'Best practice' human resource management: perfect ...

Int. J. of Human Resource Management 11:6 December 2000 1104–1124

‘Best practice’ human resource management: perfect opportunity or dangerous illusion?

Mick Marchington and Irena Grugulis Abstract In recent years there has been a considerable degree of interest in the notion of ‘best practice’ HRM, inspired at least in part by the work of Jeffrey Pfeffer. Along with other contributions from the UK and the USA, this has resulted in assertions that a particular bundle of HR practices can increase pro ts irrespective of organizational, industrial, or national context. In this paper, we focus on the way in which HRM is characterized in these writings, querying whether the practices which are typically assumed and put forward as ‘good’ may not appear quite so bene cial to workers when analysed more systematically. It is suggested that there are a number of problems with the notion of ‘best practice’, both in relation to the meaning of speci c practices, and their consistency with each other, and the claims that this version of HRM is universally applicable. The unitarist underpinnings of this literature are also exposed. This is not to argue that HR policies and practices do not in uence organizational performance but, rather, that we cannot determine this from the current literature. The ‘best practice’ conclusions may be attractive but the jury is still out. Keywords Human resource management; ‘best practice’; unitarism; performance.

Introduction In recent years, there has been a considerable degree of interest in the notion of ‘best practice’ human resource management (HRM), inspired, at least in part, by the work of Jeffrey Pfeffer (1994, 1998). In two of his recent books, Competitive Advantage through People (1994) and The Human Equation: Building Pro ts by Putting People First (1998), Pfeffer argues that a particular set of human resource (HR) practices can increase company pro ts, that the impact is more pronounced when complementary groups (or ‘bundles’) of HR practices are used together, and that this conclusion holds good for all organizations and industries irrespective of their context. Pfeffer’s work has been complemented by many other American studies (e.g. Arthur, 1994; Huselid, 1995; MacDuf e, 1995; Delaney and Huselid, 1996; Delery and Doty, 1996; Huselid and Becker, 1996; Ichniowski et al., 1996; Youndt et al., 1996) and by some in Britain as well (Wood, 1995; Wood and Albanese, 1995; Patterson et al., 1997; Guest and Conway, 1998; Wood and de Menezes, 1998). Unfortunately, as we see below, it is dif cult to draw generalized conclusions from these studies due to differences in the HR practices which were examined, in the proxies which were constructed for each of these practices, in the methods which were used to collect data, and in the respondents from Mick Marchington, Professor of Human Resource Management, and Dr Irena Grugulis, Lecturer in Employment Studies, Manchester School of Management, UMIST, PO Box 88, Manchester M60 1QD, UK (e-mail: [email protected]). The International Journal of Human Resource Management ISSN 0958-5192 print/ISSN 1466-4399 online © 2000 Taylor & Francis Ltd http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals

Marchington and Grugulis: ‘Best practice’ human resource management

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whom information was sought; as Guest (1997: 263) argues, there is ‘little additive value in these and whilst statistically sophisticated, they lack theoretical rigour’. However, this has not prevented wide-ranging conclusions being drawn on the basis of these studies. This has been most apparent in studies analysing the links between HRM and business performance. The results from some of these, most notably that by Patterson et al. (1997) published by the Institute of Personnel and Development, have been widely quoted in the media and put forward as evidence for the importance of HRM as a driver of, and contributor to, improved performance. More interestingly, it has been claimed – on the basis of this research – that HRM had a greater impact on productivity and pro ts than a range of other factors including strategy, R&D, and quality. The research was based on longitudinal studies of sixty-seven UK manufacturing rms which were predominantly single-site and single-product operations (Patterson et al., 1997: 19), with 17 per cent of the variation in company pro tability being explained by HRM practices and job design, as opposed to just 8 per cent from research and development, 2 per cent from strategy, and 1 per cent from both quality and technology. Similar results were indicated for productivity. Huselid (1995: 667) also concluded that the impact of what he called ‘high performance work practices’ on sales, market value, pro t, and labour turnover was signi cant, with speci c gures to substantiate these claims. Since then, other researchers (e.g. Delery and Doty, 1996; Wood and de Menezes, 1998) have made use of various statistical methods to examine other data sets, with rather more mixed conclusions. Appealing though such analyses may be in the search for the effect of HRM on performance, there are substantial methodological problems associated with the use of these data sets: inter alia, problems in choosing appropriate measures of performance, doubts about directions of causality, contamination from other (non-HR) in uences, the exclusion of hard-to-measure items, and the reliance on a single person to complete questionnaires or interviews. As Purcell (1999: 32) suggests, it is likely that personnel specialists, who often tend to be the respondents in these surveys, have detailed knowledge neither of competitive strategies utilized by their organizations nor of the proportion of sales which are derived from these strategies. Anxieties such as these mean that considerable caution is needed when interpreting conclusions from these quantitative studies. However, we do not intend to delve deeper into this particular area here, largely because it has been the subject of so many other studies. Instead, this paper will focus on an area which has been relatively neglected in this debate, and subject the literature to much closer scrutiny by examining the assumptions which are made about the nature, meaning, and universal applicability of the HR practices included in these lists of best practice. These are considered both for individual HR practices and in combination with each other as bundles of best practice. Rather than analyse each of the authors who have contributed to the debate about best practice HRM or high-performance (commitment/involvement) management, we focus on the seven practices outlined by Pfeffer in The Human Equation (1998) as a framework for the analysis. We endeavour to show that there are a number of problems with this notion of ‘best practice’, both in terms of the meaning of speci c practices and their consistency with each other, as well as in the claims that ‘best practice’ HRM is universally applicable. We also make explicit the unitarist assumptions which underpin much of the literature and debate. In essence, we argue that HR practices, such as teamworking, which appear super cially attractive may not offer universal bene ts and empowerment, but actually lead to work intensi cation and more insidious forms of

