Do Broad‐based Employee Ownership,Profit Sharing and Stock Options Help the Best Firms Do Even Better?

This article analyses the linkages among group incentive methods of compensation (broad‐based employee ownership, profit sharing and stock options), labour practices, worker assessments of workplace culture, turnover and firm performance in firms that applied to the ‘100 Best Companies to Work For in America’ competition from 2005 to 2007. Although employers with good labour practices self‐select into the 100 Best Companies firms sample, which should bias the analysis against finding strong associations among modes of compensation, labour policies and outcomes, we find that employees in the firms that use group incentive pay more extensively participate more in decisions, have greater information sharing, trust supervisors more and report a more positive workplace culture than in other companies. The combination of group incentive pay with policies that empower employees and create a positive workplace culture reduces voluntary turnover and increases employee intent to stay and raises return on equity.     

CEO transformational leadership and firm performance: A moderated mediation model of TMT trust climate and environmental dynamism

This study examines the role of top management team (TMT) trust climate in the relationship between CEO transformational leadership (TFL) and firm performance under dynamic environments. The research results based on a sample collected from firms in Vietnam show that TMT trust climate is a key mediator which can convert CEO TFL into better performance outcomes. Moderated-mediation analyses further reveal that the mediating effect of TMT trust climate is more significant in less dynamic environments. Our study contributes to the TFL theory by identifying a critical mechanism that intervenes in the relationship between CEO-level TFL and firm performance. We reveal how CEOs exert leadership influence on subsequent TMT dynamics and performance outcomes by navigating external environments. Moreover, our study offers insights with regard to the trust theory by uncovering TMT-level intragroup trust as a mediator, and thus complements most of prior examinations that focus on the moderating role of trust in workplace team contexts.     

Industrial Relations Climate, Attendance Behaviour and the Role of Trade Unions

In recent years there has been a growing interest in the impact of co-operative union–management relations on firm performance and organizational outcomes such as employee turnover and absenteeism. This paper seeks to identify the factors that affect the development of a co-operative industrial relations climate and analyses the effects of that climate on organizational and union allegiance and on employee attendance behaviour. The data are drawn from a study of a large automotive manufacturer in Australia. The results indicate that a positive union–management relationship is associated with higher levels of work attendance. Moreover, this outcome is consistent with the presence of strong and effective unionism at the workplace.     

A Formula for Success? Training,Reward and Commitment in a Chemicals Plant

Managerial strategies designed to elicit greater employee commitment in production have received much attention in recent industrial relations reseach. Training is seen to form a core component of such strategies, yielding such beneficial outcomes as improved efficiency and employee motivation. Yet the connections between training strategy and performance outcomes have been treated in an overly simplistic fashion. This in turn reflects a lack of empirical inquiry at the level of the shop-floor currently to be found in the subject area. By integrating an investigation of the workplace into the analysis of management strategy and performance outcomes, it is possible to develop a deeper understanding of the linkages between training provision, commitment and systems of reward.     

The Relationships of Informal High Performance Work Practices to Job Satisfaction and Workplace Profitability

Recent empirical evidence reveals considerable divergence between management reports and employee reports regarding organizational high performance work practices (HPWPs). This divergence implies that employees may not participate in some HPWPs that are formally present in their organizations, but also, that employees may participate in HPWPs that are not formally present in their organizations. In this study, we examine the implication of the latter case (i.e., employee participation in “informal” HPWPs) for employee‐level and organization‐level outcomes. Our analyses, using data from the Statistics Canada Workplace and Employee Survey, suggest that employee participation in informal HPWPs is associated with enhanced job satisfaction and workplace profitability in a similar way as employee participation in formal HPWPs is associated with these outcomes.     

Partnership at Work: Mutuality and the Balance of Advantage

A framework for the analysis of partnership at work is presented, emphasizing the principles, practices and outcomes of partnership. A survey using matched samples of 54 UK management and employee representatives found a link between partnership principles and practices, between practices and ratings of employee attitudes and behaviour, between these and estimates of positive employment relations and quality and productivity, finally between productivity and sales and profitability. The findings support a mutual gains model but show that the balance of advantage is skewed towards management and reflects generally low management trust in employee representatives.     

Job Anxiety,Work‐Related Psychological Illness and Workplace Performance

This article uses matched employee–employer data from the British Workplace Employment Relations Survey to examine the relationship between employee psychological health and workplace performance in 2004 and 2011. Using two measures of work‐related psychological health — namely employee‐reported job anxiety and manager‐reported workforce stress, depression and anxiety — we find a positive relationship between psychological ill‐health and absence, but not quits. The association between psychological ill‐health and labour productivity is less clear, with estimates sensitive to sector, time period and the measure of psychological health. The 2004–2011 panel is further used to explore the extent to which change in psychological health is related to change in performance.     

