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The reactions of employees to Human Resource Management (HRM) practices have attracted little scholarly attention. Even less research has been conducted into the effects of those practices on employee wellbeing. Instead, much of the research has focused on the types of policies and practices that might be coupled or bundled together to deliver higher organisational performance. Where subjects like job satisfaction have been investigated, associations are invariably made with outcomes of wider concern to management such as organisational commitment, employee withdrawal behaviour or more recently customer satis-faction and loyalty (Spector 1997). Of course, it can be suggested that there is a symmetry between HRM practices that deliver better performance and those that provide an enhanced working environment and greater job satisfaction. Examples of such practices include certain forms of participative work arrangements, open communication systems, formal training and development schemes, and voice mechanisms that ensure organisational justice.
Nevertheless, there are many HRM practices that are designed neither to promote employee wellbeing nor to result in a fairer or more congenial working environment. The greater application of performance-based pay and individual appraisal systems is designed principally to enhance work performance. The same objective underlies the more extensive use of direct communications with employees – often designed to restrict union involvement in the substantive rule making process – and the marked increase in employee attitude surveys and the provision of customer satisfaction data. Moreover, these practices can result in less certain and regular pay increases and erode job security. In addition, they may lead to an intensification of work effort (Green and McIntosh 1998).
Not only may different HRM practices have variable effects on employees but the environment in which they are nested may also affect workers’ emotional and material wellbeing. Certain innovative practices such as teamwork, employee involvement and gain-sharing are much more likely to deliver both quality of work life improvements and higher productivity outcomes in a unionised rather than non-unionised environment (Eaton and Voos 1992). Unions can provide
employees with an effective voice in the design and implementation of such programs, resulting in better balanced outcomes for employees.
It should also be pointed out that high performance/high commitment HRM practices can coexist with other policies in the firm that involve harsher forms of management control and limitations to involvement in the organisation. Employment policies can be combined to provide certain types of (core) employees with opportunities for participative decision-making and skill enhance-ment while at the same time exposing other (non-core) employees to more rigid forms of discipline and the vagaries of the external labour market. Indeed, there is some evidence that the presence of ‘mutual gains’ HRM policies in organisations are positively associated with the greater use of temporary contracts, outsourcing and subcontracting (Kalleberg 2001). Thus, even in those firms that practise high commitment management, it is unlikely that the gains will be distributed evenly or equitably among all employees.
The purpose of this Special Issue of the Journal of Industrial Relationsis to examine and assess HRM policies from the perspective of the employee. Which practices, for example, are associated with higher worker satisfaction? Does teamworking offer workers the benefits of greater autonomy and self direction and what are the possible effects on the representative structure of the work-place? Do interrelated high commitment work practices yield more contented and productive employees? Are high performance work practices associated with positive or negative consequences for workers? Can greenfield sites be used as a mechanism to diffuse high commitment management to older and more established parts of business? How do particular organisational contexts affect the response of employees to the introduction of new performance management practices?
In the opening article, David Grant and John Shields offer a constructive critique of approaches to the employee in the existing mainstream HRM liter-ature and provide an alternative means of conceptualising the employee as the primary subject of HRM. Taking issue with both the proponents and critics of HRM, they contend that both camps err in viewing the employee in instrumental terms. Whether the writer sees HRM as good or bad for workers, the latter are represented essentially as the means to management ends. It is only in the small but emerging employee-centred literature, they suggest, that the employee emerges as an active and independent-minded stakeholder in organisational processes. Following what is now a well-trodden path, Grant and Shields also draw attention to inconsistencies and debates surrounding the scope and basis of HRM itself. Is HRM just a generic label for all current modes of employment practice, or does it amount to a best practice approach and, if so, what particular constellations of practices constitute best practice? If the purpose, then, is to explore the connection between HRM practice and employee response, it is necessary to establish not only howand why employees respond to HRM but also what it is that they are responding to.
existing employee-focused literature, namely the notions of the ‘psychological contract’ and ‘organisational justice’, the authors propose a series of research questions, which they suggest, would assist in re-centering the employee as the primary subject of HRM. While such an approach may not resonate with those simply interested in organisational performance outcomes, it may well find favour among those with a more phenomenological orientation. These scholars may also be attracted to the prospect of applying discursive analysis to the concept of the psychological contract and to the precepts of organisational justice. The central theme of this opening piece, however, is the authors’ insistence that worker expec-tations and perceptions should be acknowledged and interrogated, and not ignored or pre-judged as is so often done by both the proponents and critics of HRM.
In the second article, David Guest also presents the argument that workers should occupy a more central location in the analysis of HRM. Rather than corporate performance being viewed as the principal outcome measure, Guest suggests that ‘employee-centred outcomes’ should be embraced equally as a subject of HRM research. Thus, worker wellbeing should join discretionary effort as a core area of analysis. Guest believes that workers can be ‘built’ into HRM research in two ways: firstly, by specifically entering them into the HRM-performance equation by measuring the effect of employee satisfaction and wellbeing on organisational performance, and secondly (and perhaps more importantly) by examining the impact of particular HR practices on employee perceptions of their own wellbeing. In relation to the first issue, Guest presents findings that suggest that certain HR practices can have a positive effect on worker attitudes and behaviour and that this, in turn, can affect performance. As to the second area of research, Guest provides data from Britain indicating that particular HRM practices are positively associated with workers’ assessments of work and life satisfaction. Work satisfaction is associated with more challenging and inter-esting jobs, a friendly (trusting, supportive) organisational climate, open communications, practices that limit harassment and equal employment opportunities and family-friendly policies. The results for life satisfaction are not dissimilar.
