects of the nature and development of collective employers' associations together with the management strategies of individual firms.
