2000/12/01 by Harvie Ramsay, Dora Scholarios, Bill Harley · 888 citations
Business, Management and Accounting · Engineering · Health Professions · #Artificial intelligence #Black box #Business #Computer science #Conceptualization #Economics #Employment and Welfare Studies #Engineering #Incentive #Job Satisfaction and Organizational Behavior #Knowledge management #Labour economics #Marketing #Microeconomics #Operations management #Organizational Downsizing and Restructuring #Performance management #Process (computing) #Process management #Risk analysis (engineering) #Set (abstract data type) #Work (physics) #Work systems
paper · doi:10.1111/1467-8543.00178
published in British Journal of Industrial Relations 38(4), 501-531 (Wiley)
openalex publication_date 2000/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/25
Most work on high‐performance work systems has examined only the direct relationship between a set of management practices and performance outcomes. This presumes that any connection operates through the incentive and motivational effects captured as ‘high‐commitment’ or ‘high‐involvement’ employee outcomes. No attempt has been made to examine the alternative, Labour Process conceptualization, which expects performance gains from new management practices to arise instead from work intensification, offloading of taskcontrols, and increased job strain. Using data from WERS98, we tested models based on high‐performance work systems and labour process approaches. Both were found wanting, and we consider the possible implications of these failures.