Management, Labour and Industrial Politics in Modern Europe

This text offers a comparative survey of management, labour and productivity politics in 20th-century Europe. The author offers detailed assessments of industrial and political campaigns to raise productivity growth in Britain, Germany and Sweden during this century. Ranging from explorations of the high politics of the nation state and the impact of the Marshall plan on the European countries, to careful assessments of the productivity struggles which took place in the coal mining and metal working industries of modern Europe, each of these essays provides a context for understanding the rise and fall of the social democratic project in the reconstruction of Western Europe. The contributors critically assess claims that workers' participation in economic decision-making was a natural feature of modern production, while also emphasizing the significance of economic reforms which were enacted in the post-War years. This text offers a deeper understanding of the performance of the European economies and the politics of reconstruction by combining our analysis of state initiatives with an examination of the strategies pursued by management and labour in the key sectors of European industry in those decades.