The take-up of human resource management by mainstream companies: key lessons from research

Drawing upon a major British study involving over 300 interviews in fifteen case organizations from the private and public sectors, this paper draws out the essential elements of recent changes in industrial relations. In particular, it examines the significance of human resource management initiatives for the practice of industrial relations. The main thrust of the paper examines the ways, and the extent to which, mainstream organizations have transposed and absorbed concepts and practices from the highly publicized ‘lead cases’ into their own routines.

The central argument has three component elements: a whole array of managerial initiatives was launched in the period covered by the research; many of the more far-reaching of these were devised and driven from outside personnel or industrial relations management; cumulatively, these initiatives have impacted on the conduct of industrial relations.

A key concept which is identified and explored is that of HRM/IR ‘dualism’. This is the attempted bolting-on of HRM techniques and language alongside prevailing, albeit to some extent diluted, IR proceduralism. Many of the significant changes in labour management practices stemmed from initiatives taken by general managers, manufacturing directors and line managers. Transformative initiatives in the guise of culture change and structural change often carried profound implications for industrial relations even though these initiatives would not traditionally be regarded as part of industrial relations proper.     

HRM and IR in multinational corporations in Denmark: uneasy bedfellows?

As multinational corporations operate in multiple countries, headquarters must take into account differences in local settings when seeking the means to coordinate and control subsidiaries. The local system of industrial relations sets the framework for what kind of human resource management a multinational corporation can implement. Yet another question is whether the still stronger multinationals can change the existing systems of industrial relations, directly or indirectly.

The paper analyzes four Danish enterprises over a 10-year period. This longitudinal study shows that none of the multinationals directly try to interfere in local industrial relations. However, by exercising their management prerogative in a way that differs from the Northern European tradition of industrial relations, they do influence the cooperation between employers and employees. In particular, the results show, that a shift from a stakeholder to a shareholder management style and an increased degree of HQ control have an effect on the whole cooperative atmosphere in each of the companies. In the long run, they may affect the collective bargaining system as such.     

ENTERPRISE WITHOUT UNIONS: THE MANAGEMENT OF EMPLOYEE RELATIONS IN NON-UNION FIRMS

Employee relations in non-union settings remain largely uninvestigated by industrial relations researchers. This article examines the management of employee relations in establishments in high technology industries in the Southeast of England - a sector and locality frequently identified with high levels of non-unionism. Moreover, high technology firms are frequently seen as exemplars of new human resource management techniques designed to substitute for unions. Our data from postal and interview surveys of 115 establishments suggests that HRM is only one, and by no means the dominant, approach to managing employee relations in high technology establishments.     

The labour relations heritage and lean manufacturing at Fiat

The objective of the paper is interpreting, from an evolutionary perspective, recent developments of work organization and human resource management policies at Fiat Auto, one of the world's largest automobile manufacturers, which achieved a successful restructuring in the early 1990s. Building on a heritage of adversarial labour relations and ‘mass production’ organizational principles, Fiat developed an original and to some extent hybrid version of ‘lean’ human resource management practices (teamwork, flexible compensation, multi-skilling, etc.).

The paper analyses this process of organizational change from an evolutionary perspective based on the concept of dynamic capabilities. From this standpoint, IR. HRM and work organization practices are the result of a learning process, based on original development, imitation, analogical replication, combination and selection of organizational capabilities; organizational capabilities have a cumulative and path-dependent nature; workplace innovations are also rooted in organizational absorptive capacities, that is, the ability of firms to exploit new (and often extramural) organizational and HRM developments; the existence of complementarities among organizational competencies, assets and choices in term of HRM are likely to push toward the adoption of a set or system of (rather than single and insulated) innovations in work organization, HRM practices and industrial relations policies.

The data provided in the paper show that the process of innovation of workplace practices at Fiat Auto (summarized by the concept of the Fabbrica Integrata) is curiously non-linear. The newly designed HRM policies have, on the one hand, been resisted by the unions (who have not been involved in the design process) and by segments of the work-force; on the other hand, they have been hindered by existing organizational features and personnel practices which, in turn, were key success factors during the 1980s. This inertia is significantly lower at the new greenfield plant of Melfi. On the whole, the restructuring process was successful from the competitive and financial standpoint, and represents the basis on which management and the unions can develop a new co-operative model of industrial relations.     

