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http://apj.sagepub.com/cgi/content/refs/45/3/261
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This commentary paper explores the meaning and significance of highperformance work systems (HPWSs), an important topic in the debate around
how to build a high-skill or high-road economy. Work reforms to increase the
involvement of production or front-line service workers are at the heart of these
systems, which are therefore more aptly called high-involvement work systems
(HIWSs). While emphasising that the specific practices in such systems need to be
customised to industry and occupational conditions, this paper outlines the core
features of HIWSs, including the wider managerial and governance processes in
which they are embedded. The paper goes on to explain how the literature in the
HPWS area is making a valuable contribution to our understanding of the role
of intervening management and employee variables in the performance of any
kind of HR system. This underlines the value to any company concerned about
its HR performance of looking at the chain of links that runs from management
intentions through management practices and employee responses to
organisational outcomes.
Keywords: high-performance work systems, high-involvement work systems
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systems in those parts of western manufacturing, such as steel making and car
manufacture, where the deskilling of production work and demarcation
among trades took a strong hold as mass production developed in the early
twentieth century.
In these manufacturing contexts, the need to adopt Japanese-style lean
manufacturing principles has led to change in work systems towards a highinvolvement model. High-involvement work practices typically include
greater decision-making autonomy on the job, as well as off line in quality
circles or other types of problem-solving groups. Managers, however, need to
keep in mind the importance of customising work practices to their specific
industry and occupational conditions. For example, in situations where
workers have high task interdependence, there is often a shift to teamwork,
but teams can be counterproductive in conditions of low interdependence
(Park, Gardner and Wright 2004; Sprigg, Jackson and Parker 2000).
Along with the Japanese quality challenge, a key environmental stimulant
of change in HR systems in manufacturing over the last 20 years has been the
advent of advanced manufacturing technology (AMT). This includes such
technologies as robotics, computer-aided design (CAD), computer numerical
control (CNC) machine tools, and electronic data interchange (EDI) systems.
Research on AMT, including work conducted among Australian and New
Zealand manufacturers (Challis, Samson and Lawson 2005), shows that such
technologies reach more of their potential when production workers jobs are
redesigned and their skills improved to enable them to enhance the operating
performance of these technologies. Studies by Wall et al. (1990) and Wall,
Jackson and Davids (1992), for example, show how work redesign and training
that enables production operators to solve technical problems as they occur
reduces the need to call in specialist technicians for problem-solving and
thereby enhances productivity. The productivity benefits come from quicker
response to these problems and thus lower machine downtime. In the longer
run, productivity improvements also come from more effective use of the
capacity of operators for learning: employees who enjoy greater empowerment
learn more about the reasons why faults occur in the first place and find ways
to reduce their incidence.
The converse of this argument is that investments in HIWSs are unlikely
to be economic in low-tech, labour-intensive manufacturing which makes little
use of AMT. Much of the apparel and toy manufacturing being conducted in
China, for example, works very cost effectively on classical management principles of labour specialisation without much worker empowerment (Cooke
2004). Firms in labour-intensive manufacturing are increasingly moving their
plants offshore to lower cost countries. A case in point is one of Britains most
innovative manufacturing firms, Dyson. The firm, an international leader in
vacuum cleaner technology, shifted its production facilities to Malaysia in the
year 2000. Relocation to Malaysia not only delivered lower unit costs than was
possible in the UK, but also ensured proximity to key parts suppliers, thus
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improving the firms location in its supply chain. HR strategy in Dyson now
revolves around managing a dual workforce: one in the UK where research
and development (R&D) staff are employed, and one in Malaysia where the
products are assembled.2
Bearing in mind, then, that the specific practices used to bring about
higher employee involvement need to be intelligently adapted across industries and work processes, the core features of HIWSs are outlined in table 1.
The table helps to make the point that HIWSs are embedded in an organisational context. There are features of the broader management process and the
leadership or governance of the organisation that need to be supportive if
HIWSs are to be successfully implemented (Gollan 2005).
While interest in HIWSs sprang from manufacturing, it is not simply a
manufacturing issue. There are also studies of the service sector which point
to the value of ensuring that HR systems fit appropriately with the nature of
the industry or the competitive segment within the industry. High-skill, highinvolvement systems of managing people are naturally necessary in professional services because workers capable of providing professional services need
Table 1
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to be paid well and developed continuously, but they are also becoming
important in those service industries which are able to segment customer
needs. In the hotel industry, for example, luxury hotel operators can improve
revenue and customer retention through HR systems that empower front-line
employees to personalise service (Haynes and Fryer 2000). They therefore have
an interest in investing in the employee development and management
practices that will support a high-quality competitive strategy in this industry.
