Is Profit Sharing Productive? A Meta-Regression Analysis

In this article, we re-examine the relationship between group-based profit sharing and productivity. Our meta-regression analysis of 355 estimates from 56 studies controls for publication selection and misspecification biases and investigates the impact of firm-level unionisation. Profit sharing is positively related to productivity on average, with a stronger relationship where there is higher unionisation. The positive effect of profit sharing on productivity is larger in cooperative firms and in transition economies. Separate meta-analysis of interactions suggests that profit sharing works better in combination with capital investment and employee participation in decisions.     

Macroeconomic Conditons and HRM-IR Practice

Although macroeconomic developments may seem removed from the world of micro-level HRM-IR practices, such practices are heavily influenced by the macro economy. Wage and price inflation, for example, are closely related, and the general state of the economy influences decisions on hiring, layoffs, and hours. The labor market's tendency toward periods of extended labor surplus or shortage condition the nature of the employer-employee relationship. Economic circumstances affect the labor relations climate and that climate has a bearing on national productivity trends. Government policy in the future may seek to encourage certain kinds of compensation systems, such as profit sharing, for macro reasons. HRM-IR practitioners, too, may benefit by reconsidering policies which make wages relatively inflexible.     

Knowledge Sharing through Face‐to‐Face Communication and Labour Productivity: Evidence from British Workplaces

We investigate whether the adoption by workplaces of human resources management (HRM) practices that enhance face‐to‐face communication (FTFC) among employees is associated with productivity gains. The analysis is based on a nationally representative sample of over 500 British trading establishments drawn from the linked 2004 Workplace Employment Relations Survey and Annual Business Inquiry, for which objective measures of labour productivity (value added per employee) are available. We find a positive association between productivity and FTFC in problem‐solving groups, teams and meetings of senior or line managers and employees, provided that FTFC is adopted on a continuous basis. Our finding suggests that British workplaces in the trading sector could increase their productivity by implementing HRM practices in such a way as to enhance knowledge sharing through employees' personal interactions.     

How Workers Fare When Employers Innovate

Complementing existing work on firm organizational structure and productivity, this article examines the impact of organizational change on workers. We find evidence that employers do appear to compensate at least some of their workers for engaging in high-performance workplace practices. We also find a significant association between high-performance workplace practices and increased wage inequality. Finally, we examine the relationship between organizational structure and employment changes and find that some practices, such as self-managed teams, are associated with greater employment reductions, whereas other practices, such as the percentage of workers involved in job rotation, are associated with lower employment reductions.     

Smallholder productivity and weather shocks: Adoption and impact of widely promoted agricultural practices in Tanzania

We investigate the impact of maize-legume intercropping, soil and water conservation practices (SWC), organic fertilizers, inorganic fertilizers and high yielding maize varieties on maize productivity under weather shocks in Tanzania using panel data. First, we estimate the determinants of adoption by applying a multivariate panel data model capturing their complementarities and/or substitutabilities. Second, after testing for their potential endogeneity, we study the impact of these practices (and combinations of them) on maize productivity controlling for weather shocks. Finally, we disaggregate results by presence/absence of seasonal rainfall and temperature shocks to explore the heterogeneous impact of adoption under weather shocks. We find strong complementarities between agricultural practices both in terms of adoption and yield impacts. Long-run variability in rainfall decreases the adoption of organic fertilizers and increases that of improved seeds. Farmers in areas where the cropping season’s rainfall has been highly variable and temperature has been unexpectedly high have significantly lower maize yields. SWC emerges as one of the most important practices in increasing yields with significant benefits by itself, in combination with other practices, under average weather conditions as well as under rainfall and temperature shocks. Overall, increasing the adoption of SWC appears a promising policy option to buffer food security from increasingly frequent weather shocks in Tanzania.     

Stakeholder influences on sustainability practices in the Canadian forest products industry

We examined how managers' perceptions of different types of stakeholder influences in the Canadian forestry industry affect the types of sustainability practices that their firms adopt. Both influences involving withholding of resources by social and ecological stakeholders and those involving directed usage of resources from economic stakeholders were found to drive such practices. We found that the industry and its stakeholders have moved beyond a focus on early stages of sustainability performance such as pollution control and eco‐efficiency. However, more advanced practices, such as those involving the redefinition of business and industrial ecosystems where firms locate in a region so that they can exchange and utilize wastes generated by other firms, are in their infancy. Stakeholders and firms in the industry are focused on the intermediate sustainability phases involving recirculation of materials and redesign of processes including sustainable harvesting of lumber. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Globalization,Human Resource Practices and Innovation: Recent Evidence from the Canadian Workplace and Employee Survey

This study examines the triangular relationship that connects the degree to which a workplace is internationally engaged, the extent to which it innovates, and the human resource practices it adopts. By pooling various years of data from the Canadian Workplace and Employee Survey, a nationally representative data set, we found that certain practices, such as variable pay and autonomy training, are more likely to be used in international workplaces. We subsequently found that for an international workplace, the use of variable pay contributes very little to workplace innovation while autonomy training has a positive relationship with innovation.     

