The increasing number of cross-border alliances and mergers both within Europe and between Europe and other parts of the world have made it imperative for students of management to have a thorough understanding of the European context for human resource management (HRM). This book enables managers and students to become "fluent" in the many various environments, approaches and practices that exist across Europe for managing human resources. The text employs comprehensive comparable representative data collected longitudinally during the last decade and it also draws directly on the expertise of leading HRM scholars. Entirely fresh analyses of HRM in Europe, based on new and hitherto unpublished data are presented and this analysis is critically important for students, researchers and also for practitioners. The book is divided into three parts: concepts and theoretical issues , trends in relation to these issues and comparisons between individual countries, and summaries and conclusions on the issue of convergence and divergence.