Dimensions and location of high-involvement management: fresh evidence from the UK Commission's 2011 Employer Skills Survey

Stephen Wood,Mark Burridge,Daniela Rudloff,William Green,Sandra Nolte

doi:10.1111/1748-8583.12064

Stephen Wood, Mark Burridge + Show 3 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1111/1748-8583.12064

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Abstract

High-involvement management is typically seen as having three components: worker involvement, skill and knowledge acquisition and motivational supports. The prescriptive literature implies the elements should be used together; but using data from the UK Commission's Employer Skills Survey of 2011 we find that these dimensions of high-involvement management are in reality separate. Two types of involvement, role and organisational, are not strongly related, and motivational supports are not strongly correlated with other practices or each other. Size of workplace and the sector in which it operates are associated with the dimensions of high-involvement management. However, there is variety in their other predictors. For example, organisational involvement and skill acquisition are positively related to workplace size while role involvement is negatively associated with it. The research illustrates the value of scaling methods over blanket indexes to measure high involvement management and highlights the independent effects of quality and operational management methods.

Highlights

High-involvement management remains at the centre of modern management thinking, as the virtues for a fast-changing economy of a specific system of human resource management (HRM), centred on employee involvement and development, are espoused
The concept of high-involvement management spawned a large stream of research, testing whether such an approach was associated with higher organizational performance (Guest, 2011; Wall and Wood, 2005; Wood, 1999)
Because of the uncertainty surrounding the nature and origin of motivational practices, we might expect no strong pattern to their use - in which case, the competing hypothesis to H1e is: H2: The practices within role-involvement, organizational involvement and skill acquisition co-exist, and the pattern of association amongst all highinvolvement practices reduces to a three-dimensional structure

Summary

Introduction

High-involvement management remains at the centre of modern management thinking, as the virtues for a fast-changing economy of a specific system of human resource management (HRM), centred on employee involvement and development, are espoused. Because of the uncertainty surrounding the nature and origin of motivational practices, we might expect no strong pattern to their use - in which case, the competing hypothesis to H1e is: H2: The practices within role-involvement, organizational involvement and skill acquisition co-exist, and the pattern of association amongst all highinvolvement practices reduces to a three-dimensional structure.

Results

Conclusion