GLOBAL TRENDS IN SERvIcISATI0N AND COMPARATIVE HRM IN EUROPE

The industrial structure of national economies has been changing since the middle of the 19th century (or even earlier, around 1820, see more in Maddison 1980) and in recent decades is increasingly shifting towards »service economies«. For organisations, more services means at least more social interactions, internally and externally, which may limit the options open to management and which re-orients their business models from pro-duction to delivery of products and services (Wise et al 1999, Valminen et al 2008). Often, a kind of modern human resources management (HRM) approach is applied by management to adequately address a diverse work-force as well as new and more interactive (business and business-related social) situations (Kaufman 2007). Of course, a modern HRM approach should not mean the same type of (convergent) HRM changes everywhere (Brewster 2007). The required hu-man relations transformations within organisations are farfrom being stand-ardised and are introduced in many diverse ways, along with many specific