Contemporary debates in European human resource management: Context and content

Abstract

Presented as an overaching contribution and designed to introduce the subsequent papers in this issue of Human Resource Management Review, this paper summarily outlines the context for human resource management in Europe. Following a brief outline of demographic and social patterns in Europe, it notes the human resource requirements and consequences that arise from the Lisbon Protocol. The paper then seeks to communicate a flavor of the diversity and innovation that characterizes contemporary human resource research and thinking in Europe through introducing the seven contributions in this issue which deal with inter alia: the contours of human resource management in Europe; the development of a normative economic theory of human resource management; the articulation of a multi-level framework for understanding work–family conflict; the experience of female expatriate managers in Europe; the development of an architecture of organizational-led learning; and the advancement of a European perspective on careers.