Using the means-end framework as a theoretical foundation, this article conceptualizes, constructs, refines, and tests a multiple-item scale (E-S-QUAL) for measuring the service quality delivered b...

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E-S-QUAL: A Multiple-Item Scale for Assessing Electronic Service Quality

Social Psychology of Organizations

Individualism and collectivism

Theory building has lagged on the intermediate linkages responsible for the relationship between HRM and firm performance. We introduce the construct “strength of the HRM system” and describe the meta-features of an HRM system that result in a strong organizational climate, analogous to Mischel's “strong situation,” in which individuals share a common interpretation of what behaviors are expected and rewarded. The strength of the HRM system can help explain how individual employee attributes accumulate to affect organizational effectiveness.

Understanding HRM–Firm Performance Linkages: The Role of the “Strength” of the HRM System

Recognizing, that not all employees possess knowledge and skills that are of equal strategic importance, we draw on the resource-based view of the firm, human capital theory, and transaction cost economics to develop a human resource architecture of four different employment modes: internal development, acquisition, contracting, and alliance. We use this architecture to derive research questions for studying the relationships among employment modes, employment relationships, human resource configurations, and criteria for competitive advantage.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/259035.pdf

The Human Resource Architecture: Toward a Theory of Human Capital Allocation and Development

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.

/pdf/the-impact-of-human-resource-management-practices-on-2c2vl7nm6j.pdf

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

Over the past decade, several leading U.S. scholars have advanced a new industrial relations paradigm, according to which “high performance” work and human resource management (HRM) practices have replaced unions and collective bargaining as the innovative force in industrial relations. Although this model fundamentally challenges the traditional focus of the field of industrial relations in the United States, research on it has centered on the diffusion and performance effects of HRM innovations, with surprisingly little systematic reflection on either the underlying tenets of the new paradigm or its implications for the future of the field. Drawing on work of British and U.S. scholars, the authors identify critical aspects of the literature on this subject that deserve careful scrutiny, and suggest several criteria (such as industrial democracy) that need to be used in addition to measures of firm performance in evaluating the new paradigm.

Reflections on the “High Performance” Paradigm's Implications for Industrial Relations as a Field:

The percentage of the U.S. work force that is unionized is at its lowest level in more than 50 years. Although many studies have sought the reasons for this decline, few have investigated characteristics of unions themselves as possible factors. This paper focuses on unions as organizations, and applies a model of national union effectiveness to union organizing. The authors propose a composite measure of organizing effectiveness that goes beyond union success in representation elections. An analysis of data from the 1990 National Union Survey and other sources, with controls for environmental influences, suggests that organizing effectiveness is enhanced by innovation and reduced by centralization of control at the national level. Some evidence is also found that internal union democracy enhances union success in organizing.

National union effectiveness in organizing: measures and influences

An industrial relations perspective on the high-performance paradigm

The authors of this literature review find that empirical research on unions' political activity since World War II has failed to answer many important questions. Not only have researchers neglecte...

John Thomas Delaney

Papers

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

Reflections on the “High Performance” Paradigm's Implications for Industrial Relations as a Field:

National union effectiveness in organizing: measures and influences

An industrial relations perspective on the high-performance paradigm

Union Political Activities: A Review of the Empirical Literature