Industrial Modernization by Workers' Participation

The European car industry is in a crisis. The saturation of traditional markets, the need for product innovation and the Japanese challenge have put this industry, more than almost any other, under pressure to modernize. This modernization has a systemic character. It creates new forms of division of labour between producers and suppliers and removes the Tayloristic-Fordist production concept in the firms without any certainty as to what will take its place. This increased uncertainty creates a boom for personnel management, resulting from a new evaluation of labour capacity, from a production factor to a human and investment factor. New forms of workers' participation are being invested in what are the consequences? Quality circles are used as an example of the possible consequences of successful participation in the field of intra-company labour relations. In this context it is worth taking a look across the border. French management discourse is more pronounced and French sociological research more productive than in Germany. What can we learn from the French experience with participative management? Are there signs of an adaptation, perhaps a European road of development in the field of intra-company labour relations parallel to the internationalization and adaptation tendencies in industrial production? Our research shows which possible development perspectives participative management contains in the field of intra-company labour relations. Nation-specific and system-overlapping aspects are presented for that purpose.