01RELATIONALMODELHIGHPERFORMANCEWORKSYSTEMS11页.docVIP

A RELATIONAL MODL OF HOW HIGH PERFORMANCE WORK SYSTEMS WORK INTRODUCTION One of the core principles of strategic human resource management is that organizational performance is influenced by the way employees are managed. In support of this argument, certain sets of human resource practices have been found to improve employee effectiveness and to predict higher levels of organizational performance (Bailey et al. 2001, Ramsey et al. 2000, see also reviews by Becker and Gerhart 1996, Ichniowski et al. 1996). Researchers have documented the impact of human resource practices on efficiency outcomes such as worker productivity (Arthur 1994, Bartel 1994, Datta et al. 2005, Koch and McGrath 1996) and equipment reliability (Ichniowski et al. 1997, Youndt et al.1996), on quality outcomes such as manufacturing quality (MacDuffie 1995) and patient mortality (West et al. 2002), and on business growth (Bartel 2004) and financial performance (e.g., Collins and Smith 2006, Delery and Doty 1996, Huselid 1995, Wright et al. 2006). Human resource practices have been found to also explain performance differences among steel finishing lines (Ichniowski et al. 1997), call centers (Batt 1999), airlines (Gittell 2001), banks (Richard and Johnson 2004) and high technology firms (Collins and Clark 2003), though some studies have found no performance differences associated with human resource practices (e.g., Cappelli and Neumark 2001). Multiple labels have been applied to this basic argument, including high performance work systems, high commitment work systems, high involvement work systems and high performance human resource management. Despite these different labels, the common thread underlying them is that organizations can achieve high performance by adopting practices that recognize and leverage employees’ ability to create value. Though some disagreement remains among researchers, it is generally agreed that these practices include selection, training, mentoring, incentives,