Section Fiveobjective financial data. The study found that outsourcing had
an indirect but positive impact on subjective measures of
financial performance and innovation. The fact that the firms’
strategies moderated the relationships between outsourcing
and firm performance provides support for the contingency
view that human resource practices are more effective in some
circumstances than others.^37
Industrial Relations
Decertification of Union Bargaining Agents
While companies are legally prohibited from the instigation of
employee attempts to decertify their unions, the nature of the
labor relations environment can be expected to have some
influence over such actions. Thus, the firm’s practices that
shape the labor relations climate have the potential to indirectly
influence decertification actions. Accordingly, decertification
elections are included in this discussion of the effects of human
resource practices. A recent study has examined the effect on
shareholder returns of 153 union decertification elections.
Potential investors are assumed to anticipate that unionism will
redistribute the firm’s earnings toward wages at the expense of
shareholder returns. Thus, the decertification of a union as the
bargaining agent would be assumed to have a positive impact
on shareholder returns.^38 In contrast to this expectation, the