Productivity Gains from the Implementation of Employee Training Programs

This study uses data on the personnel policies and economic characteristics of businesses in the manufacturing sector to measure the impact of formal training programs on labor productivity. The major finding is that businesses that were operating below their expected labor productivity levels in 1983 implemented new employee training programs after 1983 that resulted in significantly larger increases in labor productivity growth between 1983 and 1986. This higher rate of productivity growth was sufficient to bring these businesses up to the labor productivity levels of comparable businesses by 1986.     

Workplace Transformation and the Disposable Workplace: Employee Involvement in Australia

Employee involvement (EI) programs should mainly appear either where "workplace transformation" occurs or where managers create a "disposable workplace." Cluster analysis of Australian workplace data supports the notion that transformed and disposable workplaces are distinct from one another and from traditional workplaces. These workplace categories are related to the reported incidence of EI programs as hypothesized. (JEL J41, J51, 553)     

Adaptation and Organizational Connectedness in Corporate Radical Innovation Programs*

This research examines how established companies organize programs for fostering technology‐based radical innovation. It addresses conflicts revealed in the innovation literature concerning the appropriate design of the strategic, structural, and process components of these programs. In developing innovation strategies, managers must balance the desire for strategic clarity with the need to allow for creativity and exploration. They must structure programs that ensure innovations benefit from the organization's resources while minimizing the numerous constraints that can impede these unconventional activities. Additionally, though they may favor management processes that provide accountability and effective resource allocation, managers must also ensure these do not restrict the flexibility required for successful innovation. The study is a longitudinal, comparative case analysis of interviews with managers involved in innovation programs in 12 industry‐leading multinational corporations. Site visits at each company were followed by biannual interviews with key managers in each company. A total of 81 follow‐up interviews were conducted over a three‐year period. These interviews were aimed at identifying the changes and progress in the programs over time and internal and external impacts on the organization's innovation activity. The analysis reveals (1) distinct but evolving objectives that maintain a logical strategic connection, (2) adaptive structures that shift and transform but preserve relationships with the broader organization, and (3) flexible processes that are understandable beyond the innovation program and are modifiable, both for the context and in response to learning over time. This suggests that programs introducing high uncertainty and risk into mature corporate environments are highly flexible systems that maintain organizational connectedness as they evolve. For academics, this implies a need to understand the evolution of innovation programs as an adaptive learning process that, regardless of form and purpose, preserves its connection to the traditional organization. For practitioners, it highlights the importance of considering the process, strategic, and structural connections to the broader organization when designing innovation programs and suggests the need for feedback mechanisms to help adapt these elements over time.     

The Influence of Managerial Relations on Waves of Employee Involvement

One of the most enduring issues in the debate about employee involvement (EI) and workers' participation is how it survives over time, and to what extent the dynamics of EI is linked with labour-management relations. In this article, which draws upon data collected in a two-year study of 25 organizations, it is suggested that managerial relations is a significant factor in explaining waves of EI, and one that is frequently overlooked. Waves of EI can be assessed in terms of the twin concepts of centrality and prominence, terms that are amplified below. The introduction of EI techniques is motivated by a number of forces, but one of the most important is a desire by managers to be noticed, to engage in ‘impression management’, via the creation of new schemes. Despite having high-profile introductions, these schemes soon tend to fade in importance, to a large extent because of problems within management such as internal political rivalries, low supervisory commitment to schemes, inadequate training provision or the downgrading of EI by management arising from conflicting priorities.     

Determinants of Union Recognition and Employee Involvement: Evidence from London Docklands

This article examines the determinants of union recognition and of employee involvement structures in London Dockland's workplaces, by means of multivariate analysis. The authors found that the respective dependent variables are significantly associated both with each other and with certain enterprise and establishment-level characteristics. Significant independent variables include workplace size, ownership status, the presence of a personnel manager and the incidence of skill shortages.     

