Enterprise management involves finding solutions for many problems in which information is incomplete and for which co-operative relationships with employees are needed if the firm’s objectives are to be realised. To this end, management may develop practices one of whose side-effects is to aggravate unemployment.

This paper focuses on four broad themes: the first concerns the management contribution to some of the labour market rigidities highlighted in recent reviews of the literature on unemployment; the second concerns how management practices may affect access to jobs for certain categories of workers, and hence their ability to leave unemployment; the third concerns the potential impact of some of the new management practices currently transforming firms in some major sectors of employment. Since many of these practices are to be found in varying degrees in all countries, the fourth section takes a comparative look at the experience of some different countries to ask whether ...