High-Performance Work Systems and Employee Well-being in New Zealand

There is a long tradition of interest in how to enhance worker motivation and raise organisational productivity through improving the design of work. The human relations movement, and such concepts as socio-technical work systems, industrial democracy, and job enrichment, have all had their day in the sun. The notion of ‘high-performance work systems’ (HPWSs) is the most recent manifestation of this concern. The term largely originated in the USA, where it arose in the policy and academic debate over the decline of US manufacturing competitiveness in the face of challenges from other advanced manufacturing societies, most notably Japan, and more recently, from a variety of low-cost developing countries. A landmark report in 1990, America’s Choice: High Skills or Low Wages!, issued by the Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce, expressed strong criticism of the Fordist/Taylorist models of work design prevalent in US mass-production industries, where core production jobs were often low in responsibility, discretion and skill (Cordery and Parker, 2007). It argued for substantial investment in ‘high-performance work organisation’ and in greater workforce skills (Cappelli and Neumark, 2001). This message was reinforced by Appelbaum and Batt (1994) in The New American Workplace and by Appelbaum et al (2000) in Manufacturing Advantage.