Riccardo Peccei

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.

Delivering Customer‐Oriented Behaviour through Empowerment: An Empirical Test of HRM Assumptions

Organizational initiatives to strengthen customer orientation among front‐line service workers abound, and have led many commentators to speak of the reconstitution of service work. These interventions rest on managers’ assumptions about what engenders the desired customer‐oriented behaviours among employees. We evaluate those assumptions in the context of a major change initiative in a supermarket firm. The logic of the programme mirrors key precepts in the contemporary management literature. These are that management behaviour, job design and values‐based training can produce a sense of empowerment among employees, and that empowerment will generate prosocial customer‐oriented behaviour. Using data from a large scale employee survey, we test the validity of those assumptions. Employees who perceived management behaviour in a positive light and who had participated in values‐based training were more likely to feel empowered (i.e. to have internalized prosocial service values and to feel a sense of competence and autonomy on the job). Psychological empowerment was, in turn, positively related to the customer‐oriented behaviour of workers. This study, therefore, provides support for key assumptions underlying HRM theory and practice in services.

Organizational identification: Development and testing of a conceptually grounded measure

There is continuing debate in the literature as to how organizational identification (OID) should be conceptualized and operationalized. We present a new six-item measure of OID that includes both cognitive and affective components and that integrates the main dimensions of OID found in the literature. The new measure comprises three main subcomponents: self-categorization and labelling, sharing of organizational goals and values, and a sense of organizational belonging and membership. The measure was tested on two separate samples of over 600 employees working in the UK National Health Service (NHS) using Confirmatory Factor Analysis. The results provided support for the proposed three-component conceptualization of OID. However, the three subcomponents were highly intercorrelated and showed low discriminant validity. We therefore propose a single overall measure of OID. This six-item aggregate scale has acceptable psychometric properties and provides a theoretically meaningful, but parsimonious, measure of OID for use in field research.

Front-line responses to customer orientation programmes: a theoretical and empirical analysis

Programmes designed to strengthen customer orientation among front-line service workers represent one of the most common forms of culture change initiatives within service organizations. Despite their importance to contemporary management theory and practice, we know relatively little about how employees react to interventions of this kind, and why they react as they do. The paper aims to address this gap in the literature. It does this through an analysis of front line reactions to a major customer care initiative in one of the largest supermarket chains in the UK. Using data from a large-scale employee survey carried out in seven stores, we first propose a general typology of employee responses to customer care programmes. We then examine some typical employee profiles associated with the main types of response. The analysis is placed within a wider theoretical context consisting of a critical overview of the main theories which might help explain the nature of general and individual reactions to culture change programmes. To this end, we address and draw upon a variety of literatures and debates linked to various aspects of organization and management, industrial psychology, training and development and critical discourse analysis.

Does partnership at work increase trust? An analysis based on the 2004 Workplace Employment Relations Survey

In the late 1990s, partnership at work was embraced with some enthusiasm by a number of stakeholders in employment relations and incorporated in the 1999 Employment Relations Act. The implementation of the Information and Consultation Regulations has also been extensively signaled. We might therefore expect to see some evidence of partnership-related practices in Britain. The 2004 Workplace Employment Relations Survey (WERS 2004) provides an opportunity to explore the extent of partnership practice, and also, for the first time, to explore its link to trust relations. This article reports evidence from WERS 2004 suggesting that partnership practice remains relatively undeveloped and that it is only weakly related to trust between management and employee representatives and to employees trust in management. Direct forms of participation generally have a more positive association with trust than representative forms. There is also modest evidence that trust may be associated with certain workplace outcomes. The case for partnership and more particularly representative partnership as a basis for mutuality and trust is not supported by this evidence.

The social construction of clients by service agents in reformed welfare administration

This article explores categorization and labelling in organizations through a study of the social construction of clients by service agents in reformed British welfare administration. We analyse the content of client typologies and show how these are embedded in the nature of front-line service work and the organizational context as structured by social authorities. We find a pervasive categorization and valorization of clients according to their perceived attitudes to work, on the reported basis of their body language and demeanour in initial service interactions. This is embedded in a more complex system of social construction, encompassing diverse criteria such as capacity for aggression, gratitude and social status and age. We show how the criteria used by staff to make sense of overlapping groups of clients differs between the main sample in post-reform sites and those working in pre-reform benefit offices. We consider the research and practical implications of our study, the latter relating to the espoused strategy of personalized and flexible treatment of clients in an era of new public management reforms.

Lean production and quality commitment: A comparative study of two Korean auto firms

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine antecedents of employee quality commitment at two Korean auto firms.Design/methodology/approach – Data were collected from 644 employees at two auto plants; 331 at the high lean plant and 313 at the low lean plant. Hierarchical regression analyses were employed.Findings – This research showed that intrinsic rewards factors were significant determinants of quality commitment in the high lean plant sample, whereas those relating to extrinsic rewards were major antecedents in the low lean plant sample. The study finds that the tested antecedents to quality commitment differ in relative importance at different stages of lean production implementation.Research limitations/implications – Since data were collected from 644 employees at two Korean firms, the results may need to be modified before being generalized for other national contexts.Practical implications – The results suggest that the relative importance of the antecedent variables of employee quality co...

‘The Work You Want, The Help You Need’: Constructing the Customer in Jobcentre Plus

In this article we explore the concept of the customer and its application within the contemporary public sector. While the centrality of the customer ideal to ‘the new public management’ is clear, the nature, appropriateness and implications of its use are less so. Debates on these issues turn on meanings ascribed to the customer role. In the first part of the article we consider shifting conceptions of the customer appearing in literatures on consumption, organization and the new public management. The second part of the article explores the representation of the customer in an organization emblematic of the new public management in Britain. Jobcentre Plus is an emerging organization charged with delivery of the government’s work-focused welfare agenda. The agency is involved in constructing customers from what once were benefit claimants and/or the unemployed. Through analysis of internal and public documents and observation of six sites, we explore the explicit and implicit meanings of the customer as conveyed through language and labelling, operational practices and features of the physical environment. We find a complex interaction of narratives of customer sovereignty and control. In the final part of the article we consider how this case may be read according to the academic narratives previously outlined.

Discriminant validity and interaction between perceived organizational support and perceptions of organizational politics: A temporal analysis

We used two-wave panel data based on a sample of 137 employees from a small Korean manufacturing company to examine first the discriminant validity of, and then the interaction between perceived organizational support (POS) and perceptions of organizational politics (POP). We focused on the relationships between POS, POP, and three employee work-related outcomes, affective organizational commitment, intention to stay, and individually oriented organizational citizenship behaviour (OCBI). Confirmatory factor analysis revealed that POS and POP were distinct constructs. Moreover, time-lagged LISREL estimates showed that POS and POP were differentially related to the three outcomes in a theoretically predictable way. POP did not moderate the relationship between POS and either affective commitment or intention to stay. POS, however, significantly moderated the POP–OCBI relationship. The implications of the results for POS and POP theory and research are discussed.

Look Who's Talking: Sources of Variation in Information Disclosure in the UK

The article examines the correlates of variable levels of information disclosure by management to employees in the UK. It develops several hypotheses that are tested using 1998 and 2004 Workplace Employment Relations Survey data. The results show that managerial perceptions of goal alignment by employees and the existence of direct participation mechanisms are positively associated with disclosure at both dates. The size of the workplace has a generally negative relationship at both dates, but less so in 2004 than in 1998. Other variables such as financial distress and the presence of trade unions and joint consultation have more complicated relationships over the two time periods. The article discusses theoretical and policy implications of the findings.