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The International Journal of Human Resource Management

control; in other words, quite different and more worrying interpretations from that which is portrayed in the ‘upbeat’ literature – such as that by Pfeffer. Pfeffer has a long and established reputation in organizational behaviour, but his two recent books on best practice seek to make a major impact by linking human resource practices with improved competitive performance. They portray the ‘sexy’ image of the excellence literature alongside the more serious analysis and reporting of research undertaken by other academics. In addition, he makes out a strong argument for employers to adopt ‘best practice’ HRM, and harangues them for adopting short-termist solutions to their problems. He also attacks business schools for not putting HRM and organizational behaviour at the centre of their curricula, and for giving these subjects much lesser weighting than nance, strategy, or marketing. Essentially, Pfeffer seeks to achieve two goals: rst, and most explicitly, to convince his readership that one particular model of employment practices is more likely to offer sustained competitive advantage than others and, second, to provide a bridge between academic work and the more populist literature on management. Each appears to be a worthy objective. Many of the practices he prescribes are advocated by management academics and several have been recurrent features in the cases put forward by trade union negotiators. Here a ‘business case’ is offered in support of these pleas, and, by providing a scal rationale that supports better treatment of employees, it is potentially a valuable addition to the literature on HRM and may provide useful ammunition for lecturers to employ when interacting with managers who are sceptical about the contribution that HRM makes. Pfeffer’s style is accessible and enthusiastic, but, in an attempt to make his material more persuasive, he con ates robust academic studies with homespun ‘truths’, switching from one to another with a dexterity that blurs the boundaries between them. As a result, the text conveys the impression that, as a means of evaluating practice, these two approaches are equivalent. Attractive as Pfeffer’s argument seems, we conclude, as Guest (1992) remarks elsewhere, these ideas might be ‘right enough to be dangerously wrong’. Elements of best practice HRM The notion of ‘best practice’ HRM should be reasonably familiar to most specialists in HRM and industrial relations, but it might be worth reiterating the main elements in the list produced by Pfeffer (1998) before moving on to assess whether or not these do actually constitute ‘best practice’ or are less ‘best’ than the name might imply. The particular brand of HRM that he seeks to propagate is one that relies on employers adopting high-cost, high-skill employment policies and, as noted above, it is one that many academics have long argued for. Such a model allows rms to compete on quality and productivity (Nolan and O’Donnell, 1995). However, since this approach to labour management involves very real costs in investing in employees, it is far from fashionable. Essentially, Pfeffer identi es seven practices of successful organizations, reduced from his earlier (1994) list of sixteen by combining several of these together, as well as drawing upon the results of other studies. The list is as follows. Employment security This is seen as fundamental in order to underpin the remainder of the HR practices, principally because it is regarded as unrealistic to ask employees to offer their ideas, hard work, and commitment without some expectation of security on their part. In emphasizing the importance of employment security, Pfeffer (1998: 180–1) draws a


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parallel between companies that offer ‘employability’ and expect loyalty and a mythical ‘temporary appointment’: [T]ry going home to your spouse and children with the following rede nition of the ‘new family contract’: ‘Because of increasing instability in the economy, I can no longer make credible long-term commitments for your support and education. I face career instability, and, therefore, how can I promise that I will provide ongoing nancial support? In this era of rapid change, we need more family unit exibility to deploy our personnel resources as the situation dictates. In fact, what I will help you to do is to become familycircumstance resilient, so that you are better able to cope with changing family circumstances.

It is noteworthy that the term ‘employment’ security is used; this mirrors the situation in Japanese companies where employees are offered some degree of security in return for agreeing to mobility and exibility in their employment. A further reason for providing employment security is offered by Pfeffer (1998: 66) in relation to costs and competitors: laying people off too readily ‘constitutes a cost for rms that have done a good job selecting, training and developing their workforce . . . layoffs put important strategic assets on the street for the competition to employ’. Selective hiring This is seen as an effective way to achieve ‘human capital advantage’ by recruiting outstanding people and ‘capturing a stock of exceptional human talent’ (Boxall, 1996: 66–7) as a source of sustained competitive advantage. Even though the notion that employers want to recruit the best people available is hardly new, this is nowadays more likely to be systematized through the use of sophisticated selection techniques and taking greater care when hiring. As Wood and Albanese (1995: 17) indicate, technical ability is not the only, or even the most important, attribute that employers seek in new recruits; indeed, two of the major facets which are sought are trainability and commitment. Self-managed teams/teamworking This practice has become more prevalent over the last decade for a variety of reasons, not least in response to Japanese competition as a way of pooling ideas and improving work processes, and it is now identi ed by most employers as a fundamental building block in their organization. It has become one of the key attributes that employers look for in new recruits, something which is asked for in references, and which even plays a part in courses organized for school students. It is typically seen as a route to better decision making and the achievement of more creative solutions (Pfeffer, 1998: 76). High compensation contingent on organizational performance There are two elements to this practice – higher than average compensation and performance-related reward – although both send a signal to employees that they deserve to be rewarded for superior contributions. To be effective, this would need to be at a level which is in excess of that for comparable workers in other organizations so as to attract and retain high-quality labour. In addition, rewards should re ect different levels of contribution and either be paid along with basic rates of pay or provided through pro t sharing or share-ownership schemes.

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Extensive training Having recruited ‘outstanding human talent’, employers need to ensure that these people remain at the forefront of their eld, in terms not only of professional expertise and product knowledge but also in getting the best of situations, for example as managers or as team members. Boxall (1996: 67) views this as one element in ‘human process advantage’, the idea that organizations aim to synergize the contribution of talented and exceptional employees. There is little doubt that there has been a growing recognition during the last decade of the importance of training and development, and even learning, as a source of sustained competitive advantage as employers introduce more skills-speci c forms of training and experience continuing skills shortages in some areas. Pfeffer (1998: 89) sees this in terms of both the amount of training provided and the budget devoted to training, especially in lean times. Reduction of status differences This again has some of its roots in the practices of Japanese organizations and in symbolic manifestations of egalitarianism – such as common canteens, company uniforms, and similar sickness and holiday entitlements – as well as in employers sending messages to manual workers or white-collar staff that they are valuable assets who deserve to be treated in a similar way to their more senior colleagues. It is also seen as a way to encourage employees to offer ideas within a system of ‘open’ management. Sharing information There are two reasons why this practice is essential, according to Pfeffer. First, open communications about nancial performance, strategy, and operational measures conveys a symbolic and substantive message that employees are trusted as well as reducing the role of the grapevine in spreading rumours. Second, if teamworking is to be successful and employees are to be encouraged to offer ideas, it is essential that they have information upon which to base their suggestions and know something about the nancial context in which their ideas are to be reviewed. The notion of information sharing or employee involvement appears in one form or another in just about every description of, or prescription for, ‘best practice’ or high-commitment management. When outlined in this way, this list of practices is very appealing, in that it appears to offer a vision of HRM which is conducive to a high-commitment model and which provides employees with a more pleasant and stimulating working environment than might be experienced in traditional, Taylorist regimes. For example, the provision of employment security is attractive, the opportunity to earn above average wages and to be rewarded for performance is enticing, and the chance to gain extensive levels of training is highly desirable. Most attitude surveys have shown for years that employees would like to have more information about their organization and a chance to contribute to and in uence decisions which affect their working lives, as well as the removal of status differences between separate categories of workers. Selective hiring is less obvious as a source of direct bene t to employees, although it might reduce the likelihood of having to work alongside what might be seen as incapable or ineffective co-workers. In addition to this, delayed recruitment or the use of temporaries instead of permanent staff might enhance the employment security of those permanent staff in the event of a downturn. Put together, and especially in comparison with the ‘bleak house’


