High-involvement management practices, job control, and employee well-being in the public and private sectors. Evidence from Finland

Abstract

The connection between high-involvement management (HIM), entailing heavy employee involvement, and employee well-being is a controversial and widely discussed topic. Clarifying how job satisfaction and stress are connected to HIM and job control (the control employees have over their work), this study is based on data from two Finnish sources: an employer survey investigating the extent of HIM within an organisation, and employee assessments of job control, stress and job satisfaction. Logistic regression models were used as the study method. In contrast to previous Finnish studies, our findings show that HIM seems hardly to benefit employee well-being. Especially in the public sector, the correlation between extensive HIM and employee well-being turned out to be negative. However, HIM in the private sector was positively related to job satisfaction. As expected, a high level of job control was regularly associated with greater well-being.