High-performance work systems and employee voice

Abstract

Since the 1990s, ‘high-performance work systems’ (HPWS) has come to prominence as a way of conceptualising links between human resource management and organisational performance. Employee voice as a pathway from management practices to performance, via employee outcomes, is central to many accounts of HPWS. The emphasis has been on direct forms of voice, for example via job design, and less often on representative forms of voice in the form of unions and/or collaborative approaches to labour-management relations. While there has been a good deal of research showing positive associations between HPWS and performance, there are relatively few which single out voice mechanisms, and more work is required to tease out causal paths via employees. The role of representative voice has received even less attention in empirical research and the results appear mixed and inconclusive.