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policies described by Sisson (1993), HR practices such as those outlined above can appear very attractive. However, digging beneath the surface, and examining Pfeffer’s articulation of these practices in a little more depth, throws up some interesting insights. Best practice HRM: nice words and harsh realities The potential contradiction between nice words and harsh realities is nowhere more apparent than over the issue of employment security, and indeed the questions asked in the various studies use somewhat different de nitions of the term. At one extreme, for example, Wood and Albanese (1995) include three measures in reaching their assessment of employment security: a policy of no compulsory redundancy; the use of temporaries primarily to protect the core workforce; an expectation on the part of senior managers that new employees will stay with the rm until retirement. Delery and Doty (1996) adopt similar sorts of measures, but strangely include an item which states that ‘it is very dif cult to dismiss an employee in this job’ – a judgement which may have more to do with managing poor performance than employment security. In the case of Delaney and Huselid (1996), lling vacancies from within and creating opportunities for internal promotion is used as a proxy for employment security. Obviously, it is dif cult to compare results of studies when such different assumptions are made. Pfeffer (1998: 183) tends to view compulsory lay-offs and downsizing as undermining employment security, and sees the following as alternatives to these: proportionately reducing working hours to ‘spread the pain’ of reduced employment costs across the entire workforce; reducing wages to reduce the labour costs; freezing hiring to prevent overstaf ng; putting production workers into sales to build up demand. This is certainly not full-blown employment security as most commentators would de ne it, and it does not appear to be very different from the practices many employers have been following for years. It is not assumed that employment security is to be achieved by compromising corporate pro ts. The employer’s nancial exibility is preserved by basing salaries on organizational performance (see below) and increasing employee workloads. Elsewhere this might be seen as work intensi cation, but Pfeffer presents it as pleasure: ‘leaner staf ng can actually make the workforce more productive, with fewer people doing more work. The people are often happy to be more productive because they know they are helping to ensure a result that bene ts them’ (1998: 67). Further, security is offered only when and for as long as it is convenient to the employer, with Volkswagen, New Zealand Post and Carlton & United Breweries all earning praise for ‘downsizing sensibly’ (1998: 186–94). In short, a rather tenuous form of employment security can come to be seen as a reward for those who conform to and comply with employer (and to some extent, customer) requirements. A similar set of arguments can be made about self-managed teams and teamworking, which convey images of working together, equality and management by peers, utilizing expertise to the full, and being able to make contributions. Evidence suggests that employees who work in teams generally tend to report higher levels of satisfaction and are more motivated than their counterparts who work under more ‘traditional’ regimes (Geary, 1993; Wilkinson et al., 1997; Edwards and Wright, 1998). The range of measures used by researchers is rather less broad than for employment security, referring generally to the proportion of (production) workers in teams (MacDuf e, 1995) or the use of formal teams (Patterson et al., 1997). However, this measure is not really capable of determining the degree to which these teams actually manage

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themselves or act as autonomous groups, and much depends upon decisions concerning, inter alia, the choice of team leader, responsibility for organizing work schedules, and control over quality (Marchington, 1999). There is also an alternative perspective on self-managed teams which suggests that they are intrusive and dif cult to implement in practice, and that they serve to strengthen – rather than weaken – management control. In addition, it may be impossible to introduce any realistic version of teamworking when workers are unable to enlarge their jobs to embrace higher-level skills or there are legal or technical reasons why workers are not allowed to make certain types of decision, or where the rotation of a range of low-level jobs means that one boring job is merely swapped for another boring job on a regular basis (for example, Pollert, 1996). In situations such as these, teamworking may serve only to make work more stressful and intrusive, and add nothing to the skills or initiative which workers are able to deploy. Moreover, the rhetoric behind self-managed teams may not be delivered in practice so that workers are unable to achieve control and ‘democratize’ the workplace. This failure may arise either because team members are not inclined to take advantage of the opportunities for greater involvement, perhaps by resisting management initiatives or treating them with suspicion (Procter et al., 1994: 55; Banker et al., 1996: 888; McCabe and Black, 1997: 113–14), or because managers and supervisors have problems adapting to new roles or introducing new work patterns (Kulisch and Banner, 1993: 25; Wilkinson et al., 1993: 32; Carr, 1994: 199). In some cases, the in uence exerted by one group of staff may reduce the potential for self-managing teams to work effectively, and result in a form of control exerted by workers which is tougher than that under the previous supervisory regime (McKinlay and Taylor, 1996: 286). While the concerns expressed above about self-managed teams can be seen as failures of implementation, some analysts see this form of organization as potentially awed because it gives the impression of control without devolving any real power or in uence. Sinclair (1992: 612), for example, writes of the ‘tyranny’ of the team ideology, all the more dangerous in her view because it appears to offer bene ts for all. She argues that ‘teams are frequently used to camou age coercion under the pretence of maintaining cohesion; conceal con ict under the guise of consensus; [and] give unilateral decisions a codeterminist seal of approval’. Barker (1993: 408) suggests that self-managing teams produce ‘a form of control more powerful, less apparent, and more dif cult to resist than that of the former bureaucracy’ because it shifts the locus of control from management to workers – what he terms ‘concertive control’. The consequence of this is that peer pressure and rational rules in the concertive system combine to ‘create a new iron cage whose bars are almost invisible to the workers it incarcerates’ (1993: 435). A recurring theme in the studies which are critical of selfmanaged teams is that explicit, ‘over-the-shoulder’ managerial control is replaced by peer surveillance. For example, Sewell and Wilkinson (1992: 110) regard teamworking as producing a ‘horizontal disciplinary force, based on peer scrutiny, [which] operates throughout the team as members seek to identify and sanction those who may jeopardise its overall performance’. The examples above, drawn from the areas of employment security and self-managed teams, demonstrate clearly that these practices are not as straightforwardly positive as the proponents of ‘best practice’ imply, and that the proxies used vary markedly. Concerns like this are not restricted to these two areas alone. For example, the measures used to indicate ‘selective hiring’ range from ‘the number of applicants per position’ (Delaney and Huselid, 1996), through to the ‘proportion administered an employment test prior to hiring’ (Huselid, 1995) and the ‘sophistication of (selection) processes’,


