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Employees and High‐Performance Work Systems: Testing inside the Black Box
Author(s) -
Ramsay Harvie,
Scholarios Dora,
Harley Bill
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
british journal of industrial relations
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.665
H-Index - 70
eISSN - 1467-8543
pISSN - 0007-1080
DOI - 10.1111/1467-8543.00178
Subject(s) - conceptualization , work systems , incentive , work (physics) , process (computing) , black box , set (abstract data type) , computer science , process management , performance management , business , knowledge management , operations management , risk analysis (engineering) , labour economics , marketing , economics , microeconomics , engineering , artificial intelligence , mechanical engineering , programming language , operating system
Most work on high‐performance work systems has examined only the direct relationship between a set of management practices and performance outcomes. This presumes that any connection operates through the incentive and motivational effects captured as ‘high‐commitment’ or ‘high‐involvement’ employee outcomes. No attempt has been made to examine the alternative, Labour Process conceptualization, which expects performance gains from new management practices to arise instead from work intensification, offloading of taskcontrols, and increased job strain. Using data from WERS98, we tested models based on high‐performance work systems and labour process approaches. Both were found wanting, and we consider the possible implications of these failures.