面向环境的战略重构

在以环境为视角的主流战略管理理论中,都认为战略应该与环境相匹配。但是,适应环境的战略观存在许多缺陷。企业的环境总存在一定的不确定性,而这种不确定性可以经过企业的改造转化为企业的竞争优势,并且使某些战略具有期权价值。因此,需要抛弃传统的战略制定思维,依据环境的不确定性重新构筑企业战略。通过相应的战略手段,企业可以塑造环境、改变环境、适应环境以及追随环境来实现企业的目标。     

Corporate Culture and Commitment: Impact on Performance of International New Product Development Programs

To achieve success in today's competitive environment, firms increasingly must develop new products for international markets. To this end, they must leverage and must coordinate broad creative capabilities and resources, which often are diffused across geographical and cultural boundaries. Recent writings in the globalization and in the new product development (NPD) literatures suggest that certain “softer” dimensions that define the behavioral environment of the firm—that is, the firm's organizational culture and management commitment—can have an important impact on the outcome of these complex and risky endeavors. But what comprises these dimensions and what type of behavioral environment scenario is linked to high performance in the international NPD effort of firms has not been articulated clearly. This research focuses on these softer dimensions, with the objective of understanding and idengifying their specific makeup as well as their relationship to the outcome of international NPD programs. Based on an integration of three literatures—organizational, new product development, and globalization—the present study develops a research instrument, comprising 18 behavioral environment measurement items as well as several outcome measures, that is administered to a broad empirical sample of goods and services firms active in NPD for international markets. Using empirical results from 252 international NPD programs, three key dimensions are idengified: (1) the innovation/globalization culture of the firm; (2) the commitment of sufficient resources to the NPD program; and (3) top management involvement in the international NPD effort. These dimensions are used to derive four clusters of firms, where each grouping represents a distinctly different behavioral environment scenario. In a preliminary analysis, it is ascertained that other aspects of the firm such as “degree of internationalization,” location of the respondent to the NPD center, and other company parameters do not form the basis of cluster membership. By linking measures of performance to the four behavioral clusters, findings are developed that clearly support this study's hypothesis that international NPD outcomes are associated with the softer behavioral environment dimensions. Scenario performance ranges from “very high” to “very low” and appears to be linked clearly to the dimensions studied. The lower‐performing firms tended to emphasize positively only one, or sometimes two, of the three dimensions. The “best performers” were found to be firms with a “positive balanced” approach to international NPD, where all three behavioral environment dimensions are supported strongly. In other words, firms in this scenario have an open and innovative global NPD culture, they ensure that sufficient resources are committed to the NPD program, and their senior managers play an active and involved role in the international NPD effort. Given this evidence of a direct link between behavioral environment and international NPD performance, the present study's findings suggest some important messages for managers charged with the development of new products for international markets.     

Accounting for Cross‐Country Differences in Employee Involvement Practices: Comparative Case Studies in Germany,Brazil and China

Employee involvement is a contested concept in organizations. While the mainstream of the research debate has focused on measuring the strength of employee involvement (EI), this article emphasizes the existence of very different forms of EI. It draws on case studies of the German, Brazilian and Chinese plants of a German automobile manufacturer to analyse forms of EI and to investigate their societal determinants. The article reveals considerable differences in the design of employee involvement between the self‐organization model and the competition/social involvement model. It shows how industrial relations and cultural factors lead to these very different approaches.     

The Decentralization of Decision Making and Employee Involvement within the Workplace: Evidence from Four Establishment Datasets

Participatory work practices, like teams, quality circles and joint consultative committees (JCCs) can, but do not necessarily, decentralize decision making and increase worker autonomy. We use broad, cross‐sectional establishment data from the European Union and three Commonwealth countries to measure the extent of decision making by workers across these countries, and to analyse how this measure varies with the use of participatory practices. Within Europe, workers in Sweden, Germany, France, the Netherlands and Ireland are most likely to be given the authority to make decisions. In Spain, Portugal and Italy, decentralized decision making is more unusual. While decision making is generally higher in establishments with teams, JCCs and quality circles, this result does not hold across all countries. Even where the relationships are significant, use of participatory practices explains a surprisingly small amount of the overall variation in decision making.     

