Oxford Handbook of Human Resource Management

(Steven Felgate) #1

Most of the empirical studies of the links between performance and the three
types of practices have focused on high-involvement management and have
largely tested the complementary perspective. The few studies of family-friendly
practices have concentrated largely on individual practices (e.g. Bewley and Fernie
2003 ;DexandSmith 2002 ; exceptions include Perry-Smith and Blum 2000 ), while
equal-opportunity practices have been neglected. Few studies have tested synergistic
eVects (see Wood 1999 a; Wall and Wood 2005 for a summary of the high-involvement
management and associated studies) and even fewer have tested the integrated
perspective. The studies of both family-friendly and high-involvement practices reveal
a mixed picture, as there is diversity across practices, performance measures and
samples. There are certainly no strong grounds on the basis of the studies for expecting
a universal positive link between any of the three management forms and perform-
ance. There are even arguments that suggest we might Wnd some negative
relationships. For example, following Hochschild ( 1997 ), there is the argument that
high-commitment management achieves its performance eVects through creating an
overcommitted workforce and that family-friendly practices are needed to overcome
the negative eVects of this on non-work life. If this is the case, family-friendly practices
may have a negative eVect on performance.
The few exceptions to the focus on performance that have stepped back and
examined the use of human resource practices have also produced uneven results.
Some suggest that there is no clear pattern to the use of these practices (Osterman
1994 ; Gittleman et al. 1998 ); others suggest that there is some coherency to the use
of practices and that one or more orientations may well underlie this (Wood and
Albanese 1995 ; Wood and de Menezes 1998 ; Wood 1999 b; Wood et al. 2003 ;de
Menezes and Wood 2006 ). The diVerence in results may well reXect diVerent
analytical methods, as de Menezes and Wood ( 2006 ) show that investigations
based on cluster analysis may be less powerful than those based on statistical
models.
In the next section, we report our study, which illustrates how the three types of
management can be jointly investigated. It particularly focuses on exploring the
integration argument, and thus assesses whether there is a tendency towards an
integrated worker-and-family-centered on high-involvement management and
whether it heralds superior organizational performance.


28.3 Our Study
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We designed a study to explore whether family-friendly, equal-opportunity, and
high-involvement practices are being used in an integrated way or reXect discrete


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