The historical development of American HRM broadly viewed

This paper surveys the development of the American human resource management field from the late 19th century to the start of the 21st century. Important people, ideas and events are identified as are contributing fields of study and schools of thought. Interesting and sometimes revisionist insights emerge, partly because human resource management is defined broadly to include industrial relations and personnel economics. The historical analysis is also used to derive implications for improving the current-day HRM research program.     

Religiosity as a source of influence on work engagement: a study of the Malaysian Finance industry

Abstract

The majority of work engagement studies have been conducted using a quantitative approach with limited attention to the institutional and social contexts. Meanwhile, the role of religion in shaping people’s philosophy and behaviour in life and work has been gaining attention from management researchers. Studies have revealed the positive impact of religiosity on a number of human resources and organizational outcomes. However, few studies treat religious belief as a job or personal resource from a HRM perspective. This study fills part of this research gap by focusing on the relevant factors that may affect work engagement in the Malaysian Islamic context. Drawing on data from 41 semi-structured interviews with mid-ranking professionals from the finance sector, this study responds to calls for more focus on contexts and for deeper qualitative investigations into individual dynamics that concern religiosity and work engagement. It provides evidence that religiosity plays an important role in work engagement. Our findings have implications for people management in organizations that have a diverse workforce representing multiple religions.     

Human resource management and organizational strategies in German- and US-owned companies

The development of the international economy over the past twenty years has bred considerable diversity in the form and substance of employment relations (labour-management relations, human resource management practices) throughout the world. Cases of ‘social partnership’ are today found in the ‘free market’ United States economy; some companies operating in Germany's ‘social’ market economy are rejecting traditional forms of social partnership in the name of more unilateral strategies.

This paper examines (a) the extent to which ‘strategic diversity’ – variation in human resource strategies and policies – is possible within the heavily institutionalized, co-operative and codeterminative German economy, and (b) how managers perceive the effects of different kinds of HR approaches on organizational change and industrial adjustment. It is based on empirical evidence drawn from seven large chemicals companies operating in Germany – three of them US-owned firms and four German-owned.

The main conclusions are that considerable strategic diversity is possible within the German context, and that managers perceive distinct costs and benefits to specific aspects of the typically American ‘unilateral’ style and the more German ‘negotiated’ approach to structuring the relationship with human resources. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of these trade-offs for the transferability of HR strategies across international borders, giving special attention to policies to avoid some of these potential costs.     

Multinationals and human resource practices in Ireland: a rejection of the 'new conformance thesis'

In a previous edition of this journal, Turner et al. (1997a) claim that the industrial relations and human resource management practices of multinational companies operating in Ireland bear a close resemblance to those of indigenous firms. The advancement of this (new) conformance thesis stands in stark contrast to much recent work on Irish industrial relations. In this paper we criticize Turner et al.'s argument for its failure to appreciate and acknowledge the weight of evidence both internationally and in Ireland which points to the predominance of 'country-of-origin effects' over 'hostcountry effects', especially in countries characterized by weak industrial relations systems. We are also critical of the empirical basis of the 'new conformance thesis'. In analysing data from a recently conducted national workplace survey our doubts as to the empirical validity and generalizability of Turner et al.'s results are confirmed. In brief, the 'new conformance thesis' is refuted and the employment relations practices of foreign- and particularly US-owned establishments are shown to be very different from those of Irish workplaces.     

Does unionization lead to corporate changes in productivity practices?–insights from Singapore

This paper explores the role of trade unions in influencing corporate change towards productivity improvement for a newly industrialized country– Singapore.Empirical analysis of a sample of firms found unionization to be positively associated with certain productivity practices.The more significant and stronger correlations being the sharing of productivity gains, role Specialization (productivity manager) and productivity as part of corporate policy. Implications of these findings are discussed.

A Sunday Times commentary 2 suggested that, drawing from the Singapore industrial relations experience, trade unions could play a positive role in generating economic growth. If that is seen to be occurring from the macrolevel, it will naturally be interesting to inquire further what effects unionization can have on internal organizational practices, such as in productivity improvement. There may also be practical benefits from having insights into the dynamic forces that are at work when trade unionism is present.

