A partnership approach : strategies for organisational change

The research described in this report aimed to describe “best practice” for partnership based work in the labor market in the steel and metal industry as a response to the process of restructuring in the European steel and metal sector. It is based on case studies at two companies manufacturing goods to a global market and presents how the blue-collar workers union has dealt with the management of organizational change in the steel and metal industry in Sweden. The results in this report show that both companies have been successful when it comes to responding to the restructuring in the steel and metal sector; however there are some differences. The author discusses the differences in the report and search for answers in the trade unions involvement in the change process. Trade unions that have a higher level of participation and a stronger influence on the management of organisational change are more successful in creating sustainable conditions for change - that means creating conditions that are good for their members. Hanne Randle is working as a researches assistant at the R&D centre APeL in Lindesberg in Sweden and she is currently involved in two different research projects. The first project is to evaluate investments in the public sector to lower employee sick rates and the second is to take part in a transnational project with the ambition to develop a European standard for employee vocational training and education for the explosives sector