HRM COMPLEMENTARITIES AND INNOVATIVE PERFORMANCE IN FRENCH AND BRITISH INDUSTRY

Abstract

A dominant theme in the high performance HRM literature concerns complementarities among individual practices and the positive performance benefits associated with adopting simultaneously a bundle of HRM practices. While there is little consensus over what practices should be included under the “high performance” label, most authors see employee representation and consultation as representing a traditional management approach. Moreover enterprise performance is commonly measured as financial performance and relatively little attention has been given to innovative performance. In contrast to the mainstream view, we argue that employee representation can be highly complementary to the training and incentive devices focused on in the high performance HRM literature. This proposition is empirically tested for the innovative performance of comparable populations of U.K. and French private sector establishments. The chapter constitutes one of the first major comparative empirical investigations of the HRM/innovative performance link.