Keith Macky

The relationship between ‘high-performance work practices’ and employee attitudes: an investigation of additive and interaction effects

In order to improve our understanding of mediating variables inside the ‘black box’ of the firms labour management, this paper examines the relationship between high-performance work system (HPWS) practices and employee attitudes. Using a randomly selected, national population sample, clear evidence was found for a positive relationship between HPWS practices and the attitudinal variables of job satisfaction, trust in management, and organizational commitment, implying that HPWS can provide win-win outcomes for employees and employers. However, the study also tests – from an employee perspective – the ‘complementarities thesis’ and finds negative interaction effects among HPWS practices. This strengthens the argument that there are likely to be limits to the positive outcomes of HPWSs for employees. Evidence of sequencing in the employee attitudinal responses to HPWSs was also found, with job satisfaction as the key mediating variable.

Labour turnover and retention in New Zealand: The causes and consequences of leaving and staying with employers

This study represents the most comprehensive survey to date of labour turnover and employee loyalty in New Zealand. The widely held view that the New Zealand worker has become more mobile in the contemporary labour market is shown to be somewhat simplistic. Instead, the picture is one of increasing employment stability as people get older and as they become better paid, lending support to the idea that there are identifiable developmental stages affecting the careers of both men and women. In terms of the reasons for employee turnover, the study demonstrates that motivation for job change is multidimensional: no one factor will explain it. While interesting work is the strongest attractor and retainer in the labour market, the results also show that there is a strong employee expectation that management should make personnel decisions based on merit, demonstrate that extrinsic rewards (such as pay, promotion and security) play a role in both employee retention and turnover, lend support to the idea that there is growing concern with work-life balance, and underline the retention value of good relationships with co-workers and supervisors. The results demonstrate that employee turnover is not riskless for individuals: some benefit a lot (for example, in finding worthwhile promotion), while others do badly out of it. The study offers suggestions for improving retention in firms with dysfunctional employee turnover.

Non-Union Voice and the Effectiveness of Joint Consultation in New Zealand

Formal systems of non-union employee representation are receiving increasing attention in the Anglo-American world. Drawing on the New Zealand Worker Representation and Participation Survey 2003, this study finds joint consultation and certain forms of non-union employee voice to be more prevalent and effective in New Zealand workplaces than previous accounts have allowed. New Zealand workers report having greater influence over many areas of workplace decision-making than their US and UK counterparts. The rolling back of unionism under the Employment Contracts Act 1991 seems not to have been accompanied by a decline in management– employee consultation.The findings of high levels of workplace influence and consultation in New Zealand contradict the ‘cycles of control’ thesis and challenge the assumptions of radical labour process theory. While further research is needed, they may suggest that a shift has been occurring in employee relations style.

Union Reach, the ‘Representation Gap’ and the Prospects for Unionism in New Zealand

The New Zealand Worker Representation and Participation Survey, drawing on earlier surveys in the USA and Britain, charts the incidence, location and nature of demand for union membership in New Zealand for the first time. Using Freeman and Roger™s (1999) definition, we estimate the ‘representation gap™, the extent of unsatisfied demand for union membership, at 17.8 percent of the labour force. The gap is greater among younger and lower paid workers in smaller organizations in private sector service industries. How much of the gap consists of workers who would definitely join a union if actually offered the opportunity is a debatable point. New Zealand unions face three major challenges: indifference on the part of the majority of workers in non-unionized firms, lack of union reach (mainly into small, private sector workplaces), and free-riding. These challenges imply a mix of responses in union strategy and public policy.

High-performance work systems and employee well-being in New Zealand

There is a long tradition of interest in how to enhance worker motivation and raise organisational productivity through improving the design of work. The human relations movement, and such concepts as socio-technical work systems, industrial democracy, and job enrichment, have all had their day in the sun. The notion of ‘high-performance work systems’ (HPWSs) is the most recent manifestation of this concern. The term largely originated in the USA, where it arose in the policy and academic debate over the decline of US manufacturing competitiveness in the face of challenges from other advanced manufacturing societies, most notably Japan, and more recently, from a variety of low-cost developing countries. A landmark report in 1990, America’s Choice: High Skills or Low Wages!, issued by the Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce, expressed strong criticism of the Fordist/Taylorist models of work design prevalent in US mass-production industries, where core production jobs were often low in responsibility, discretion and skill (Cordery and Parker, 2007). It argued for substantial investment in ‘high-performance work organisation’ and in greater workforce skills (Cappelli and Neumark, 2001). This message was reinforced by Appelbaum and Batt (1994) in The New American Workplace and by Appelbaum et al (2000) in Manufacturing Advantage.