Such investments in employees, however, are unlikely to be economic at
the low-price end of the hotel industry where customers want a cheap bed
without frills. In general, HIWSs are unlikely in mass services where
customers are price conscious and willing to engage in self-service to help keep
prices low (Boxall 2003). It is important to bear in mind a critical difference
between manufacturing and services: while modern high-tech manufacturing
often has the capability to deliver better quality and lower prices, while also
investing heavily in employee development and retention, improvements in
quality in service industries generally translate into a price premium. If
customers are resistant to price increases for basic services, the options for HR
strategy are more constrained.
In summary, then, the first stream of literature in the HPWS area is
concerned with identifying the market or technological situations in which
firms have a clear interest in changing towards HR systems which increase
the empowerment, skills and rewards of production or service workers.
Recognising the need to be careful with specific practices, research is increasingly outlining the broad shape of the changes that are needed in such a highinvolvement HR model.
HPWSs: the how question
To provide more practical guidance, however, research needs to explain more
fully how such systems work. This involves studying the difficulties and
complexities that can arise in what researchers have called the organisational
black box (e.g. Purcell et al. 2003; Wright and Gardner 2004). The general
principles being developed in this stream of work are not relevant only to
HPWSs but can be applied to any situation in which there is a need for a
companys HR systems to perform more effectively. This focus here is on the
mediating links from managements intentions through to whatever notion of
organisational performance is desired (figure 1). The process of HRM is
actually a chain of links in which 1) intended HR practices lead to 2) actual HR
practices, which lead to 3) perceived HR practices, and then to 4) employee
reactions, and, finally, to 5) organisational performance.
Figure 1 underlines two important facts about the links between HRM
and performance. First, it emphasises that there is often a difference between
what management says the company will do and what managers actually do
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Figure 1
Intended
HR
practices
Actual HR
practices
Perceived
HR practices
Employee
reactions
Organisational
performance
Source: adapted from Wright and Gardner (2004); Purcell and Hutchinson (2007)
with their staff. Line managers, including supervisors and team leaders, are
responsible for converting much of managements intentions for HRM into
actual HR practice, given the resources they have to work with, and their
judgments about what will work and what serves their interests. It is useful
therefore to think of HR practice as a wide range of actual managerial
behaviour centred around a notional standard.
The second vital fact that figure 1 illustrates is that if management wants
to bring about valued organisational outcomes, it needs to influence employee
beliefs, attitudes and behaviour. Employee behaviour is critical to whether the
desired organisational outcomes will be achieved, and is influenced by
employee perceptions of, and their cognitive and affective responses to, HR
practices. Major gaps between management intentions and perceived management actions usually undermine employee trust and loyalty and thus affect
performance outcomes.
The possibility for gaps between rhetoric and reality (Legge 2005) underlines not only the need for senior managers in large organisations to figure
carefully what they want to achieve and then follow through on their pledges
achieving greater consistency in their own behaviour but also the importance of the management of lower level managers. While this includes both
staff specialists, such as HR specialists, and line managers, the latter are particularly important if consistency is going to be high in HRM. Line managers
are not simple conduits. Line managers action or inaction is often responsible
for the difference between espoused HR policies and their enactment. Some
formal HR policies (such as rates of pay and the details of pensions) are (nearly
always) directly transmitted from policy to practice without slippage, but much
else is filtered through line managers, positively or negatively.
The quality of the relationships between line managers and their team
members is starting to receive greater attention in the analysis of HR systems.
There is no doubt that ties within a work team can be much stronger than
those with remote senior executives because it is much easier to trust someone
you know, especially if you find them to be a person of competence and
integrity (Macky and Boxall 2007). A recent study by Purcell and Hutchinson
(2007) of the British retail organisation, Selfridges, underlines the value of
senior management taking a much greater interest in the selection, development, support and motivation of front-line managers so that they, in turn,
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Peter Boxall (PhD) is professor of human resource management in the Department of Management and
Employment Relations at the University of Auckland. He is co-author with John Purcell of Strategy and
human resource management, co-editor (with John Purcell and Patrick Wright) of the Oxford handbook
of human resource management, and co-editor (with Richard Freeman and Peter Haynes) of What
workers say: Employee voice in the Anglo-American workplace.
Keith Macky (PhD) is associate professor of human resource management in the Department of
Management at the Auckland University of Technology. He has more than 20 years HR experience in
both academic and consulting environments, including senior positions at Massey University, Ernst &
Young, and KPMG. He is the co-author with Gene Johnson of Managing human resources in New
Zealand.
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