Partnership,high performance work systems and quality of working life

The paper measures the effects of workplace partnership and selected high performance work practices on four different dimensions of employee experience. Whilst the partnership– high performance work systems nexus seems to have little impact on employees’ job satisfaction or sense of attachment, it does, however, have a negative impact on both workplace stress and employee evaluations of union performance. The analysis thus questions common assumptions about the inevitability of ‘mutual gain’ and the necessity of employer/union partnership.     

Labor–Management Partnership and Employee Voice: Evidence from the Healthcare Setting

This paper examines the relationship between labor–management partnership (LMP) and employee voice in the healthcare setting. We argue that the ability of LMP to deliver gains to employees is contingent on the quality of the procedural infrastructure on which it is established. We maintain that the quality of LMP processes influences employee trust in their employer and perceptions of union effectiveness and that these perceptions, in turn, are related to employee patient‐care voice.     

Buying into Capitalism? Employee Ownership in a Disconnected Era

This article considers whether employee ownership mitigates the negative workplace outcomes identified by the Disconnected Capitalism Thesis (DCT). Drawing on a programme of in‐depth interviews with workers and managers in employee‐owned businesses (EOBs), the article reveals how they are partially insulated from the vicissitudes endemic within contemporary capitalism. In contrast to the workplace outcomes envisaged within the DCT, these firms are characterized by strong workforce participation, high levels of employment security, active employee engagement and strong levels of employee creativity. Not only are these features beneficial for productivity and firm performance, they generate a form of ‘connected’ capitalism, partially offsetting wider negative systemic forces at play in the economy.     

Unions, Safety Committees and Workplace Injuries

This paper exploits the Workplace Industrial Relations Survey from 1990 (WIRS3) to examine the determinants of workplace injuries for a sample of manufacturing establishments in the UK. A key focus of this paper is an assessment of the role played by union-appointed safety representatives and joint health and safety consultative committees in reducing the frequency of workplace accidents. We find that joint consultative committees, with all employee representatives appointed by unions, significantly reduce workplace injuries relative to those establishments where the management alone determine health and safety arrangements. However, an important role is also found for those joint consultative commitees where no employee representatives are appointed by unions.     

Effects of Works Councils on Firm‐Provided Further Training in Germany

Unions are an important indicator of various measures of firm performance in Anglo‐Saxon countries. The same is true for the German analogue of the workplace union, the works council. Using German establishment data, I examine the impact of works councils on further training. I employ pooled logit and count‐data models to analyse the further training activity and intensity of German firms. Because the treatment variable may suffer from endogeneity, I also adopt linear and nonlinear instrumental variable techniques. The analysis reveals a positive impact of works councils on firm‐provided training and provides slightly weaker evidence for firm‐size differentials in workplace representation. I conclude that enhanced management–employee relations foster the training efforts of firms.     

Disability and Perceptions of Work and Management

Matched employee–employer data from the 2004 Workplace Employment Relations Survey are used to examine differences in work‐related perceptions between disabled and non‐disabled employees. Even after accounting for differences in personal, job and workplace characteristics, disabled employees are found to hold more negative views on the treatment of workers by managers and, consistent with this, they express less job satisfaction and commitment towards their organization. The influence of disability is also examined across workplaces defined by sector, the presence of disability‐related policies and practices, and employee views of management to explore the role of corporate culture.     

Monitoring what and how: psychological implications of electronic performance monitoring

Implementing electronic performance monitoring in the workplace might improve the efficiency and quality of employee data that are collected. These intended benefits might be discounted or even eliminated if employees have a negative reaction to the monitoring process. The goal of this exploratory study was therefore to investigate which electronic performance monitoring techniques and monitoring characteristics are associated with negative employee reactions using survey responses from 190 student workers. Results showed that close performance monitoring (via cameras, data entry, chat and phone recording) had significant negative effects on job attitudes such as job satisfaction and affective commitment. Similar effects were observed for employee self‐efficacy and perceived control. Attitudes were furthermore negatively impacted when the monitoring was focused on individuals and unpredictable, which also reduced organisational citizenship behaviour while continuous monitoring reduced self‐efficacy. These findings suggest that the benefits of close monitoring may be overshadowed by negative employee reactions.     