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such as the use of psychometric tests (Patterson et al., 1997). These measures capture quite different practices, and it could be argued that the number of applicants for a position is actually indicative of poor HR procedures due to failures to de ne the job and the eld adequately prior to advertising. There are also wider worries that selective hiring, especially when it focuses on how well new recruits might t with the prevailing organizational culture, can lead to under-represented groups being excluded and excessive ‘cloning’ of employees which can be problematic if there are changes in business objectives (Becker and Gerhart, 1996: 789). Similar arguments could be made about the way training and development is presented. While it is clearly important to establish whether or not employers invest in formal training which covers the entire workforce and get some measure of the amount of time or money devoted to training, it is also crucial to identify the type of training which is provided and who has responsibility for managing this. Some of the researchers focus solely on extensiveness (e.g. Huselid, 1995), whereas others go further and attempt to establish whether formal training programmes are directed at issues not speci cally related to the individual’s immediate work area (Arthur, 1994), create longer-term budget safeguards to protect training provision (Wood and Albanese, 1995), or offer ‘increased promotability within the organization’ (Delery and Doty, 1996). The quality of training, both in terms of its focus and its delivery, is clearly just as important, if not more so, than a simple count of the amount provided. In their study of eight large UK organizations, Truss et al. (1997: 61) found that, even where training opportunities were provided, ‘these were not necessarily equated with a soft, developmental HRM perspective . . . [there] was no explicit aim within the training of increasing the individuals’ skill base or broadening their experience’. The lack of guarantee of any future career development or the absence of speci c career management support reinforces the view that training, per se, is not necessarily something which ts with the developmental underpinnings of the ‘best practice’ model. The range of measures used and the ‘ exible’ nature of the de nition is also something which is problematic in the area of information sharing. Many of the studies restrict this to downward communications from management to employees, which measure the frequency of information disclosure (Patterson et al., 1997), or to the regularity of team brie ng or quality circles (Wood and Albanese, 1995), or the proportion of employees consulted by attitude surveys (Huselid, 1995). Some go further and enquire about the percentage of employees who receive training in group problem solving (Arthur, 1994) or the level at which a range of decisions is made (Delaney and Huselid, 1996). Again, the range is so wide that it is dif cult to compare results across these studies and reach any rm conclusions about the importance of information sharing to high-commitment management. The fact that information sharing is often little more than a cascade of information from management to employees means that any realistic employee involvement and contribution is unlikely. Indeed, one of the objectives of schemes such as team brie ng is reinforce the role of the supervisor as information disseminator who can tailor messages to suit speci c operational requirements (Marchington, 1992). This one-way version of information sharing – rather than being seen as educative, empowering, and liberating as the terminology might imply – could more easily be interpreted instead as indoctrinating, emasculating, and controlling (Marchington and Wilkinson, 2000). It seems that, as with earlier normative models of HRM (Storey, 1992; Sisson, 1994; Legge, 1995), Pfeffer’s model is more attractive as rhetoric than it is in reality, with individual practices losing much of their appeal when unpacked. Much greater care

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needs to be taken in specifying the nature of the HR practices which are included in lists of ‘best practice’ to ensure that these are not dilute and relatively meaningless; for example, to justify inclusion in such a list, employment security would have to mean the expectation of long tenure, self-managed teams would need to operate with a large degree of autonomy, information sharing would actually allow for employees to in uence decisions relating to their working lives, and training would not just be focused primarily on the acquisition of short-term skills needed by the employer, but on the development of longer-term skills which can facilitate employee contributions and career growth. Having looked at the practices individually, we can now turn to an examination of groups of complementary HR practices or bundles which are supposed to combine synergistically to provide an effective system of labour management. Does the virtue of this whole serve to outweigh some of the dif culties experienced with individual parts? Integrated bundles, weak links, and contradictory practices A key point in all the publications on best practice/high-commitment HRM is that individual practices can not be implemented effectively in isolation, and that it is the combination of practices into a coherent package which is what matters (MacDuf e, 1995). An assumption is made that the practices support and mutually reinforce one another, and that contradictions between ‘best practice’ in one area and ‘worst practice’ in another will undermine the package as a whole. Employees, it is argued, soon notice differences between employment practices in different areas, and are quick to spot inconsistencies between policy statements and workplace practice across the range. There are certainly many examples of this. Keenoy and Anthony (1992) note that, shortly after the TSB launched its cultural change programme (which aimed to construct an ‘achievement oriented culture’), it announced that some 5,000 staff were to be made redundant. More recently, British Airways’ much vaunted high regard for its staff was not apparent in Höp ’s (1992, 1993) description of the company’s training programme or its behaviour throughout the industrial action of 1997 (Financial Times, 15 July 1997). Wood and de Menezes (1998: 487) note that most studies have indicated this lack of consistency, reporting fragmentation, a ‘pick and mix’ approach to managing human resources, ad hocism, pragmatism, and short-termism, rather than the deployment of consistent, integrated, and long-term packages of HRM. The recent study by Truss et al. sums this up perfectly when they state that ‘our research found little evidence of any deliberate or realized coherence between HR activities. For instance, one HR Of cer commented that the rm could be recruiting someone in one department and laying-off someone with a similar pro le in another’ (1997: 66–7). Moreover, they saw no evidence of any coherence among HR activities in different parts of the organization, and, while the language of the soft HRM model was in evidence, so too was that of the hard model, emphasizing nancial control. The lack of any sizeable take-up of these HR practices would come as no surprise to authors such as Pfeffer. He suggests that even smart organizations often do ‘dumb things’, failing to learn from other examples or being driven by criteria which are ultimately wide of the mark. There is certainly some support for the notion that HR practices do operate more effectively in combination, although, as we see below, the precise number and mix of these is more open to debate. The case for integration is obvious at one level, with clear links between each of these practices. For example, extensive training is an essential requirement for self-managed teams to run effectively, higher than average rewards are likely to have a positive impact on numbers of


