performance. Furthermore, while the attention has been on treating these practices
as a system or bundle (see e.g. Huselid 1995 ; MacDuYe 1995 ), there has been a lack
of appreciation of the diVerent meanings of such terms. Appelbaum et al. ( 2000 :
33 – 4 ) interpreted this focus on bundles or clusters of practices as meaning that
(a) practices are complementary; (b) synergies exist between practices that lead to
positive interaction eVects on performance; and (c) the practices form a coherent
set or integrated system. They summarize the key studies of the human resource
management–performance link as suggesting that ‘bundles, systems, or conWgura-
tions of internally coherent practices can be identiWed, and that such systems of
practices do a better job of explaining establishment performance than the individ-
ual practices do.’
However, such an overview conXates three diVerent approaches to the rela-
tionship between practices and hence perspectives on the human resource
management–performance link. It treats the complementary nature of practices,
synergistic relationships, and integrated approache as if they were equivalent, when
they are diVerent. First, a complement of practices consists of all those practices
that individually have a positive association with performance. As such, a comple-
ment of human resource practices would be made up of the practices that are best
in the main domains of human resource management (such as recruitment,
selection, and training). Each would not detract from the performance of the
others. Consequently, negative interactions between practices are not expected.
Second, synergistic practices are those that enhance the eVect on performance of
another. A high-performance synergistic set would be one in which all the practices
interact positively with each other, so that the combined use of the practices has ‘a
greater eVect on performance than the sum of eVects of the individual practices’
(Appelbaum et al. 2000 : 134 ). At the extreme, all then-way interactions between a
set ofnpractices are signiWcantly positively related to performance. Third, an
integrated approach implies that the practices reXect an underlying distinctive
orientation on the part of management towards human resource management,
and that it is this orientation that is positively associated with performance. The
individual practices are more than simply complements. Adopting practices in a
pre-speciWed form may not be crucial, but having key practices in some form or
another is important. The absence of one or more such practices may undermine
the whole approach.
The extreme form of the family–work integration approach implies the third
perspective. It is the underlying orientation of management, embedded to such an
extent that it is reXected in the organization’s culture, that will make for a high-
performing organization based on workers having a good balance between work
and non-work. However, in the absence of such a holistic approach, it may be that
discrete orientations underlie the use of each set of practices: family friendly, equal
opportunity, and high involvement. In this case, it may be that the underlying
orientations have a synergistic relationship with organizational performance.
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