We describe why human resource management (HRM) decisions are likely to have an important and unique influence on organizational performance. Our hope is that this research forum will help advance ...

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/256712.pdf

The Impact of Human Resource Management on Organizational Performance: Progress and Prospects

Firms are organizations that represent social knowledge of coordination and learning. But why should their boundaries demarcate quantitative shifts in the knowledge and capability of their members? Should not knowledge reside also in a network of interacting firms? This line of questioning presents the challenge to state an alternative view to the “theory of the firm,” a theory that has moved from Coase's early treatment of what firms do to a concern with ownership, incentives, and self-interest. We return to Coase's original insight in understanding the cost and benefits of a firm but based on a view that individuals are characterized by an “unsocial sociality.” Does the perception of opportunism generate the need to integrate market transactions into the firm, or do boundaries of the firm lead to the attribution of opportunism? This basic dichotomy between self-interest and the longing to belong is the behavioral underpinning to the superiority of firms over markets in resolving a fundamental dilemma: p...

What Firms Do? Coordination, Identity, and Learning

In 590 for-profit and nonprofit firms from the National Organizations Survey, we found positive associations between human resource management (HRM) practices, such as training and staffing selectivity, and perceptual firm performance measures. Results also suggest methodological issues for consideration in examinations of the relationship between HRM systems and firm performance.

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The Impact of Human Resource Management Practices on Perceptions of Organizational Performance

This essay discusses the effect of technical change on wage inequality. I argue that the behavior of wages and returns to schooling indicates that technical change has been skill-biased during the past sixty years. Furthermore, the recent increase in inequality is most likely due to an acceleration in skill bias. In contrast to twentieth century developments, most technical change during the nineteenth century appears to be skill-replacing. I suggest that this is because the increased supply of unskilled workers in the English cities made the introduction of these technologies profitable. On the other hand, the twentieth-century has been characterized by skill-biased technical change because the rapid increase in the supply of skilled workers has induced the development of skill-complementary technologies. The recent acceleration in skill bias is in turn likely to have been a response to the acceleration in the supply of skills during the past several decades.

Technical Change, Inequality, and the Labor Market

This essay discusses the effect of technical change on wage inequality. I argue that the behavior of wages and returns to schooling indicates that technical change has been skill-biased during the past sixty years. Furthermore, the recent increase in inequality is most likely due to an acceleration in skill bias. In contrast to twentieth-century developments, much of the technical change during the early nineteenth century appears to be skill-replacing. I suggest that this is because the increased supply of unskilled workers in the English cities made the introduction of these technologies profitable. On the other hand, the twentieth century has been characterized by skill-biased technical change because the rapid increase in the supply of skilled workers has induced the development of skillcomplementary technologies. The recent acceleration in skill bias is in turn likely to have been a response to the acceleration in the supply of skills during the past several decades.

/pdf/technical-change-inequality-and-the-labor-market-5dt0t9hxk6.pdf

Much of the hoopla surrounding quality circles, teams, and high-performance work systems has been based on anecdotes and very thin evidence. It has not been established that those employee involvement strategies amount to anything more than another series of management fads or ruses designed to get more out of workers without giving them anything in return. This revelatory book, written by some of the skeptics, lays some of the suspicion to rest. Based on their visits to 44 plants and surveys of more than 4,000 employees, Eileen Appelbaum, Thomas Bailey, Peter Berg, and Arne L. Kalleberg concluded that companies are indeed more successful when managers share knowledge and power with workers and when workers assume increased responsibility and discretion. The study of steel, apparel, and medical electronics and imaging plants revealed much. In self-directed teams, workers were able to eliminate bottlenecks and coordinate the work process. In task forces created to improve quality, they communicated with individuals outside their own work groups and were able to solve problems. Expensive equipment in steel mills operated with fewer interruptions, turnaround and labor costs were cut in apparel factories, and costly inventories of components and medical equipment were reduced. And what did the employees think? The worker survey showed that jobs in participatory work systems often provide more challenging tasks and more opportunities for creativity. Employees in apparel had higher hourly earnings; those in steel had both higher hourly earnings and higher job satisfaction. Workers in more participatory settings were no more likely than others to report heavy workloads or excessive demands on their time. They were, however, less likely to report involuntary overtime or conflict with co-workers, and were more likely to be satisfied with their surroundings. Manufacturing Advantage provides the best assessment available of the effectiveness of high-performance work systems. Freestanding chapters near the end of the book provide full documentation of research data without interrupting the narrative flow.

Manufacturing Advantage: Why High Performance Work Systems Pay Off

participation in Quebec over the period 197993. Their detailed analysis of welfare entries, exits, and duration marks an important contribution to our understanding of participation dynamics. Also on the topic of social assistance, Constantine Kapsalis studies how benefit rate changes affect the employment rate of lone mothers. This work is in response to significant changes in benefit rates in Ontario in recent years. The author finds that a $1,000 increase in benefit rates reduces the employment rate of lone mothers by 1-2%. The final essay in this volume, by MarieTherese Chicha, considers the impact of structural changes in the labor market on the effectiveness of laws promoting workplace gender equality. There are two such classes of legislation in Canada: employment equity legislation and pay equity legislation. By considering the challenges posed by labor market transformations for these policies, this essay greatly informs the policy debate surrounding such legislation. Overall, the breadth of topics considered in Women and Work makes it an important contribution to our understanding of the effect of labor market structural change on women's labor market outcomes. The book will be of particular value to those interested in the Canadian policy environment. However, researchers and policy-makers in other countries will also find Women and Work a valuable source of information on how women's labor market outcomes are affected by technological change, organizational change, and various institutions, especially unions. Finally, authors from all countries will find Women and Work a source of interesting case studies of women's experiences with social assistance programs.

Manufacturing Advantage: Why High-Performance Work Systems Pay off

The New American Workplace: Transforming Work Systems in the United States

https://www.jstor.org/stable/info/4538464

The new American workplace

In this study we conducted performance assessments in 62 childcare centers and surveyed 232 teachers and aides, to examine the extent to which workers crafted their jobs and how such crafting affec...

Eileen Appelbaum

Papers

Manufacturing Advantage: Why High Performance Work Systems Pay Off

Manufacturing Advantage: Why High-Performance Work Systems Pay off

The New American Workplace: Transforming Work Systems in the United States

The new American workplace

Work Process and Quality of Care in Early Childhood Education: The Role of Job Crafting