The project was concerned with changes in economic, workplace and associational participation arising in the context of market-oriented economic reforms and changes in property rights and ownership in communist and post-communist societies.
At the macro-economic level, the project aimed to outline the main elements of the respective governments' economic strategies, to elucidate the assumptions concerning social impact, and to compare these with actual outcomes for unemployment, real wages and incomes, and access to social benefits.
Micro-level studies investigated the impact of privatization and enterprise restructuring on three aspects of social participation: workers' participation; changes relating to social benefits previously provided by the enterprise; and the efforts made by the employed and unemployed to protect their interests.
Research was carried out in China, Czechoslovakia/Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland.