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There are (and have been) many efforts to support the development of new forms of work organisation in Europe, most of them being project-driven either as enterprises’ own initiatives or funded by public sources. Dissemination is making rather slow progress, though, despite proven economic benefits. Moreover, national programmes supporting work organisation activities are unevenly distributed among EU member states. While Finland, Denmark or Germany, for example, provide more than one national programme with efforts to promote work organisation in different areas, the majority of EU member states — namely Austria, Belgium, France, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Spain — seemingly have no national activities of this kind, although there might be some regional or project-based efforts with public funding like ADAPT or EQUAL. Comparing new national initiatives with earlier programme activities, it seems that efforts have been cut back. In the final section, a number of recommendations for further initiatives are derived that focus on implementation and dissemination issues.

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This paper presents two basic approaches of generating innovation and improved business performance (so called "low road" and "high road" approaches) and describes organisational requirements which are likely when these approaches were applied. Based on these ideal types, empirical data is provided on recent changes of organisational structures and the use of human resources from two representative surveys in Germany. The findings indicate that there is only a limited range of organisational changes in the German industry.