Introduction: Company training and services with a focus on low skills

This special issue of the International Journal of Manpower aims to make a contribution to broadening our limited understanding of the role and impact of employer‐provided training for low‐skilled service sector workers. It brings together seven of the papers that were presented at the international conference “Adapting Education and Training for the Enhancement of Low‐Skilled Jobs” held at Helsinki in May 2002. The papers are situated at the crossroads where three different strands of research and policymaking meet: the training of the low skilled, the system of vocational training and the role of training for the service sector. The contributions cover an interesting variety of European countries: Ireland, Germany, the Netherlands, Austria, Sweden, Spain and the UK, with diverging levels of low‐skilled (un)employment, vocational training and service‐sector employment.