Paul Osterman

Bio: Paul Osterman is an academic researcher from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The author has contributed to research in topics: Workforce & Secondary labor market. The author has an hindex of 33, co-authored 90 publications receiving 8637 citations. Previous affiliations of Paul Osterman include University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign & University of Paris.

How Common is Workplace Transformation and Who Adopts it

Abstract: The author, using data on 694 U.S. manufacturing establishments from a 1992 survey, examines the incidence of innovative work practices (teams, job rotation, quality circles, and Total Quality Management) and investigates what variables, including human resource practices, are associated with the adoption of these practices. He finds that about 35% of private sector establishments with 50 or more employees made substantial use of flexible work organization in 1992. Some factors associated with an establishment's adoption of these practices are being in an internationally competitive product market, having a technology that requires high levels of skill, following a “high road” strategy that emphasizes variety, service, and quality rather than low cost, and using such human resource practices as high levels of training and innovative pay systems.

Manufacturing Consent: Changes in the Labor Process under Monopoly Capitalism.

Abstract: Since the 1930s, industrial sociologists have tried to answer the question, Why do workers not work harder? Michael Burawoy spent ten months as a machine operator in a Chicago factory trying to answer different but equally important questions: Why do workers work as hard as they do? Why do workers routinely consent to their own exploitation? \"Manufacturing Consent,\" the result of Burawoy's research, combines rich ethnographical description with an original Marxist theory of the capitalist labor process. \"Manufacturing Consent\" is unique among studies of this kind because Burawoy has been able to analyze his own experiences in relation to those of Donald Roy, who studied the same factory thirty years earlier. Burawoy traces the technical, political, and ideological changes in factory life to the transformations of the market relations of the plant (it is now part of a multinational corporation) and to broader movements, since World War II, in industrial relations.

Work Reorganization in an Era of Restructuring: Trends in Diffusion and Effects on Employee Welfare

Abstract: High Performance Work Organizations (HPWOs) took root in the early 1990s but then faced an environment of organizational turmoil and restructuring. This paper, drawing on a second-round survey of employers that replicated and extended a 1992 survey, addresses two questions: whether HPWO practices continued to spread, and whether their productivity and quality gains redounded to employees' benefit. The results show that HPWO practices continued to diffuse at a rapid rate between the 1992 and 1997 survey dates, although more slowly for self-managed teams than for other practices. With regard to the second question, however, the author finds that adoption of HPWO practices in 1992 was associated with increased layoff rates in subsequent years and no compensation gains. In addition, HPWO practices are linked to employment reorganization, such as reductions in contingent and managerial employment.

Change at Work

Abstract: This book illuminates what is really happening in the American workplace. The contributors explain how the widespread restructuring of American firms-usually resulting in a reduction of the workforce to cut costs-has had a profound impact on the lives of workers. The book explains how the new relationship requires high skill levels, but does not provide training for them. Workers themselves now must take charge of their personal development instead of relying on their employers. Their alienation from their firms is compounded by the large disparity between the pay of top managers and that of workers. The future is uncertain, but the authors argue that the traditional relationship between employer and employees will continue to erode.

Work Family Programs and the Employment Relationship

Abstract: This research was supported by the Spencer Foundation. I am grateful to Rose Batt for superb research assistance and to Lotte Bailyn, Steve Barley, Peter Cappelli, David Knoke, and Maureen Scully for comments. Using data from a representative sample of American private-sector establishments, this paper explains variation across firms in the implementation of work/family programs by examining how these are related to the employment strategy of organizations. The central hypothesis is that firms seeking to implement so-called high-performance or high-commitment work systems, incorporating employee involvement and quality programs, are more likely to adopt work/family programs as part of an effort to build up the level of workforce commitment to the enterprise. This hypothesis is tested, controlling for two other broad hypothesized effects: (1) that adoption of work/family programs is linked to the demand for them arising either from workforce problems such as absenteeism and turnover or from pressure from the labor force; and (2) that adoption is linked to whether employers already have in place elements of well-developed internal labor markets such as job ladders and human resource departments. Results show considerable support for the link between work/family programs and the use of high-commitment work systems.'

The Impact of Human Resource Management Practices on Turnover, Productivity, and Corporate Financial Performance

Abstract: This paper comprehensively examined the linkages between systems of High Performance Work Practices and firm performance. Results based on a national sample of nearly one thousand firms indicate that these practices have an economically and statistically significant impact on both intermediate outcomes (turnover and productivity) and short- and long-term measures of corporate financial performance. Support for the predictions that the impact of High Performance Work Practices is in part contingent on their interrelationships and links with competitive strategy was limited.

The Impact Of Human Resource Management Practices On Turnover, Productivity, And Corporate Financial Performance

Abstract: This study comprehensively evaluated the links between systems of High Performance Work Practices and firm performance. Results based on a national sample of nearly one thousand firms indicate that these practices have an economically and statistically significant impact on both intermediate employee outcomes (turnover and productivity) and short- and long-term measures of corporate financial performance. Support for predictions that the impact of High Performance Work Practices on firm performance is in part contingent on their interrelationships and links with competitive strategy was limited. The impact of human resource management (HRM) policies and prac

Structural Inertia and Organizational Change

Abstract: Considers structural inertia in organizational populations as an outcome of an ecological-evolutionary process. Structural inertia is considered to be a consequence of selection as opposed to a precondition. The focus of this analysis is on the timing of organizational change. Structural inertia is defined to be a correspondence between a class of organizations and their environments. Reliably producing collective action and accounting rationally for their activities are identified as important organizational competencies. This reliability and accountability are achieved when the organization has the capacity to reproduce structure with high fidelity. Organizations are composed of various hierarchical layers that vary in their ability to respond and change. Organizational goals, forms of authority, core technology, and marketing strategy are the four organizational properties used to classify organizations in the proposed theory. Older organizations are found to have more inertia than younger ones. The effect of size on inertia is more difficult to determine. The variance in inertia with respect to the complexity of organizational arrangements is also explored. (SRD)

Modes of theorizing in strategic human resource management: Tests of universalistic, contingency, and configurational performance predictions

Abstract: The field of strategic human resource management (SHRM) has been criticized for lacking a solid theoretical foundation. This article documents that, contrary to this criticism, the SHRM literature ...

Human resource bundles and manufacturing performance: organizational logic and flexible production systems in the world auto industry

Abstract: Using a unique international data set from a 1989–90 survey of 62 automotive assembly plants, the author tests two hypotheses: that innovative HR practices affect performance not individually but as interrelated elements in an internally consistent HR “bundle” or system; and that these HR bundles contribute most to assembly plant productivity and quality when they are integrated with manufacturing policies under the “organizational logic” of a flexible production system. Analysis of the survey data, which tests three indices representing distinct bundles of human resource and manufacturing practices, supports both hypotheses. Flexible production plants with team-based work systems, “high-commitment” HR practices (such as contingent compensation and extensive training), and low inventory and repair buffers consistently outperformed mass production plants. Variables capturing two-way and three-way interactions among the bundles of practices are even better predictors of performance, supporting the integrati...