Bill Harley

Employees and High-Performance Work Systems: Testing inside the Black Box

Most work on high-performance work systems has examined only the direct relationship between a set of management practices and performance outcomes. This presumes that any connection operates through the incentive and motivational effects captured as ‘high-commitment’ or ‘high-involvement’ employee outcomes. No attempt has been made to examine the alternative, Labour Process conceptualization, which expects performance gains from new management practices to arise instead from work intensification, offloading of task controls, and increased job strain. Using data from WERS98, we tested models based on high-performance work systems and labour process approaches. Both were found wanting, and we consider the possible implications of these failures. This paper seeks to test the competing claims of theories advocating and criticizing so-called ‘high-performance work systems’ (HPWS) in order to advance the debates about the nature and outcomes of emerging approaches to labour management. In an attempt to fill gaps in past research, the analysis explores linkages from HPWS practices to employee outcomes and via these to organizational performance. The paper utilizes data from the 1998 Workplace Employee Relations Survey (WERS98) to construct indicators of HPWS practices, of employee outcomes and of organizational performance as a means to explore associations between these phenomena.

Reflecting on reflexivity: Reflexive textual practices in organization and management theory

This paper identifies four sets of textual practices that researchers in the field of organization and management theory (OMT) have used in their attempts to be reflexive. We characterize them as multi-perspective, multi-voicing, positioning and destabilizing. We show how each set of practices can help to produce reflexive research, but also how each embodies limitations and paradoxes. Finally, we consider the interplay among these sets of practices to develop ideas for new avenues for reflexive practice by OMT researchers.

High Performance Work Systems and Employee Experience of Work in the Service Sector: The Case of Aged Care

In spite of the growing body of research on high performance work systems (HPWS), there is little evidence on their application in the service sector. It is commonly argued, however, that occupational segmentation in services is a barrier to HPWS. Analysis of data from aged-care workers indicates that: HPWS have positive outcomes for workers; highly skilled nurses are no more likely than lowly skilled personal care workers to be subject to HPWS; and in some cases, HPWS are associated with more positive outcomes for low-skilled than high-skilled workers. These findings suggest that HPWS may well be widely applicable in service settings.

Employee Responses to High Performance Work System Practices: An Analysis of the AWIRS95 Data

Since the early 1990s, there has been increasing academic interest in a range of labour management practices labelled variously as ‘high commitment management’, ‘high involvement management’ and ‘High Performance Work Systems’ (HPWS). Such sets of practices - which include performance-related pay, various employee communication mechanisms, training and team-based work- when used in combination, are said to be mutually reinforcing and to generate superior organisational performance. Advocates of HPWS argue that improvements in organisational performance are generated because these practices enhance employee discretion which, in turn, flows into improved attitudes to work. Conversely, critics suggest that HPWS practices lead to work intensification, with any gains in discretion being marginal. In spite of the volume of literature in this area, there are few studies that have examined the impact of HPWS on employees. This article seeks to remedy this gap by reporting results of analysis of the Australian Workplace Industrial Relations Survey 1995 (AWIRS95) data aimed at assessing the associations between HPWS practices and employee outcomes. The analysis suggests that there are few such associations, and those that exist are weak, which calls into question the claims of both advocates and critics of HPWS.

Management Reactions to Technological Change The Example of Enterprise Resource Planning

This article explores how different types of managers respond to large-scale organizational change and what factors underpin differences in management attitudes and reactions. Through qualitative analysis of the introduction of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems in two case study organizations, the authors argue that variations in managerial responses to organizational change relate to both the structural position of individual managers and their level of involvement in the implementation of change. Managers are also shown to exhibit agency in interpreting, influencing, and negotiating the impact of organizational change. The analysis emphasizes the need to incorporate more critical perspectives informed by labor process theory with existing insights from conventional organizational change literature.

Work, Organisation and Enterprise Resource Planning Systems: An Alternative Research Agenda

This paper reviews literature that examines the design, implementation and use of Enterprise Resource Planning systems (ERPs). It finds that most of this literature is managerialist in orientation, and concerned with the impact of ERPs in terms of efficiency, effectiveness and business performance. The paper seeks to provide an alternative research agenda, one that emphasises work- and organisation-based approaches to the study of the implementation and use of ERPs.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing: getting below the surface of the growth of 'knowledge work' in Australia

This article critically addresses the claim that there has been a striking growth in ‘knowledge work’ in advanced economies. Using the Australian Bureau of Statistics Labour Force Survey, we examine occupational change from 1986 to 2000 to evaluate the support for this claim. Researchers have usually relied on aggregate level data to justify the presence of a burgeoning knowledge-based workforce, but we contend that we must ‘get below the surface’ of the major occupational groups by disaggregating the data. This enables us to demonstrate that a substantial component of the apparent growth in knowledge work is accounted for by an increase in low-level information handling occupations rather than by a growth in knowledge work as it is commonly conceived. The article then develops an interpretive framework that makes sense of the data in a manner that avoids both over-estimating the prevalence of the ‘knowledge worker’ and underestimating the knowledge-related activities in jobs commonly considered to be low-skilled and bereft of important competencies.

Employee responses to ‘high performance work system’ practices: an empirical test of the disciplined worker thesis

This article considers the possibility that ‘high performance work system’ (HPWS) practices generate positive outcomes for employees by meeting their interests (specifically their interest in an orderly and predictable working environment). Utilising survey data on employees working in the Australian aged-care industry, statistical analysis is used to test the mediating effect of order and predictability on associations between HPWS practices and employee experience of work. The results suggest that positive outcomes arise in part because HPWS practices contribute to workplace order and predictability. In explaining this finding, the article highlights the importance of contextual factors, notably industry and employee characteristics, in shaping outcomes. The article concludes that socio-logically oriented analyses which apprehend the importance of employee interests provide a useful supplement to conventional psychologically oriented accounts of HPWS and provide a basis for continued development of labour process theory.

Participation and Democracy at Work

Employee participation is a dynamic and contested area of organisational behaviour, attracting continuing academic, practitioner and policy interest and debate. This book will bring together a fresh, critical and comparative perspective on the full range of participation practices, drawing on the work of leading scholars in the field. It is inteded to honour the work of Harvie Ramsay, who died tragically in 2001 and who was a pioneering writer on participation and democracy in this field.

Online consultation: E-Democracy and E-Resistance in the Case of the Development Gateway

To explore the implications of the Internet for the relationship between organizational communication and power, this article compares two online forums established in response to the introduction of a new e-organization: the Development Gateway. The article analyzes postings to the forums to explore the capacity of the Internet to foster democracy, and to investigate how power and resistance are exercised through this medium. Findings show that, rather than equate resistance with participation, as some models of democracy do, the dynamics of power and resistance are more complex, and resistance and power can take participative and nonparticipative forms.!