Using sequential tree analysis to search for ‘bundles’ of HR practices

This article reviews progress in the search for a ‘bundle’ of HR practices, using the work of MacDuffie as a starting point for the analysis of the concept of a bundle. The different methods by which bundles might be identified are reviewed and sequential tree analysis is presented as a possible alternative approach. It is then tested alongside factor analysis and regression on accounts of HR practices and aspects of performance provided by a sample of 1,308 managers. The results show that sequential tree analysis does identify a relatively parsimonious set of practices; these overlap partly with those identified in factor analysis and more extensively with those occurring in regression analysis but are more interpretable and therefore potentially more useful for policy‐makers.     

Have British Workers Been Working Harder in Thatcher's Britain? A Re-Consideration of the Concept of Effort

Increased intensity of work has been frequently cited as part of the explanation for the productivity gains in British manufacturing industry during the 1980s. One of the main sources for this claim has been the PUL (Percentage Utilization of Labour) index, a measure of throughput at the point of production. Analysis of the underlying rationale for this measure leads to the conclusion that it is not a sound basis on which to assess workers' effort. This article examines the concept of effort in some detail and considers the validity of psychological and psychophysiological measures. Whichever measure is used, the evidence provides little support for the contention that workers' effort has been a significant factor in productivity increases.     

Interlocking of information systems for international supply and demand chains management

This paper is concerned with coordination aspects of supply chain management and, in particular, investigates setup coordination between two and three stages of a supply chain. The problem arises from a real application in the production chain of a kitchen furniture plant. In different stages of the plant, items are grouped according to different attributes. A setup is required in a stage when the new batch has a different level of attribute from the previous one. Two objectives are considered, i.e., minimizing the total number of setups and minimizing the maximum number of setups of the stages. The problem is to determine a sequence of batches in search for Pareto-optimal solutions with respect to the two objectives. Several metaheuristics, including genetic algorithm, simulated annealing, and iterated local search (ILS) have been proposed for the two-stage problem. In this paper, we develop a constructive heuristic, which combines a least flexibility first principle and a greedy search, for the two- and three-stage problems. Computational results show that the proposed heuristic performs significantly better than the genetic algorithm and simulated annealing. Although the proposed heuristic is inferior to the ILS, which employs two constructive initial solution heuristic, for the two-stage problem, it can be easily extended to the three-stage problem.