A perspective on the direction (whether positive or negative) and scale of change in the emphasis on productivity improvement practices could help multinational enterprises formulate more effective employee relations policies when operating in Singapore –where tripartite co–operation is the key industrial relations philosophy. Corporations that are in the process of

being unionized may be able to appreciate that resulting change to their operating environments as a consequence of unionization need nor always be unfavourable.Management operating in unionized contexts could rethink their industrial relations strategies in light of the findings here –that it is quite possible to work with trade unions to enhance corporate productivity.

Most significantly, such findings could foster a greater determination by both the management and unions in engendering a co-operative industrial relations climate.This is particularly relevant for corporations operating in countries such as Britain, where industrial relations are traditionally less harmonious.To survive in the increasingly global competition of the 1990s and beyond, Western businesses will need co-operative industrial relations that help to foster productivity improvement efforts. This theme isfurther explored in the last section of the paper.     

The complementarity of IT and HRM capabilities for competitive performance: a configurational analysis of manufacturing and industrial service SMEs

ABSTRACT

Building on the resource-based view (RBV) perspective, we analyse the combined effects of two highly-valued organizational resources, namely information technology (IT) capabilities and human resource management (HRM) capabilities, on the competitive performance of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Three resource configurations are derived from data on 227 SMEs (121 from the manufacturing sector and 106 from the industrial services sector) through a cluster analysis. These resource configurations are labelled IT Capabilities-dominant Configuration (ITC), e-Business Capabilities-dominant Configuration (e-BC), and HRM Capabilities-dominant Configuration (HRC). This last configuration is the best-performing, followed by the e-BC, with the ITC as the worst-performing. The results also show that manufacturing and service firms are very unevenly distributed within HRC and ITC configurations, suggesting notable differences between the two sectors regarding their respective IT and non-IT capability-building. The fact that service SMEs are overwhelmingly represented (93%) in the worst-performing configuration and completely absent (0%) in the most effective configuration while displaying the strongest IT infrastructure capabilities confirms that the IT productivity paradox is aggravated in service SMEs and calls for further research on this issue.     

Research on unionized grievance procedures: Management issues and recommendations

This paper critically reviews research on unionized grievance procedures to identify key issues for human resource/labor relations executives and to provide recommendations for dealing with these issues. The review covers psychological, sociological, economics, and industrial relations‐based research. Specifically, the authors recommend that senior human resource/labor relations executives and their staffs conceptualize the grievance procedure as a high involvement human resource practice, distinguish between the presence and use of grievance procedures, use grievance data to determine whether grievants or their supervisors suffer management reprisals, assess supervisors' dominant orientation toward employees, determine employee perceptions of grievance procedure fairness, and monitor the effects of work force composition and supervisor selection on grievance activity. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Strategic global human resource management research in the twenty-first century: an endorsement of the mixed-method research methodology

Global competition is rapidly becoming the norm in which nearly all business organizations must compete in one fashion or another. The complexity and value of strategic global human resource management (SGHRM) will continue to compound in significance as globalization becomes the predominate form of business. Both practitioners and researchers maintain the grapple with understanding the global phenomena and the resulting impact on the entire human resource management system.

Previously, researchers' maintained research programmes utilizing Western-style theories and methods, which were predominantly quantitative, to explore phenomena that may now be inappropriate. These methods and theories frequently do not capture the ‘fabric’ of global phenomena that include complex interactions of culture, institutions, societal norms and government regulations, among a few concerns.

The mixed methods approach is proposed to add the ‘fabric’ required, illustrating the depth and flexibility needed to explore the SGHRM issues. Mixed methods are a combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches that maintain methodological rigour as well as measures for reliability and validity. This paper explores the current methods, the reasons for their lack of success in portraying the depth of the phenomena and why the mixed methods approach appears to be a superior method for research for the SGHRM field.     

