The co-applicant organisations will follow an established structure for communication, division of tasks and monitoring of the implementation of the activities developed in the framework of the previous successfully implemented joint projects by the core partners in the project Consortium (INFORMIA, INFORMIA II, INFPREVENTA and DIRECT).

The overall coordination, management and monitoring will be implemented by the lead applicant CITUB and all the guidelines, requirements and content of the research and analytic activities will be provided and coordinated by the Project Research Team Leader who is also a representative of CITUB and the project external expert. In all the activities of the project the branch and regional structures of the national trade union confederations and employers’ organisations are expected to take an active part.

The Bulgarian research team leader will be supported by an external expert – Kevin P.O’Kelly who was part of the project consortium in all the preceding 4 projects (his CV is attached to the paper copy of the application documents- the folder of CITUB). While the national project partners are all experts and practitioners in their respective information and consultation and industrial relations systems, there is a requirement for the project to have an overview of how these arrangements fit within EU-level social dialogue, employee involvement and workers’ rights legislation and practice. The selected external expert will provide this requirement through his long experience and expertise in EU social dialogue systems and legislation. The roles and responsibilities of the external expert will be the following:

• Providing an overview of different industrial relations systems in the participating Member States, in particular in relation to direct  participation, based on the methodology used in the Eurofound EPOC study, 1994 to 2000
• Assist the project manager and project research team-leader in the drafting of a detailed common analytical framework and questionnaire for the national studies on direct participation in the six participating Member States, as it relates to the introduction of new technologies
• Identify key participants and also participate in and contribute to project meetings, seminars and the final project conference, as an EU-level expert on European social dialogue, including direct participation
• Contribute to the analysis of the survey data and the preparation of a report on the findings of the study
• Contributing to the national reports and to the final consolidated report on the basis of the EU-level study.

There will also be contributions by some experts, representing the Associate organizations – BIA and RHUL, other representative national social partners, other EU Member States, the European institutions,   such as the ETUC, BUSINESSEUROPE, and European Industry federations during the three European Round Tables, the six National Workshops and the Final Conference.

The involvement of the co-applicant organisations, their roles and responsibility will be strictly defined in the preparatory phase of the project, but in general all co-applicants will share a common engagement and will have to implement very identical task in each co-applicant country, namely:

• To participate in the establishment of the Project Steering Committee, in the Project Research Team, in all project meetings and the three European Round Tables;
• To carry out research on the links between direct participation and other forms of employee participation and representation, in the context of their direct influence on humanising the work environment, improving skills and workplace welfare, improving work satisfaction and worker motivation, including the impact of new technologies;
• To develop a National Report based on the research carried out by each project partner;
• To develop, organise and carry out a National workshop (one day) on the topics defined in the detailed description of the project;
• To participate in the development of the European comparative report and the Handbook of Good Practice Guidelines based on the data analysis and project research;
• To support the organisation and carrying out of the Final conference;
• To participate actively in the established network in the framework of the previous DIRECT Project.