The Productivity Effects of Participatory Employment Practices: Evidence from New Japanese Panel Data

We report the first results for Japanese firms on the effects of clusters of participatory employment practices (or participation/employee involvement at the top level as well as at the grassroots level, and financial participation) by estimating production functions using new panel data. We find that the introduction of a group of complementary practices will lead to a significant 8–9 percent increase in productivity. However, the full productivity effect is felt only after a long developmental period.     

Employee Participation and Equal Opportunities Practices: Productivity Effect and Potential Complementarities

The relationships between employee participation, equal opportunities practices and productivity are explored. Data from the British Workplace Employee Relations Survey of 1998 provide strong evidence that equal opportunities practices improve productivity overall, and increasingly so as the share of female and ethnic minority employees increases. However, short‐term effects may be negative in segregated workplaces. Non‐financial participation schemes are negatively associated with productivity, but in most cases the joint presence of these participatory schemes and equal opportunities practices significantly increases productivity. Interactions between participatory and equal opportunities schemes are also affected by work‐force composition and by the level of equal opportunities policies implemented.     

Process reengineering: A review of enablers

In an attempt to improve productivity, performance and overall competitiveness in both domestic and global markets, organisations have realised that there is a need to reform their business practices and become more customer focused. Consequently, these organisations have recognised the need for organisational change, but do not necessarily know how and what to change, to achieve improvements in productivity and performance. Process reengineering has been described as the elixir for achieving dramatic improvements in production time and cost. Process reengineering is not about fixing current processes, but rebuilding them, with the aim of process improvement. This paper will explain what is meant by process reengineering and suggests that before an organisation attempts to process reengineer, a thorough understanding of current practices, procedures and enablers of change are required. Typically, information technology is implemented as the key change enabler of process reengineering implemented as the key enabler without prior consideration to other enablers such as organisational, human resource and total quality management. This paper suggests that the use of information technology as an enabler is rarely sufficient to cause process change. The paper concludes by suggesting that a combination of information technology, organisational and human resource enablers and a total quality management based philosophy are requisite for the effective redesign of business processes.     

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.     

The Dominance Effect? Multinational Corporations in the Italian Quick‐Food Service Sector

This paper is based on a study of the employment practices of one Italian‐owned multinational corporation (MNC) and one US‐owned MNC in the Italian quick‐food service sector and examines such issues as work organization, unionization, employee representation and pay and conditions. The paper focuses on the concept of ‘dominance’ and the related convergence and divergence theses. The findings suggest that dominance can not only be interpreted as a mode of employment or production emanating from one country, but could also be associated with one dominant MNC in one sector. Consequently, it is argued that while the effect of host and home country influences may be significant factors in cross‐border employment relations practices, more attention needs to be paid to organizational contingencies and the sectoral characteristics within which firms operate.     

Where Do Unions Add Value? Predominant Organizing Principle,Union Strength and Manufacturing Productivity Growth in the OECD

This article deploys comparative historical data on 14 OECD countries to examine the significance of predominant union structure for the impact of union strength on the (medium‐term) growth in hourly labour productivity in manufacturing. The analysis shows that where craft and general unionism predominates, union strength has a deleterious impact on productivity growth. Where enterprise unionism predominates, union strength is irrelevant. However, where industrial unionism predominates, union strength promotes productivity growth. These effects exist independently of established economic influences on aggregate productivity growth. The findings are interpreted as displaying the importance of the character of the governance that unions provide for their productivity impact.     

Internal agglomeration and productivity: Evidence from microdata

Research Summary: We study how internal agglomeration—geographic clustering of business establishments owned by the same parent company—influences establishment productivity. Using Census microdata on the population of U.S. hotels from 1987-2007, we find that doubling the intensity of internal agglomeration is associated with a productivity increase of about 2% in pre-existing establishments. We consider several mechanisms that may be driving the productivity effect and find evidence consistent with the idea that an economically meaningful component of the productivity effect is due to knowledge transfer between internally agglomerated establishments. We replicate our main findings with Census microdata on the full population of U.S. restaurants from 1987-2007, suggesting that the internal agglomeration effects we document may generalize broadly to other industries with multi-unit firms. Managerial Summary: Internal agglomeration is the geographic clustering of business establishments owned by the same parent company. This paper uses detailed Census data on hotels and restaurants to show how internal agglomeration influences performance. Interestingly, knowledge sharing between owned establishments in the same metropolitan area appears to be a key driver of the internal agglomeration effect.     

