and labor retention. In addition, where high-involvement management is adopted,
equal-opportunity management will have a positive eVect onWnancial perform-
ance. Equal-opportunity management is associated with lower absence levels, and
again this is strengthened when high-involvement management is adopted. When
family-orientedXexible management is underpinned by top management valuing
employees having a balance between work and family responsibilities, it is also
associated with lower absenteeism.
The limited number of associations between organizational performance and
family-friendly and equal-opportunity managements may be used to reinforce the
arguments for a holistic approach. It could be precisely because the employee
involvement, equality, and diversity issues are not integrated that the current
approaches are not as successful. Moreover, the lack of recognition that the
potential beneWts of such an integrated approach may be high may very well
explain the relatively low take-up of many of the practices that we have studied.
Alternatively, there are other possible explanations for the results. For example,
one is that family-friendly and equal-opportunity policies neither symbolize to
employees any wider ‘corporate concern’ for employees (Grover and Crooker 1995 :
274 ) nor create within employees a ‘generalized sense of obligation to the work-
place’ (Lambert 2000 : 811 ). Or it may be that, while policies are manifest in
practices, these practices are not so eVectively implemented or operated as to
have a telling impact on the lives, commitments, and perceptions of employees.
Taking the results at face value, theWrst implication is that a high-involvement
approach to management should have positive eVects on economic performance
and labor stability. This is likely to be so regardless of whether it includes a
signiWcant element of work enrichment. The second implication is that we should
be directing attention to equality, diversity, and family–work conXict, and even
work enrichment on equity grounds alone. Yet, our focus has been on short-term
economic outcomes and, as Boxall and Purcell ( 2003 : 6 – 13 , 242 – 5 ) remind us so
forcibly, human resource initiatives, from an employer’s perspective, need to be
judged by other criteria as well. Salience should also be given to longer-term
economic objectives concerned with innovation and adaptation, which Boxall
and Purcell call organizationalXexibility, and the need for organizations to have
social legitimacy.^6
Certainly, making arguments on the basis of the impact of employee-centered
approaches on short-term economic outcomes ignores their potential contribution to
other goals. The argument that approaching family friendliness, equal opportunity,
and high involvement in a holistic, high-commitment way may help to ensure that
(^6) The institutional theory argument that organizations need to respond to pressures for both
eYciency and legitimacy has been a particularly important consideration in the studies of the use of
family friendly practices (see e.g. Goodstein 1994 , 1995 ; Ingram and Simons 1995 ; Milliken et al. 1998 ),
but as yet no attempt has been made to test their impact over the long term or on the legitimacy of the
organization.
management in britain 595