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applications for jobs and be consistent with selective hiring practices, and the provision of nancial and performance information to all employees is likely to be part of a wider harmonization package. An employer may feel more inclined to promise employment security if satis ed that selective hiring has taken place, that self-managed teams are extensive throughout the organization, and that compensation is contingent upon performance. It is possible to make many other hypothetical links between practices, as authors like Huselid (1995) have done, and indeed other studies (e.g. Dyer and Reeves, 1995: 660) do suggest that marginal changes in individual practices have little or no effect on productivity, but that improvements depend upon substantial changes across the board. Wood and de Menezes also nd an ‘identi able pattern to the use of high commitment HR practices’ (1998: 485) and con rm that they are being used in conjunction with each other. So far so good, but what if the achievement of one of these practices contradicts with or undermines (some of) the others? Employers may make employment security conditional on an agreement that pay rates can be substantially adjusted in order to maintain the guarantee through lean times, or, by hiring on the basis of future potential rather than immediate contribution, make established employees expand their working hours and effort in order to induct new staff. At the margins, this may be ne, but if the pro t-sharing or performance-related component of rewards is a signi cant proportion of overall income, then it may be problematic. Pfeffer himself (1998: 84) cites the case of Lincoln Electric where pro t sharing averages around 70 per cent of individual employee salaries. This has enabled the company to maintain employment when business falls because ‘pro t sharing payments fall and labour expenses decrease – without having to break the rm’s commitment to employment security’. Whether this is acceptable to the employees concerned is not revealed, but there must be a point at which the value of employment security is outweighed by the need for a certain minimum amount of salary in order to survive and maintain commitments to housing and food. A number of recent examples may have been less dramatic, but nonetheless show that there is a link between reductions in pay (concession bargaining) or amendments to working hours (e.g. to an annual hours contract) and the maintenance of employment security. The question is how far salaries can slip, and for how long, without employment security guarantees being rendered meaningless. There is a tendency to assume that most employees have savings which can act as a buffer during the bad times, but for many manual workers this is just not the case. Employers are also advised not to over-expand their workforce, to hire with extreme caution, and to encourage those who do not t in to leave so as to reduce the potential need for later downsizing and to strengthen the security of the existing workforce. This form of employment security is not quite so appealing when it is unpacked as its advantages seem weighted in favour of the employer. Individual employees are offered security, but at a price. Employees are required to be exible, to move jobs and locations to maintain employment, undertake retraining, and adjust working hours (e.g. to accept annual hours contracts) to suit the needs of the employer – on the grounds that their own employment is likely to be more secure provided perceived customer needs continue to be served. Elsewhere, among the many advantages for self-managed teams cited by Pfeffer, it is suggested that they can remove a supervisory level from the hierarchy: ‘eliminating layers of management by instituting self-managing teams saves money. Self-managed teams can also take on tasks previously done by specialised staff, thus eliminating excess personnel’ (1998: 77). Certainly, reducing the numbers of levels in the hierarchy and making senior managers more visible and accessible is seen as a major tenet of

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‘modern management’, but it is not self-evident that the personnel who are ‘eliminated’ (interesting word!) are actually found other jobs. Indeed, given the tendency of organizations to engage in rationalization via managerial redundancies, it is unlikely that these people are retrained. Instead, they are probably retired early or offered voluntary severance packages which are dif cult to refuse. In effect, the implementation of self-managed teams, even if it does empower certain groups of workers, may result in others losing any employment security. There are further potential contradictions between the different practices, especially in relation to the idea that compensation should be at relatively high levels and linked to performance. One of the essential tenets of the team concept is that members should be encouraged to work together to solve problems, be exible in terms of the tasks they undertake, and see themselves as part of an organization which operates without major status differentials. There are clear contradictions if team members earn varying amounts, especially if they nd it dif cult to see the rationale behind any differentials. This is obviously most stark when senior managers are able to collect substantial bonuses connected (perhaps loosely) with company performance or where share schemes are set up exclusively for the bene t of certain groups of employees to the exclusion of others. It is not just restricted to this level, however, and even performance-related rewards on a team basis may stimulate resentments and jealousies from other teams who feel that their work has not been recognized or there is less potential for them to earn higher bonuses. In addition, selective hiring, especially for groups of staff who are in short supply, can result in sizeable internal differentials if recruitment needs to be from the external labour market where salaries and wages may be out-of-line with internal structures. As previously mentioned, one of the problems with the various lists of ‘best practice’ HRM is that there are inconsistencies between the studies, with some ignoring one factor but including another: for example, despite the importance attached to employment security by Pfeffer, this is not included in quite a number of the other lists (e.g. Delaney and Huselid, 1996; Youndt, 1996; Patterson et al., 1997; Wood and de Menezes, 1998). Equally, while other authors include some measure of employee voice other than that achieved through self-managed teams and employee involvement, Pfeffer does not. Perhaps this does not matter if researchers are clear as to why certain HR practices should be included or excluded, but that does not seem to be the case. The lists seem to be developed on the basis of looking at what other researchers have used or by constructing groupings of practices on the basis of factor analysis, and then attempting to impose some theoretical justi cation for this ex post facto. For example, Huselid (1995: 645–7) identi es two groups of practices, entitled ‘employee skills and organizational structures’ – which includes job design, enhanced selectivity, formal training, various forms of participation, and pro t sharing – and ‘employee motivation’ – which comprises performance appraisal linked to compensation and a focus on merit in promotion decisions. It seems strange that participation and pro t sharing should be in the rst grouping rather than the second given the supposed importance of these as techniques which enhance employee motivation. Patterson et al. (1997) also emerge with two groups of practices, sub-titled ‘acquisition and development of employee skills’ and ‘job design’, and, on this occasion, participation and teamworking nd their way into the second grouping rather than the rst. At least Pfeffer does not try to construct semi-arti cial conceptual distinctions on the basis of statistical analysis. Guest is in no doubt that the lists of HR practices to be included ‘await a clear theoretical speci cation or a much stronger empirical base’ (1997: 265).