Does competition raise productivity through improving management quality?

A classic question in industrial organization is whether competition raises productivity and if so, through what mechanism? I discuss recent empirical evidence from both large-scale databases and specific industries which suggests that tougher competition does indeed raise productivity and one of the main mechanisms is through improving management practices. To establish this, I report on new research seeking to quantify management. I relate this to theoretical perspectives on the economics of competition and management, arguing that management should be seen at least in part as a transferable technology. A range of recent econometric studies suggests that (i) competition increases management quality and (ii) improved management quality boosts productivity.     

Building coalitions on Facebook: ‘social media unionism’ among Danish bike couriers

Platform work represents an important challenge for the ‘Danish model’ of unionisation. Using interviews and ethnographic data, this article analyses the strategies of the Danish grassroots union movement the Wolt Workers' Group, representing principally migrant couriers using the food-delivery platform Wolt. This study is an attempt to map an emergent form of flexible labour organisation based on horizontal, informal online networks while supported in different ways by established unions. We term this strategy of balanced autonomy and support ‘social media unionism'. Wolt couriers' attempts at grassroots organisation via social media is an important and understudied issue, especially their complex relationship to union actors. The ‘social media unionism' explored in this article allows for the formation and maintenance of nimble grassroots mobilisation among workers that are otherwise hard for unions to reach, such as migrants platform workers. We argue that this strategy holds both great possibilities and challenges for the labour movement.     

Inventory management: Is there a knock-on effect?

Over the last several years a number of independent empirical studies have shown that organizational performance is related to a portfolio of management techniques, clearly demonstrating that there is no single “silver bullet.” In fact, these studies indicate that performance is positively correlated with the number of techniques employed and the depth of their implementation. Operational outcomes in areas like product quality, on-time delivery and productivity, as well as market measures like margins and export sales are both positively related to the implementation of a variety of techniques. This paper explores the relationship between the use of effective inventory management practices (as reflected in inventory turnover) and the implementation of other manufacturing practices. The hypothesis is that effective inventory management practices have a positive knock-on effect on the implementation of other practices. Since organizational performance is related to the implementation of multiple practices, the knock-on effect should have a positive effect on performance as well. The results show that inventory turnover is significantly related to the implementation of other techniques and weakly related to an index of overall company performance. This suggests a positive knock-on effect, but that it takes more than inventory management to achieve high levels of performance. Having established the knock-on relationship adds more evidence to the notion that management excellence in one area begets management excellence in others.     

Labour productivity change: Drivers, business impact and macroeconomic moderators

This paper focuses on the operational drivers of labour productivity changes. We consider two sets of drivers: (a) current working practices and (b) changes in working practices through management programs. The relationship between these two sets of drivers and productivity changes are analysed. We also investigate the importance of productivity growth by looking at the impact of labour productivity changes on business performance changes. Finally, the moderating effects of industry and country on the use of drivers of productivity changes are examined. Data from an international survey, IMSS-IV, are used for the analysis.     

Changes in Working Practices in British Manufacturing Industry in the 1980s: A Study of Employee Concessions Made During Wage Negotiations

The 1980s witnessed a considerable increase in the rate of growth of manufacturing productivity in Britain. This paper attempts to reveal the extent of systematic change at the work-place which was associated with this improvement. The study focuses on changes in working practices introduced concurrently with negotiations over wage increases; in every year throughout the decade around one third of wage settlements involving trade unions included productivity enhancing change. It is argued that the discipline of competitive pressure and the absence of incomes policy gave rise to the growth in the incidence of wage negotiations which featured a productivity element.     

Assessing Brazil’s Cerrado agricultural miracle

Brazil’s emergence as a primary global agricultural producer is often credited to production expansion into soils of the Brazilian savannah or Cerrado. These soils are, however, deficient in important nutrients and prone to degradation, requiring input-intensive processes that suggest a low level of productive efficiency. Employing a sequence of agricultural censuses and a biome approach for characterizing agricultural zones, the present study evaluates the Cerrado’s total factor productivity growth and productive potential. The analysis highlights the resource cost of Brazil’s “Cerrado Miracle,” the role of paved road infrastructure in expanding production opportunities, and the significant production gains that the Cerrado may yet achieve. Results suggest a substantial productivity gap between the Cerrado’s most efficient and average producers, implying that Cerrado production might well be further boosted if average producers succeed in adopting the technologies and management practices of the more efficient operators. More generally, and to the extent the Cerrado model is generalizable elsewhere, agricultural development of the world’s savannahs, such as Sub-Saharan Africa’s Guinea regions, into breadbaskets will be expensive in terms of material inputs such as fertilizers and pesticides, depending for their success therefore on the real prices of these inputs.