Bridges to the future. Industrial relations as a key to strengthening innovation

摘要

The brochure summarises an innovation policy study carried out for the European Commission's Directorate-General Enterprise. The study has been conducted by the Higher Institute of Labour Studies (HIVA), at the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium. Its remit was to look at the potential impact of industrial relations on innovation, and accordingly to establish the role of industrial relations as part of a comprehensive and coherent innovation strategy. It drew on secondary literature and the framework of the European Action Plan for Innovation, to investigate different levels and fields of the European industrial relations systems and identify positive links with a business innovation strategy. Using the resulting case study research, it has illustrated these links with original practices throughout Europe.The study project has been supported by the « Innovation and participation of SMEs » programme, which forms a part of the EU 5th Framework research programme. HIVA had support for the case study research from three partners (CASA, Denmark; FORBA, Austria and IRES, Italy).