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One way forward can be gleaned from recent papers by Guest himself, and by Boxall who draws on the work of Barney (1991) on the resource-based view of the rm. Guest (1997: 271) categorizes previous attempts to examine internal t (he also looks at external t, but that is not our interest here) to divide previous studies into three groups. First, there are criterion-speci c studies, such as that by Pfeffer, which outline a number of ‘best practices’ and suggest that the closer organizations get to this list the better their performance is likely to be. Second, there are two sets of criterion-free categories, ‘ t as gestalt’ and ‘ t as bundles’. In the case of the former, it is assumed that the synergies are achievable only with the adoption of all these practices, and that if one is missing the effect will be lost; these are termed ‘multiplicative’. The idea of a bundle, by contrast, is additive, and generally speaking the more practices which are in place the better, provided some distinctive core exists. In addition, Guest points out that there may be room for variation between organizations in order to make allowance for speci c internal and external circumstances. In this case, the key might be to identify the key objectives and strategies of an employer, and then search for HR practices which might be appropriate in the circumstances. Boxall (1996: 66–7) makes the useful distinction between human capital advantage and human process advantage. The former is concerned with ‘recruiting and retaining outstanding people, through capturing a stock of exceptional human talent, latent with productive possibilities’, while the latter may be understood as ‘a function of causally ambiguous, socially complex, historically evolved processes such as learning, cooperation and innovation’. In other words, while the former is designed to ensure that the best people (in our view, those who are most appropriate for the circumstances rather than the most able in general) are recruited and retained, the latter is necessary in order to ensure that they work together effectively. Following Barney’s development of the concept of inimitability, it is the latter (human process advantage) which is hardest to imitate, largely because it is complex, often unarticulated, and is the product of many different sets of people in organizations over a lengthy period of time; that is, it is path dependent. This then sows the seeds for a model of HRM which identi es a series of objectives (such as attracting and retaining the best candidates, managing performance, or providing the environment for synergistic endeavour) which can then be linked to a series of HR practices which are essentially interdependent (e.g. effective selection techniques, opportunities for training and advancement, employee involvement, reward systems, employee voice). Universalism: a new employment relationship for all? One of the key features of the Pfeffer argument is that ‘best practice’ HRM is capable of being used in any organization, irrespective of product-market situation, industry, or workforce, and evidence is produced from a range of industries and studies which he claims demonstrates the case for ‘putting people rst’. He notes that the industries in which a ‘best practice’ approach has been shown to work ‘range from relatively low technology settings such as apparel manufacture to very high technology manufacturing processes. The results seem to hold for manufacturing and for service rms. Nothing in the available evidence suggests that the results are country-speci c. The effects of high performance management practices are real, economically signi cant, and general – and thus should be adopted by your organization’ (1998: 33–4). Support for this line of argument is provided by the results from several other studies. For example, Huselid states that ‘all else being equal, the use of High Performance Work Practices and good internal t should lead to positive outcomes for all types of rms’ (1995: 644). He has

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some con dence in his conclusion because the results are ‘consistent across diverse measures of rm performance’ and take into account selectivity and simultaneity bias (1995: 667). Delery and Doty (1996: 825), after comparing the universalistic, contingency, and con gurational perspectives, nd ‘relatively strong support’ for the rst of these and some support for the other two. They expand on this by suggesting that ‘some human resource practices always have a positive effect on performance’, these being pro t sharing, results-oriented appraisals and employment security (1996: 828, emphasis added). There is support from a non-US study as well, with Wood and Albanese agreeing that certain HR practices have a universal effect (1995: 242). This conclusion is not shared by all commentators of course, and the criticisms vary from minor adjustments to, through to downright rejection of, the case that ‘progressive’ HR practices can always provide sustained competitive advantage. Youndt et al. suggest that ‘the universal approach helps researchers to document the bene ts of HR across all contexts, ceteris paribus, [while] the contingency perspective helps us to look more deeply into organizational phenomena to derive more situationally speci c theories and prescriptions for management practice’ (1996: 837). Purcell (1999: 36) is particularly sceptical of the claims for universalism, which lead us, he argues, ‘down a utopian cul-de-sac’. While he recognises that the search for bundles of best practice is important, ‘so too is the search for understanding of the circumstances of where and when it is applied, why some organizations do and some do not adopt HCM, and how some rms seem to have more appropriate human resource systems than others’. There are several reasons why the ‘HRM as best t versus best practice’ question is so dif cult to answer. First, organizations are dynamic and complex, and typically operate in multiple product markets, whereas the contingency models rely on examining links between two sets of static variables – for example, product market and HR practice – which are not static in reality. In addition, similar HR techniques may be perceived in quite dissimilar ways by employees in different situations (Marchington et al., 1994). Second, empirical research is dogged by problems of causality and prescription/description. There are dif culties in establishing whether or not ‘best practice’ HRM is a contributor to, or a bene ciary of, superior organizational performance, and there are logical reasons to support both of these possibilities. Moreover, organizations which are seeking to improve on poor business performance may adopt a set of ‘best practice’ techniques in order to effect this, whereas many others in the same position may see little point investing in their HR systems to achieve a business turnaround. Similarly, organizations which are in strong product-market positions may nd it easy to adopt ‘best practice’ HRM, while others may see little incentive for changing HR practice if the rm is performing well. In other words, although data can be presented from quite different sectors showing the use of ‘best practice’ HRM, this does not mean that it represents a universal panacea, nor does its absence imply that other approaches are ineffective (Wood and de Menezes, 1998: 16). Third, while the prescriptive literature might indicate a ‘preferred style’ either in all or in some situations, there is a multitude of reasons why organizations may manage their human resources in a different way from that prescribed: for example, senior managers may disagree with, misinterpret, or choose not to examine evidence which suggests that particular styles of HRM are likely to lead to improvements in performance; middle managers may not put grand strategies and ideas into effect, perhaps because they have not been adequately trained or because they are suspicious of the ideas; trade unions or employees may obstruct management initiatives; ‘champions’, such as internal change agents or consultants, may have motives for introducing practices which are different