Employee Perceptions of Job Influence and Organizational Participation Employee Perceptions

An analysis using British matched employer-employee data finds that workers in establishments operating employee participation schemes feel that they have greater influence over their jobs. Schemes involving broader forms of participation, such as representative participation and briefing groups, are shown to be more strongly associated with greater influence than those of a more focused type, such as quality circles and work teams. There is little evidence of a strong positive interaction between these types of schemes.     

Employee Participation,Ownership, and Productivity: A Theoretical Framework

A new conceptual framework to define and differentiate among diverse forms of employee ownership is developed. Two central rights associated with ownership, return and control rights, are identified. Their impact on individual motivation, individual performance, organizational structural variables and organizational performance is evaluated. We show how, over certain ranges of combinations of control and return rights, the relationship between alternative ownership arrangements and organizational performance may be nonlinear. The implications for the introduction of employee ownership and the evaluation of empirical work are considered.     

Community Organizing and Employee Representation

The decline in the scope and power of American unions has led to a search for new strategies and new organizational forms to better succeed in representing the interests of employees in the labour market. This paper examines the role of community‐based organizations of the sort that proved so powerful during the Civil Rights Movement. The subject of the paper is a strong national network of community organizations that is neighbourhood‐based and draws heavily on churches and other community institutions. The organizations are put together in neighbourhoods, yet they also wield power at the city and state levels. The paper describes the organizations and examines and assesses their labour market policies. The second part of the paper takes up organizational issues and, in particular, describes how the structure and culture of these organizations enable them to avoid some of the organizational perils that have befallen unions and other social movement organizations. The paper concludes by comparing these organizations with traditional unions and by discussing their prospects for growth as well as their limitations.     

Corporate distinctive competence,strategy, industry and performance

Corporate distinctive competencies may facilitate effective management of interdependencies among multiple units. Relationships between corporate distinctive competencies and firm performance were examined in 185 industrial firms. Results suggested that distinctive competencies associated with performance vary according to the grand strategy used and the firm's principal industry. Specific distinctive competencies were identified for each strategy and industry type.     

外部治理环境与公司内部治理结构效应比较

本文以深沪两市1039家上市公司2001—2005年的严格平衡面板数据作为样本.实证分析了外部治理环境的不同程度和公司内部治理结构的不同安排对公司价值的影响效应,并分行业细分了这种影响效应的差异。实证回归的结果发现。在外部治理环境当中只有法治化水平对总体样本的上市公司价值有显著的影响作用.而在公司内部治理结构当中则证实了正U型的股权结构效应。此外.外部治理环境与公司内部治理结构对公司价值的影响效应会因行业而有所差异。然而。从整体上看.前者的效应都明显地小于后者。研究结果表明。对于中国特殊的证券市场环境而言。同样存在着公司内部治理结构的合理安排可以作为公司价值保护机制的可能性。     

New Forms of Employee Involvement at European Level — The Case of the European Company (SE)

This article focuses on important but widely neglected problems of supranational employee involvement both at the level of information and consultation as well as at board level. It takes the most important pattern, the European Company (SE), and presents a systematic empirical analysis of its negotiated forms of worker representation and employee involvement. The questions addressed are: What do these new forms of collective voice and representation at the supranational level look like? What is the relevance of SEs for the development of an emerging system of European industrial relations in a broader perspective? Is the negotiated form of employee involvement likely to lead to new forms of harmonization and convergence or rather to heterogeneity and fragmentation?     

经营风险、晋升激励与公司绩效

本文以2004—2006年中国A股上市公司为样本,检验经营风险是否以及如何影响公司高管晋升的激励效应。我们发现:①经营风险越高,公司高管晋升的激励效应越明显;②与民营公司相比,国有公司经营风险对其高管晋升激励效应的影响更小;③与政府间接控制的国有公司相比,政府直接控制的国有公司的经营风险对其高管晋升激励效应的影响更小。本文检验结果支持当业绩度量噪音较大时晋升激励更为有效的理论推断,并表明政府对国有公司的薪酬管制会限制其对激励合约的选择,而监督的加强有助于弥补激励合约的不足。