These findings identify important HRM practices that are indeed worker-orientated. These practices generally do not enter equations seeking to estimate the impact of high commitment/high performance work systems on organisational performance. Moreover, they do not appear to be widely utilised among the growing number of workplaces in Australia that have developed highly indi-vidualised, non-union working arrangements (Deery & Walsh 1999). In Britain as well, the evidence does not indicate that there is a broadening commitment to developing more challenging jobs and friendly and trusting organisational climates. Indeed, Gallie et al.(2001) have found that during the 1990s there was a noticeable decline in personal initiative at work and a reduction in the discretion that employees were allowed to exercise over their work. In addition, there appeared to be an increase in the overall tightness of management control of work performance.
voice are important to worker wellbeing. However, these were not specifically included in Guest’s two models. This is unfortunate since it is well established that perceptions of equity and fairness (distributive, procedural and interactional justice) are associated with job satisfaction (Folger and Cropanzano 1998). Furthermore, recent research in the US has found that workers want to have a voice in workplace governance (Freeman and Rogers 1999). Not only did employees want to participate as individuals in job-related matters but they also perceived a need to exercise a collective voice over matters such as health and safety, pay rate and benefits, particularly in the form of union representation. They saw management as unwilling to share power and believed that their wellbeing required a representational voice that was independent of the company. Interestingly, employees felt that if they did have a greater say at the workplace it would not only improve the quality of their working lives but it would also make their organisation more productive.
In her contribution, Marian Baird examines the effect of High Commitment Management (HCM) practices on the employment relationship. She is principally concerned with the dangers of these practices for employees and unions and the adequacy of employee voice mechanisms to protect worker interests in this context. This research was conducted in a manufacturing organisation which had two sites: an old established brownfield site with a multiple union presence, and a more recently commissioned greenfield operation with a single union and a clutch of high commitment HR practices. The case study records two interrelated developments. The first was the fairly rapid and unimpeded diffusion of HCM practices from the greenfield to the brownfield site. Old working arrangements were discarded as new forms of multi-skilling and employee involvement were installed, and fourteen unions were reduced to one. The second development was the extension of the decision-making role of the team system and the apparent replacement of distributive bargaining with integrative bargaining as the union in the greenfield site was progressively marginalised.
The reasons for the loss of union influence were difficult to identify. Did the HCM practices strengthen employee identification with the company and weaken union loyalty? The survey data on employee attitudes does not suggest that this was so. Organisational commitment at the greenfield site actually fell over the period of the study. Why was the union not able to tap into any rising discontent? Perhaps the unitarist design of the HCM practices at both sites left little room for collective bargaining and workplace rule mediation. Alternatively, the union may have neglected its representative activities, failing to devote appropriate resources to servicing its members and allowing manage-ment at the workplace level to redefine its role. The loss of independent represen-tation therefore may have had as much to do with union inattention as it did with HCM.
large multinational – was built around small business units and teams. In turn, individuals and teams were provided with considerable autonomy and respon-sibility, a pay system that reinforced teamwork but also encouraged initiative, extensive and ongoing training, open communication systems and an emphasis on internal promotion, egalitarianism and minimal status differentials. On the basis of the interviews conducted with the staff – from senior management to the most recently appointed sales consultant – there appears to be universal support for the company’s practices and for their motivational qualities. All in all, a remarkable congruence has been engineered between the interests of the individual, the group and the firm. The case is resonant of South West Airlines, with its hand-picked and happy staff, its emphasis on egalitarianism and its excellent performance standards (Hallowell 1996).
However, the study did not pick up any discordant voices or any recalcitrant behaviour. Why? The organisation employed sophisticated selection and recruit-ment techniques but how did it manage to achieve such a good person–job fit? Interactive service work can be a source of considerable job satisfaction but it can also be a cause of great anxiety and stress (Wharton, 1996). What under-currents lay beneath this snap-shot of corporate happiness? Were there other dimensions to the employee response? What were the attrition rates in the company? Teamworking combined with performance-related pay can be associ-ated with significant peer pressure to maximise sales and to conform to a ‘work hard’ culture. Were there not casualties of these work and pay arrangements? In the absence of an interviewing schedule that included past employees it may not be possible to identify the full range of employee responses to the organisation’s HR practices.