Human resource management and industrial relations in European companies

The paper explores the different patterns of labour relations in European companies. It is based on comparative research carried out in fifteen companies in Italy, France, Germany, Great Britain and Spain. ^{1 1}This paper is based on a comparative research study conducted in 1991 in fififteen industrial companies in Italy, France, Germany, Great Britain and Spain. The research team consisted of Paolo Perulli and Ida Regalia (Italy), Alain Lipietz (France), Bruno Cattero (Germany), Paul Marignson (Great Britain) and Fausto Miguelez (Spain). In each country, three case studies were made of companies in thse chemical, food-procesing and engineering industries. Interviews were conducted with the company management as well as with workers' representatives and trade unionists. Of course, this methodology does not allow us to gen eralize our findings, even less to compare national or sectoral patterns. What it does allow us to do, however, is, first, to sugest hypotheses on common trends and major differnces by using the cases studied as anecdotal evidence; second, it allows us to show how apparently similar patterns of personnel management and of labour relations display different features im different cases; third, it enables us to see whether some of these features are systematically asociateed with other variables. View all notesIn each country, three companies in the chemical, food-processing and engineering industries have been studied, through interviews with the company management as well as with workers' representatives.

The starting point is the observation that employers' policies of Jabour relations are today more differentiated than in the recent past: while many employers tend to involve unions in the re-organization of work, have frequent meetings with them and grant them full recognition, others pursue more unilateral paths to industrial adjustment and others still adopt a mixed policy of union involvement on some issues or for some categories of workers and of individual bargaining on others.

An analysis of the major differences among the companies studied is then developed by illustrating three types of choices that managers have to make. The first concerns the extension of the involvement of workers' representatives in decisions. The second has to do with the use of direct relationships with individual workers, as an attempt to bypass the unions or simply as a new method to increase the overall information and communication. The third alternative regards the degree of homogeneity in the management of human resources, in which some rules and advantages may apply to either the whole labour force or some professional (and possibly age or gender) groups only.

In the final section, some possible determinants of the differences in employers' strategies of labour regulation between firms and countries are examined. Special attention is paid to two institutional factors: the role of legal rights to information, consultation and negotiation in different national contexts, and the type of workers' representatives which are present in the companies.     

Revitalizing social dialogue in the workplace: the impact of a cooperative industrial relations climate and sustainable HR practices on reducing employee harm

Abstract

The purpose of the present study is to unravel the relationship between current forms and realities of social dialogue in the workplace, the industrial relations climate, HRM, and employee harm. We tested a model specifying associations between (1) indicators of revitalized social dialogue, (2) perceived cooperation within the industrial relations climate, (3) perceived sustainability in HR practices, and (4) management perceptions regarding employee harm. The test was based on a survey conducted among 356 (HR-)managers and CEOs in Belgium. The results support the idea that a cooperative industrial relations climate and sustainable HR practices can reduce employee harm. More specifically, efficiency in social dialogue fully mediated the relationship between cooperative industrial climate and employee harm. In turn, industrial relations climate partially mediated the relationship between sustainable HR practices and employee harm. Finally, sustainable HR practices correlated positively with a cooperative industrial relations climate, suggesting that HR and employee relations reinforce rather than weaken each other.     

The ‘newcomer’ MNC and the re-organization of national industrial relations actor network: the case of the Finnish food-retailing sector

This article looks at the institutional-level negotiations and configurations between a ‘newcomer’ multinational, the trade union and the association of employers. Developing a relational approach based on Actor Network Theory, the article goes beyond the currently used convergence and divergence perspectives by looking at the effect of MNCs on human resource and industrial relations systems as a process of re-organizing identities and power positions of the actors. A qualitative study on the case of the entry of the first international company (Lidl) into the Finnish food-retailing sector suggests that an international company tends to become positioned as an authorial representative of the global market forces, superior to the national actors. A closer analysis reveals, however, that the trade union is granted with some strategic discretion in the emerging actor network whereas the association of employers appears as the least powerful actor in the evolving configuration. At a general level, the analysis of the Finnish case underlines the importance of examining the MNC effect from a theoretical perspective that pays full attention to the complexities and particulars of the process. Implications for internationally oriented human resource management and industrial relations research are discussed.     

Employment and wage practices of Japanese firms in the Philippines: convergence with Filipino-Chinese and Western-owned firms

In foreign-owned Philippine firms, human resource approaches and practices tend to converge. Japanese-owned firms localize their human resource practices by emphasizing local standards and practices in compensation, hiring, recruitment, job assignments and the like. On the other hand, Western-owned firms tend to adopt well-known Japanese style practices. Filipino-Chinese-owned firms tend to be traditional, emphasizing both informal and hierarchical control mechanisms which put a premium upon loyalty and trust, through familistic, informal but hierarchical control mechanisms. As the owners of these firms pass on control to the next generation, they tend to hire professional managers. These managers include younger generation Filipino-Chinese educated abroad. They are torn between the rational, and traditional norms and practices insisted upon by their Confucian-oriented elders, and the demands of a competitive and ever-changing technology and economy.

