Poole notes that because of these historical differences, union structures differ considerably among Western countries. These include industrial unions in Germany and other European countries, which represent all grades of employees in an industry; craft unions in Europe, Australia and the United States which are based on skilled occupational groupings across industries; conglomerate unions in the United States, Canada and The Netherlands which represent members in more than one industry; and general unions in Australia and Europe which are open to almost all employees in a given country. These differences in union structures have had a major influence on the collective bargaining process in Western countries. Some changes in union structure are evident over time; for example, enterprise unions are increasingly evident in industrialized nations. Enterprise unions are common in Asia–Pacific nations (especially in Japan), although there are national variations in their functions, and in the proportion of enterprise unions to total unions.
The less we know about how a structure came to develop in a distinctive way, the less likely we are to understand it. As Prahalad and Doz7 note, the lack of familiarity of multinational managers with local industrial and political conditions has sometimes needlessly worsened a conflict that a local firm would have been likely to resolve. Increasingly, MNEs are recognizing this shortcoming and admitting that industrial relations policies must be flexible enough to adapt to local requirements. This is evidently an enduring approach, even in firms that follow a non-union labor relations strategy where possible, as IHRM in Action Case 9.1 points out. Although the case is relatively old, the key points made remain relevant to current international industrial relations.