High Commitment Management Research Articles

Evolving high commitment management and the experience of the RAC call centre

Evolving high commitment management and the experience of the RAC call centre

National culture and high commitment management

This paper examines the relationship between national culture and high commitment management (HCM). A model linking national culture and HCM is developed and hypotheses concerning the relationship between national culture and the take‐up of specific HCM practices are derived. Empirical results demonstrating the relationship between national culture and the take‐up of particular HCM practices across nine countries are presented. The paper further establishes that the adoption of certain individual HCM practices is more closely associated with superior employee performance in countries with certain cultural characteristics than in others. However, when HCM is implemented as a package of practices, it is found to be associated with superior employee performance across different cultural settings. The paper concludes that national culture plays an exogenous determining role in the adoption of HCM practices, with the result that the globalisation of HCM practices should be undertaken with sensitivity.

High Commitment Management in the U.K.: Evidence from the Workplace Industrial Relations Survey, and Employers' Manpower and Skills Practices Survey

Are the practices widely associated with the high commitment or involvement model, such as job flexibility and minimal status differences, actually used in conjunction with each other? Or rather are they being used, as some commentators speculate, in a fragmented or ad hoc manner? The authors use Latent Variable Analysis to assess whether practices identified with high commitment management do form a unity. They are simultaneously attempting to see if such practices can be used as indicators for measuring an underlying high commitment orientation on the part of management. The analysis uses data from the 1990 UK Workplace Industrial Relations Survey and its sister survey, the Employers' Manpower and Skills Practices Survey, on the use of a range of high commitment practices across the whole economy. The evidence suggests that there is an identifiable pattern to the use of high commitment practices. Four progressive styles of high commitment management (HCM) were discovered. Though the use of it in its entirety is still relatively rare in the UK, the proportion of organizations with medium levels of high commitment management is higher than is perhaps commonly assumed. High degrees of high commitment management are not necessarily associated with nonunion workplaces. The research also demonstrates that HCM does have some performance effects, though they are not unique to it since those organizations that adopt high commitment management in its entirety do not perform better on any performance criteria than all others, but they do perform better than some types.

High commitment management and unionization in the UK

High commitment management, as popularized by Walton and Lawler, and trade unionism are often thought of as antithetical. The research reported here uses an index of high commitment developed by the author to assess whether indeed this is the case, or whether they do in fact co-exist, as is increasingly being acknowledged in the UK as possible. Using data from a sample of 135 manufacturing plants in the UK, the paper shows that, whilst the use of high commitment management did increase in the late 1980s, it was not more likely to be practised in the non-unionized ones. Furthermore, unionism did not seem incompatible with relatively high levels of high commitment management. Nonetheless, the rate of change of HCM between 1986 and 1990 was lower in plants with recognized trade unions, which suggests that unions have a dragging effect on HCM, but will not affect its ultimate extent. The research also demonstrates that the co-existence of unionism and high commitment management cannot be put down to managemen...

High Commitment Management and Payment Systems

ABSTRACTThis paper extends the analysis of high commitment management (HGM) reported in a previous Journal of Management Studies article (Wood and Albanese, volume 32, number 2) by examining its linkage to payment systems. It opens with an overview of what the literature on HCM portrays as the pay systems that are most compatible with it. Then it reports research, based on data from a representative sample of manufacturing plants in the UK, which examines what pay systems in practice are used in conjunction with HCM. It also assesses whether, as we might expect, plants using piecework and individual bonuses are less likely to adopt such an approach. Finally, the paper examines whether changes in payment systems are made as managements attempt to heighten their use of HCM.Contrary to the claims of many writers, there is no systematic association between the use of HCM and the use of performance or contingent pay systems, such as merit pay and profit‐sharing schemes. the study does, however, show that those plants in which merit pay is paid as a permanent increase in the basic wage are likely to have higher levels of HCM (and rates of change in it) than are those in which merit pay is simply paid as a bonus. Individual bonus systems appear to be associated with plants which are not pursuing high commitment management to any great extent. Finally, the research shows that for the period 1986 to 1990 payment system changes in British manufacturing, though highly varied, tended to be introduced in association with a greater use of HCM and not introduced as a substitute for this. Moreover, the research suggests that these were lagging other changes, rather than leading them.

CAN WE SPEAK OF A HIGH COMMITMENT MANAGEMENT ON THE SHOP FLOOR?*

ABSTRACTThe Commitment model à la Walton has been a key element in conceptions of human resource management (HRM). Is there though any evidence of its application to production workers? Drawing on the HRM literature the authors first develop some measures of practices which might be thought to contribute to high commitment management (HCM). Having acquired data on the extent to which organizations adopt these practices the authors then, using latent variable analysis, assess whether there is a common structure underlying it which represents some kind of HCM‐type approach to labour. In so doing they develop a construct to measure HCM relevant to manual workers. Basing the analysis on data from a representative sample of manufacturing plants in the UK, they conclude that HCM is being practised, albeit to a very varying degree.The research also reveals a growth in the use of HCM practices between 1986 and 1990, and that this has been mainly in practices already popular in 1986; hence the increased use of HCM has been more in plants for whom it was relatively insignificant in 1986, rather than a further heightening of its significance in plants for which it was important before. Using multiple regression analysis, the authors are also able to show that organizational factors rather than factors exogenous to the organization are significantly related to both the level of HCM, and its rate of change between 1986 and 1990. of overwhelming importance is the extent of the strategic integration of personnel management. the authors draw out the relevance of the study for the wider debate about HRM. In particular the results add some support for Walton's and Guest's universalistic theories of HCM, as opposed to what have been called matching or contingency theories of HCM, according to which it is only likely to be found in specific contexts where, for example, high quality is important for competitive advantage.

Teaching High-Commitment Management the High-Commitment Way

High-commitment management practices—including the use of self-managed work teams, broad job descriptions, performance-based compensation, and high levels of employee participation in decision making—are becoming increasingly popular. How can business students best learn to manage effectively in the high-commitment workplace? Drawing on the management education literature and the author's teaching experiences, this article argues that high-commitment management can most effectively be taught the high-commitment way by modeling analogous practices in the classroom and then analyzing the group's own experience to illuminate the distinctive dynamics of participatory management.