It is quite meaningless to attach adjectives like ‘Japanese’, ‘Filipino-Chinese’ or ‘Western’ to universal concepts like industrial relations and human resource approaches - the search for the best approach in work relations is beyond the issue of convergence or divergence.     

The relationship between principals’ configuration of a bundle of HR practices for new teachers and teachers’ person–organisation fit

Abstract

Based on studies in the private sector showing the positive effects of strategic human resources management (SHRM) on performance, many stress the value of adopting SHRM in the public sector. However, until now, the argument for applying SHRM in the public sector remains largely theoretical. Especially in educational contexts, it is unclear through which mechanisms SHRM affects performance. Therefore, this paper zooms in on the relationship between the configuration of a bundle of human resources (HR) practices and person–organisation (P–O) fit. A mixed methods design was used to collect both qualitative and quantitative data from principals and teachers in 56 Flemish primary schools. The qualitative data, which provides insight into principals’ configuration of HR practices, were converted into numerical scores and analysed, together with the quantitative teacher data, using multilevel analysis. The results show that both principals’ strategic and HR orientation are associated with teachers’ P–O fit. This study contributes to the research field of SHRM in education by studying a bundle of HR practices and how this relates to the fit of teachers’ own values with the school culture. The practical implications for schools are discussed.     

Towards a hybrid model? A systematic review of human resource management research on Chinese state-owned enterprises (1993–2017)

Abstract

Over the past two decades, there has been a proliferation of research on human resource management (HRM) in Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs) as a result of the wide-reaching state-sector reform of the late 1980s. This article aims to provide a systematic review of literature on this topic and capture the nature of HRM in Chinese SOEs, both in research and practice. The article draws on 178 studies from 43 English academic journals over a period of 25?years (1993–2017). In analysing this literature and by taking stock of theoretical frameworks, research methods, themes and analysis of academic articles in this area, we have gained a number of insights. The study has found that the research methods used have shifted from qualitative and interpretive methodology toward quantitative and sophisticated modelling. A further insight is that there has been a relatively heavy reliance on institutional theory in the earlier studies reviewed, and since then a switch towards organizational behaviour perspectives. The level of analysis has moved from macro to micro level and thematic foci have become more diverse and complex. We highlight a number of avenues, theoretical and empirical, for future studies in this field.     

Industrial policy,social capital,human capital,and firm-level competitive advantage

Despite the popularity of governmental action devised to foster firm performance, the link between industrial policy and firm-specific human capital and social capital has received scant attention in the strategic management literature. In this paper, we build a dynamic optimization model which bridges concepts from industrial policy, social capital, human capital, and firm-level competitive advantage. We derive theoretical and policy implications from our competitiveness model, concluding that it increases in the opportunity cost of social capital reduce the production of human capital, so the optimal opportunity cost of social capital under feasible industrial policy should be set equal to zero. A government’s optimal industrial policy to help accumulate and churn human capital should reduce the opportunity cost of social capital to zero and reduce the probability of human capital leaving the community to zero. Thus, the model not only expands the potential determinants of competitive advantage in the context of governmental intervention, but also broadens the human capital theory and social capital theory in the creation of firm-specific human capital.

     

The under-utilization of human resources in industrial relations theory and practice

Industrial relations, as a theoretical and practical system of work arrangements between employees, unions, management and governments, have come under substantial pressure in recent decades, but neither theory nor practice has fully adjusted to the new circumstances. The article describes the changing conditions in relation to one aspect of the industrial relations (IR) system, namely influence and power sharing outside the sphere of collective bargaining. The analysis is based on two theoretical models derived from an accumulation of social science research evidence since the 1960s and further supported by recent comparative studies of countries with significant different IR philosophies.

The application of the human resources and motivated competence models to IR leads to the conclusion that long-term interests of employees and management as well as governments are best served by having a dual system of influence and power sharing, only one of which is adversarial.