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from those outlined above (Marchington et al., 1993). In effect, as managements are not omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent, because they lack cohesiveness and typically engage in political behaviour, it is probably impossible to determine at an empirical level whether or not best practice HRM is universally applicable. At a conceptual level, however, there are a number of reasons to doubt that best practice is universally applicable. First, despite Pfeffer arguing that the ‘best practice’ approach is applicable in all situations, underpinning many of the points he makes is the assumption that employers have the luxury of taking a long-term perspective or that, with a bit of foresight, they could do so. For example, they are encouraged to hire during the lean times when labour markets are less tight rather than seek to recruit when they have a pressing demand for staff and it is harder to attract the type of applicant who is desired (and desirable). Similarly, there is advice to invest in employees with non-speci c skills who will offer most over the longer term rather than seek to ll posts with staff who can solve immediate needs, for example by providing specialist expertise or qualities which are sought by customers who demand excellent service to satisfy their needs. It is suggested that employees are retained during downturns because it will only cost more to rehire them when the market improves, a practice which also ties in with employment security guarantees. Rather than cutting back on training when times get tough or cash is in short supply, employers are urged to spend more money on training during the lean times since it is probably easier to release employees from other duties when production schedules are less tight or staff can be released from front-line customer service duties more easily. There are good economic and labour-market reasons for employers to do all of these things, but they all depend, to a greater or lesser extent, upon the luxury of a long-term perspective and the prospect of future market growth. Second, it is rather easier to engage in many of these ‘best HR practices’ when labour costs do not form a major proportion of controllable costs, such as in sectors which are capital intensive and where it does not make sense to cut back on essential staff who have highly speci c and much-needed skills (say, in a pharmaceutical or chemical plant or with research scientists). In the situation where one of the major costs is labour, as in many service-sector organizations for example, or there are strict limits to what can be spent in any one year, it is rather more dif cult to persuade other managers and nanciers of the long-term bene ts of investing in human capital. It is unlikely, given their previous behaviour, that bankers and lenders in Britain will perceive the bene ts of taking a strategic perspective on human resources and sacri ce short-term gains for longer-term accumulation. In contrast, there are immense dif culties in being able to persuade employers to adopt a ‘best practice’ approach if they operate in situations where labour costs are signi cant, and where it is dif cult to increase pay rates or offer training when resources are constrained. Moreover, it is unlikely that customers or users will accept inferior short-term service in order to help employers develop talent over the longer-term (e.g. in the health service, local government, textiles factories, pubs and restaurants). Third, so much depends upon the categories of staff whom employers are trying to recruit. MacDuf e is often quoted as someone whose research is supportive of the universality argument, but it is apparent from his studies that ‘best practice’ HRM may actually be situationally speci c. He suggests: Innovative human resource practices are likely to contribute to improved economic performance only when three conditions are met: when employees possess knowledge and skills that managers lack; when employees are motivated to apply this skill and

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knowledge through discretionary effort; and when the rm’s business or production strategy can only be achieved when employees contribute such discretionary effort. (MacDuf e, 1995: 199, emphasis added)

Ignoring (for this paper) the question of motivation, the other two conditions seem to indicate clearly that the circumstances under which ‘best practice’ HRM will make a difference are quite speci c. This is when employee skills and attributes are essential to achieve organizational goals, such as in high-technology industries where work systems and processes cannot be easily codi ed or overseen by managers, or where employees take some time to learn how to do their work effectively and their skills are in short supply. In many situations, the time taken to train new staff is relatively short, work performance can be assessed simply and speedily, and there is a supply of substitutable labour readily available. Here, the rationale for arguing that employers should adopt a best practice approach is hard to sustain. In addition, some jobs are so boring or so unpleasant that it is inconceivable that many people would see employment security, basic training, or information sharing – for example – as any kind of bene t. On the contrary, such employees would undoubtedly resent being expected to take an interest in their organization beyond routine work performance, and nd it stressful and intrusive. In short, the best practice model may be relatively unattractive or inappropriate in some industries or with certain groups of workers. Finally, the dramatic growth in ‘non-standard’ contracts over the past few years has led many commentators to express concern about the extent to which ‘ exible’ employment is compatible with ‘best practice’ HRM, and whether or not the latter can be applied to all employees in an organization. Given a decline in the ‘mutual commitment’ model and concerns that the psychological contract is becoming distorted in favour of employers, there is a feeling that employment insecurity has become more widespread (Boxall, 1996: 68). Support for this perspective comes from the survey by Gallie et al. (1998: 124) which indicates that between the mid-1970s and the early 1990s, the proportion of people who had experienced a spell of unemployment rose throughout each successive time period (in four-year blocks), almost trebling over the twenty years from 7 per cent to approximately 20 per cent of the population. The recent IPD survey by Guest and Conway (1998: 50) also suggests that there has been a decline in employment security, in that the proportion of employees who reported that their organization has ‘a stated policy of deliberately avoiding compulsory redundancy’ has fallen from 66 per cent to 53 per cent between 1996 and 1998. These gures reinforce case-study and anecdotal evidence that employees now feel rather more insecure than they did twenty years ago. However, it is clear that some groups of employees are gaining more from ‘best practice’ HRM than others; as Guest and Conway (1998: 10) note, the presence of such practices is more likely to have been implemented in large organizations, for permanent (rather than temporary) workers, at senior levels in organizations, and for non-blue-collar workers. The distinction between a core and a transient workforce (Holliday, 1995) is becoming clearer, and is substantiated by recent statistical analysis by Burgess and Rees (1998: 630) which shows, inter alia, that the average elapsed job tenure barely changed between the mid-1970s and the early 1990s, with 40 per cent of men and 20 per cent of women having worked for the same employer for over twenty years. This seems to indicate a distinction between longserving core workers, who might need to be nurtured because of their contribution to sustained competitive advantage and who would therefore be the recipients of ‘best practice’ HRM, and non-core peripheral workers who may or may not be employees of the same rm (Purcell, 1999: 30).