Incorporating human resource management initiatives into customer services: Empirical evidence from Chinese manufacturing firms

The existing operations management literature has extensively investigated the associations between customer satisfaction and firm performance. However, how to improve customer satisfaction through employee empowerment, service reward, and service training has rarely been investigated. In this research, we tied human resource and service operations management to each other and examined the relationships among employee empowerment, service reward, service training, employee satisfaction, customer service and customer satisfaction based on empirical study of 214 Chinese manufacturing companies. Using structural equation modeling, we found that both employee empowerment and service training have significant impacts on employee satisfaction and customer service, while service reward only has significant impact on customer service. We also found that both employee satisfaction and customer service have significant impact on customer satisfaction. However, the impact of employee satisfaction on customer service is insignificant. The findings suggest that employee empowerment, service reward and service training are important considerations for operations managers to boost employee satisfaction and customer service, which in turn improve customer satisfaction. We provide empirical evidence that employee empowerment, service reward and service training play significant roles in increasing customer satisfaction in the context of manufacturing businesses.     

Corporate social responsibility as an employee governance tool: Evidence from a quasi‐experiment

Research summary : This study examines whether companies employ corporate social responsibility (CSR) to improve employee engagement and mitigate adverse behavior at the workplace (e.g., shirking, absenteeism). We exploit plausibly exogenous changes in state unemployment insurance (UI) benefits from 1991 to 2013. Higher UI benefits reduce the cost of being unemployed and hence increase employees' incentives to engage in adverse behavior. We find that higher UI benefits are associated with higher engagement in employee‐related CSR. This finding suggests that companies use CSR as a strategic management tool—specifically, an employee governance tool—to increase employee engagement and counter the possibility of adverse behavior. We further examine plausible mechanisms underlying this relationship. Managerial summary : This study examines whether companies employ corporate social responsibility (CSR) to improve employee engagement and mitigate adverse behavior at the workplace (e.g., shirking, absenteeism). We find that companies react to increased risk of adverse behavior by strategically increasing their investment in employee‐related CSR (e.g., work‐life balance benefits, health and safety policies). Our findings have important managerial implications. In particular, they suggest that CSR may help companies motivate and engage their employees. Hence, companies dealing with employees that are unmotivated, regularly absent, or engage in other forms of adverse behavior, may find it worthwhile to design and implement effective CSR practices. Further, our findings suggest that CSR can be used as employee governance tool. Accordingly, managers could benefit from integrating CSR considerations into their strategic planning. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The trusted general manager and business unit performance: empirical evidence of a competitive advantage

Employee trust for the general manager is proposed as an internal organizational characteristic that provides a competitive advantage for the firm. This paper empirically examines the relationship between trust for a business unit's general manager and organizational performance. Trust was found to be significantly related to sales, profits and employee turnover in the restaurant industry. Managers who were either more or less trusted differed significantly in perceptions of their ability, benevolence and integrity. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Ethnographic Contribution to Understanding Co‐worker Relations

Relations among co‐workers are becoming both more important and more complex in modern workplaces as authority over job decisions is shifted from supervisors to quasi‐independent teams. The author develops a model of co‐worker relations that recognizes these changes and evaluates this model using data content coded from the full population of published book‐length workplace ethnographies (N = 204). Confirmatory factor analysis techniques support the existence of three distinct aspects of co‐worker relations: cohesiveness, conflict and peer supervision. The most important determinants of co‐worker relations are employee involvement programmes and management behaviour. Returning to specific case studies allows a theoretical elaboration of how employee involvement and management behaviour condition co‐worker relations. The author concludes by noting the importance of intellectual exchanges between qualitative and quantitative methods for generating new advances in the study of work and employment relations.     

Multidimensional latent traits of perceived organizational innovation: Differences between Thai and Egyptian employees

A new approach, the multidimensional latent regression (MLR) approach of item response theory, is employed to evaluate the dimensions of individual employee creativity, workplace atmosphere, and workplace innovative activity. Based on the MLR concept, the relationships among the measurement scales of these variables are tested for their unidimensionality versus multidimensionality. Multidimensionality was found. While workplace atmosphere is closely linked to workplace innovative activity, individual employee creativity forms its own dimension but is still positively linked to the other two measures. To achieve an accurate comparison between the two groups of Thai and Egyptian employees who have the same levels of agreement with the scale items, it is necessary to adjust the scores of Egyptian employees downwards.

Hybrid social media: employees’ use of a boundary‐spanning technology

Improved employee collaboration and communication can be facilitated by social technologies that extend within and beyond organisations. These social technologies have increasingly come to be represented by social media sites, which are used to extend workplace relationships across personal and professional boundaries in a hybrid role. This presents opportunities and risks as those boundaries are collapsed. Using boundary management as a theoretical lens, we evaluate the associations of relationship initiation between colleagues at different levels of organisations with employees’ strategies and their well‐being. We also investigate relationships with social media usage, age and propensity to self‐monitor and group employees using cluster analysis. We consider implications of our findings for developing more sophisticated policies, training and guidance for employees on the use of social media as a workplace tool.