Self-managing teams are seen as an integral part of High Performance Work Systems (Appelbaum et al. 2000). They are said to provide workers with greater autonomy, influence and responsibility over task completion and with a broader set of inter-dependent skills. Organisations benefit by eliminating supervision that is not needed and from greater employee motivation, productivity and commitment. More generally, self managing teams are viewed as an evolution-ary development in the management of work; from a traditional bureaucratic structure to a more decentralised, participative and democratic form of controlling work activity (Barker, 1999). However, critics have seen this as a mirage and pointed, instead, to a reality of peer control, work intensification and limited autonomy. In their piece, Buchanan and Hall explore these competing claims. They point to an ‘essential dualism’ in teamworking: on the one hand, a capacity to promote a more varied and satisfying work experience; on the other, the possibility of creating greater work pressures and imposing new disciplines and controls on employees. As they observe, ‘teams are neither essentially “good” nor “bad” for labour’.
performance; (iii) yielded little real employee decision-making; and (iv) margin-alised trade unions. Buchanan and Hall find that teams were provided with limited operational control over day-to-day production decisions. Teamworking was associated with the removal of managerial layers in the organisation, which gave workers some added responsibilities, but this tended to augment stress levels rather than pay levels. Most importantly, management’s objective for introducing teams was more to do with meeting production targets than enrich-ing the lives of the workers. This tends to confirm Buchanan and Hall’s initial thesis. However, the data from the existing studies are limited. Although they infer a relationship between motivation and effect, it is unfortunate that they could not be interrogated further to explore related questions. For example, what effect did teams have on employee motivation, job satisfaction, organisational commit-ment and performance? Did it vary according to the degree of self-managecommit-ment that was extended to the different teams? Was bureaucratic control replaced by ‘concertive control’ whereupon team members imposed new norms, rules and pressures upon each other in ways that were functional for the organisation? Under what conditions or circumstances were unions more likely to be margin-alised by teams? These are important and relevant questions that flow from Buchanan and Hall’s useful compilation of secondary source data.
Bill Harley’s article seeks to assess the relationship between High Performance Work System (HPWS) practices and employee outcomes using the 1995 Australian Workplace Industrial Relations Survey (AWIRS95). As noted above, some research suggests that HPWS practices are associated with positive attitudinal outcomes while other findings point to more negative effects on workers. Harley’s study draws upon two sets of data. The first set is drawn from survey responses of managerswho are asked to supply information about particular characteristics of the workplace, such as: Does teambuilding exist? Do employees get involved in change? Are there autonomous work groups at the site? Does management communicate with its staff about its investment plans? The second set of data is drawn from a separate survey of individual employees
who are asked questions about their job satisfaction, job security, levels of stress and attitudes to management among other issues. The two sets of data are linked together in such a way that it is possible to identify which employees (and their attitudinal responses) are attached to which workplaces with particular HPWS practices in place. Thus, the article seeks to identify whether certain attitudes such as job satisfaction, might be associated with certain workplace HRM practices, like teambuilding.
unions or employees in change or the existence of autonomous work groups or teambuilding. Furthermore, levels of reported stress are not affected by the presence or absence of any one of these HR practices. Harley suggests that the reason for this is ‘that HPWS practices make little difference to employees’. This indeed may be the case.
There is, however, another possible explanation for the absence of any real relationship. The analysis may be affected by measurement error. It has been shown that measures of HR practices can suffer from severe problems of con-struct validity (Gerhart et al., 2000). Single respondents (e.g. a senior manager at a workplace) can produce quite unreliable information about HR practices. Wright et al.(2001) have found that significant disagreements can exist between employees and HR managers about the existence of particular HR practices at both the site and job level. They have identified very low interrater reliabilities (congruence of responses) for many questions relating to job security, training, career opportunities and employee participation and have urged extreme caution when using data from single informants. Thus, we may have a situation where a single management respondent indicates that a practice exists (e.g. teambuilding or training), but an employee working at the same site either disagrees with that assessment or has had no experience of that practice. Thus, any attempt to explain variations in employee attitudes (such as job satisfaction) through the reported existence of a particular work practice by a manager may be rendered meaningless by problems of measurement error. These problems can, of course, be minimised by gathering the same data (from work attitudes to workplace HR practices) from multiple respondents, as Guest has done in his contribution.
The authors suggest that a move towards a more transactional psychological contract – which is inherent in the Finance and Administration model – carries dangers of diminishing organisational trust and perceptions of injustice and unfairness. Certainly, the research confirms the relevance of earlier studies that have emphasised the importance of meeting employees’ development needs, setting clear and fair performance goals and providing regular feedback and good management support. The piece also raises interesting questions about the psychological contract and its possible violation. By introducing new performance management systems as part of a programmatic change process and by raising expectations about the potential rewards that will accompany those systems, are organisations making it more difficult to fulfil their employees’ psychological contracts?
In conclusion, the articles contained in this volume provide important new insights into the effect of HRM policies and practices on employee reactions and wellbeing. Although they utilise different methodologies and draw upon different types of evidence and data, all attempt to record the employee’s voice and assess their attitudes/responses/behaviour to HRM. In this sense, they complement earlier research – often ethnographic or case study in nature – that sought to understand how workers responded to, or fared under, other work regimes and management control systems, whether Taylorised or bureaucratised. The simil-arities or differences with those research findings may warrant further exploration. Finally, the Editors are to be congratulated on drawing together into one issue such an interesting and challenging body of work.
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