Strategies to Promote Workplace Innovation: A Comparative Analysis of Nine National and Regional Approaches

Europe has a long history of programmes to promote workplace innovation, that is, changes in a company’s work, organizational or human resource management practices that lead to improved performance and that also support other types of innovation. Typical objects in recent European programmes have included team-based organizational structures, flexible working methods and business practices based on trust and participation. Despite the increase in the number of workplace development programmes and evaluation research surrounding them, literature on experiences in building such programmes is still rare. Cross-national learning in particular has been virtually non-existent. For example, the Open Method of Coordination, an approach used in the construction of Social Europe to employ non-binding objectives and guidelines to bring about change in European social and employment policy (Trubek and Trubek 2005, Zeitlin and Pochet 2005), has scarcely been utilized in the area of workplace development. This is owed to the fact that actual programmes only exist in some European countries; the matter is still not of interest to the EU 27 area as a whole. There have only been occasional general analyses and presentations of programmes on a country-specific basis (e.g. Bamps and Berckmans 2005, Brödner and Latniak 2003, Business Decisions Limited 2000, den Hertog and Schröder 1989). These analyses and presentations have been mainly used for the purpose of revealing the diversity of development trends, or targeting criticism to the lack of activeness shown by the policy makers in this area.