Oxford Handbook of Human Resource Management

(Steven Felgate) #1

chapter weWrst discuss how they are perceived to be related and the research thus
far on their links to organizational performance. We then report a study designed
to test these associations.


28.2 Theoretical and Research


Background
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Family-friendly, equal-opportunity and high-involvement management are per-
ceived to be related for a number of reasons. On the one hand, the work enrich-
ment that is central to Lawler’s ( 1986 , 1991 ) and Walton’s ( 1985 ) high-involvement
management is expected to enhance workers’ satisfaction and well-being at work
and reduce the spillover of negative emotions from work to family life. On the
other hand, it has been argued, on the basis that ‘personal time is a legitimate
employee need,’ that the equality and diversity agendas imply that any eVective
high-involvement management must be extended from employee involvement to
embrace issues of working time (Bailyn 1993 : 87 ). In a similar vein, Guest ( 2002 )
argued that many presentations of high-involvement management or related
concepts have been employer-centered, and concludes that a truly worker-centered
approach will include family-friendly practices. The implication is that models of
high-involvement management have so far focused on laborXexibility and skill
acquisition in order to create the social system that will support the requirements
of modern technical systems rather than addressing workers’ concerns as a top
priority (Guest 2002 : 338 ). This problem of neglecting worker interests has been
accentuated by the increasing marginalization of work enrichment in the literature
that tests the link between high-involvement management and performance, as the
emphasis has been placed on skill acquisition and motivational methods such as
variable pay (Wood and Wall 2007 ). It is important to restore work enrichment to a
central place in human resource management if we are to capture the core of the
high-involvement concept and also to pursue family-friendly management and
equal opportunities. The pursuit of family-friendly management and the achieve-
ment of equal opportunities can in turn help to create the conditions in which
people can work in a more highly involved way. Crucially, this may signify to
employees that management views the workforce as a major asset and is concerned
about its well-being, as well as allow them to work unimpeded by family pressures.
Such arguments are normatively oriented, concerned with what should be. On the
one hand, they may be taken to imply that a serious move towards any of the triad of
types of management—family-friendly, equal-opportunity, and high-involvement—
will involve the other two and in so doing create an authentic high-commitment


582 stephen wood and lilian m. de menezes

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