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Missing voices in the business case for HRM In all of the persuasive rhetoric on ‘best practice’ HRM, one element is noticeable by its absence – independent employee voice. Not only is this apparent at the workplace, since Pfeffer’s notion of employee involvement is based on economic ef ciency and problem solving rather than industrial democracy, but also in the way the book itself is written. This is essentially a unitarist text and has no conviction that employees are active participants in the employment relationship whose frames of reference may differ from those espoused by their managers. This is not to suggest that Pfeffer is against trade unions. Far from it. Encouragingly, he devotes a strongly written chapter to arguing that there are many advantages to employers in working with unions. Mirroring Purcell’s (1979) work on ‘cumulation’ he argues that, since everything an organization does sends messages to its workforce, then co-operating with employee representatives can only be positive. Important though this is, it is not one of the seven successful practices and consequently may not reach the practitioner audience which will undoubtedly focus primarily on the key prescriptions and recommendations. But his support for unions does not extend to acknowledging the different interests held by the various parties to the employment relationship. Here it is assumed that employee and employer interests naturally converge, that dif culties with initiatives are those of implementation only, and that, other than by providing invaluable assistance to improving productivity and pro tability, employees have no right to a voice in the rms that employ them. His treatment of employee involvement is ultimately only in terms of what the organization as a whole may gain from such practices, mediated of course by employees being more interested in, or committed to, their employers. An alternative, pluralist, conception of participation would place substantial weight on the views which employees have about their organization as a whole, about their grievances as well as their ideas regarding quality and productivity, about the actions of supervisors in managing their work, and about the way in which work is organized and rewarded. Boxall argues rmly that ‘existing notions of internal and external t in the strategic HRM literature do not amount to a theorisation of the employment relationship because they merely prescribe an elegant alignment of managerial practices in a unitary conception of the rm. Much more dif cult, and more apposite, is the question of how to achieve at least a minimal alignment of interests in a pluralistic conception of the rm’ (1996: 68). The unitarist assumptions are apparent in the sources from which Pfeffer draws his material. Chief Executive Of cers are cited with approval and the accounts of both successful and unsuccessful interventions are culled from employers. In this view of the world, employees’ opinions are either unnecessary or self-evident and supplied by Pfeffer himself. These opinions typically express discontent when HR practices are poorly implemented and pleasure when they succeed. In this world view, employees who have an equity stake in the company are indistinguishable from its owners in their behaviour (1998: 83), relations with management are harmonious, and, as long as initiatives are properly implemented, employees will be prepared to demonstrate their loyalty and commitment: ‘Employees at rms where loyalty is building are, other things being equal, more likely to want to identify with the rm by wearing company-logo Tshirts or using company-logo coffee mugs or pens’ (1998: 120). The favoured work-wear of these people not withstanding, such a unitarist orientation is characteristic of most management writings, and it is this which is most worrying about Pfeffer’s publications. By denying employees an active voice in the process and by ignoring the fact that contrasting viewpoints exist, this work – along with much of

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the material which seeks to examine the HRM–performance link – distorts the complexity of the workplace, reducing some of the most fascinating issues that can be studied to the relatively simple problem of how to implement ‘best practice’. Ironically, limiting the readership’s perspective in this way may make them less able to understand the implementation problems which are almost inevitable. As Ezzamel et al. (1996) note, while good employment practice can mitigate some of the tensions inherent in the employment relationship, they cannot resolve them. Assuming that absolute consensus is the natural state of affairs when diverse groups of people come together is not only unrealistic, it is unhelpful. Through this work, Pfeffer seeks to construct a bridge between academic research and the populist texts, and there is much to applaud in this attempt. Given the attention paid to this work, his notion of best practice has certainly made an impact on practising managers, his style is engaging, and the material is often lively. Yet all this is achieved at a price. Pfeffer presents some excellent material to an audience that might not otherwise learn of it, but his text is interspersed with assertions that this model is worthy because it has a nancial pay-off. This is substantiated with references to robust academic work and pieces of homespun wisdom, each of which is accorded equal status in the discussion. Pfeffer cites Capelli et al., Ichniowski et al., John Storey and Keith Sisson, and Stephen Wood, among others. But readers are also assured that treating their employees well will provide their rms with competitive advantage because of the one-eighth rule (1998: 29). This rule says that: one half of the people will not believe the connection between the way business manages people and pro t one half of those who do believe will try a single, one-shot solution rather than a systemic approach one half of rms that do make systemic changes will persist long enough to see the difference. c

c

c

Since 123 123 125 18, this is known as the ‘18 rule’. This is presented in tandem with ‘hard scienti c evidence’ (1998: 30) and no attempt is made to distinguish between the two. Yet such an approach fatally undermines the best aspects of academic work, not by opening it up to a new readership but by assuming that, for this readership to accept it, the lines between empirically derived conclusions and ‘self-evident truths’ must needs be obscured. Analysis and prescription, robust work and tenuous anecdotes, moral tales and optimistic predictions are all con ated, providing a work that is easy to read but hardly a good advertisement for academic labour. The central argument itself also presents dif culties. As the book’s sub-title indicates, this text offers instruction on building pro ts by putting people rst, yet subordinating a moral good to a nancial goal is not only problematic, it also means that the moral aim itself is less likely to be realized. As with Pfeffer’s insecure promise of security, these good employment practices can be offered only as long as they contribute to company performance. He maintains that they do, that over the long term they contribute to pro ts by encouraging loyalty and commitment, by ensuring that people work harder and by providing them the opportunity to ‘work smarter’ (1998: 60–1). However, there are fewer guarantees of the ef cacy of this option than Pfeffer suggests. Not only is enlightened self-interest unlikely (even Pfeffer admits that examples of good practice are declining), it is not a recipe for success, and, in promising that it is, Pfeffer is offering the sort of ‘universal nostrum’ (Storey, 1990) that has earned the practitioner literature so much condemnation. On the basis of their research in eight organizations, Truss and her colleagues are clear that the business case takes precedence


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over the moral argument: ‘the speci cation of the soft model suggests that sort HRM has the dual aims of improved competitive advantage and individual development. This second element appeared to be missing in the organizations we studied. This was most apparent in the case of career development’ (1997: 69). The rhetoric of the ‘best practice’ model in reality was demonstrated by the low level of employee commitment apparent in these organizations. Conclusion Best practice, it seems, is problematic. When unpacked, the practices are much less ‘best’ than might be hoped, there are times when they appear to present contradictory messages, they are not universally applicable, and they tend to ignore any active input from employees – other than to help achieve employer goals – into the organizations for which they work. It is not clear that employees are as enthusiastic about the model as their employers and, if they are, their views are not accorded the same space. In presenting the argument for the adoption of ‘best practice’ HRM, the nature of the employment relationship itself is over-simpli ed and distorted. Useful though this debate has been, and it has certainly catapulted discussions of the links between HRM and performance into the limelight, much more research is needed to make it meaningful and suf ciently rigorous to withstand critical analysis. So much attention has focused on the issue of performance that the nature of what is meant by ‘best practice’ HRM has been relatively ignored. This paper has shown that the concept needs to be analysed much more systematically for it to be worthwhile and that some agreement may be necessary as to what elements might be included in any de nition and how these are to be measured. This may mean a focus on the somewhat wider concept of HR architecture, a realization that different sets of practices may be important in different organizations, and a recognition that employees’ perceptions of work are what really matter at workplace level. If academics and practitioners are serious about discovering what motivates employees and how this can be converted into higher levels of commitment and improved organizational performance, there is a need for more independent, longitudinal case-study research which allows this to be tapped effectively. Notes An earlier version of this paper was presented as the Seventh Annual John Lovett Memorial Lecture at the University of Limerick.

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