management. We might then expect, if employers are institutionalizing the practices
associated with these forms of management, that they are doing so in an integrated
way, as part of an overall approach to human resource management. The extreme of
the normative argument implies that the three sets of practices will only have a
signiWcant eVect on performance when they are used in conjunction with each
other. Anything short of this integrated package will not work. Taking a less extreme
version, the argument implies that the eVect of one type of management will enhance
the eVect of the others, and their eVect, if used in isolation, will be limited.
The link between family-friendly management and equal opportunity is typic-
ally made on the basis that the achievement of the latter depends on reducing the
constraints on equal access to opportunities and the full utilization of people’s
talents. Women are particularly disadvantaged, so the argument goes, by their
childcare responsibilities, and any attempt to aid these should therefore reduce
constraints on their achievement of parity with men. Family-friendly management,
we should expect, would focus initially on women and their childcare issues, as
opposed, for example, to eldercare.
The association between high-involvement management and family-friendly
management is typically made on the grounds that the latter is an important means
of gaining the motivation and commitment required to make high-involvement
working the norm (Berg et al. 2003 : 172 ; Osterman 1995 : 685 ). Satisfying demanding
work should also reduce work-to-family conXict, while family-friendly practices may
reduce family-to-work conXict (Batt and Valcour 2003 ). Equal-opportunity man-
agement is linked to high-involvement management because it is seen to ensure the
development and utilization of human resources to their maximum potential.
In reality, however, the theoretical associations that underlie the integration
thesis may not be shared by managers or tally with their perspectives on human
resource management. At the extreme, it is often argued that managers, at least in
the Anglo-Saxon world, have tended to select human resource practices on a
piecemeal basis. Their reasons for picking one practice are thus diVerent from
those that inXuence their choice of others, and hence their choice of all practices is
not guided by an underlying approach. This argument has been made particularly
in relation to high-involvement practices by Sisson ( 1995 : 106 ) and Appelbaum and
Batt ( 1994 : 124 ). It has often been justiWed by the observation that the use of such
practices is low across the whole economy. However, low adoption does not
necessarily mean a lack of coordination in the use of practices. It could be that
the same organizations are the main users of all or a signiWcant set of practices.
Moreover, if there were such a pattern in the use of practices, this could indicate an
underlying approach to the management of the workforce.
The emphasis in the literature on any of family-friendly, equal-opportunity, or
high-involvement management has not, however, been on examining the empirical
relationship between the practices that are associated with them. Rather it has been
centered, particularly in the case of high-involvement management, on links to
management in britain 583