IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ehl/lserod/19909.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Catching a wave: the adoption of voice and high commitment workplace practices in Britain: 1984-1998

Author

Listed:
  • Bryson, Alex
  • Gomez, Rafael
  • Kretschmer, Tobias

Abstract

In this paper we treat workplace voice and systems of high-commitment human resource management (HCHRM) as technological innovations in order to account for the uneven diffusion patterns observed across establishments. Using British data, the paper finds that variables highlighted in the technological diffusion literature are significant predictors of voice and HRM adoption decisions. Workplace size, size of multi-establishment network, ownership type, set-up date and network affects all play a significant role in high-commitment HRM adoption. We also find that union presence, per se, is not an inhibitor to the adoption of high commitment HRM practices.

Suggested Citation

  • Bryson, Alex & Gomez, Rafael & Kretschmer, Tobias, 2005. "Catching a wave: the adoption of voice and high commitment workplace practices in Britain: 1984-1998," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 19909, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:19909
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/19909/
    File Function: Open access version.
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Michie, Jonathan & Sheehan, Maura, 1999. "HRM Practices, R&D Expenditure and Innovative Investment: Evidence from the UK's 1990 Workplace Industrial Relations Survey (WIRS)," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 8(2), pages 211-234, June.
    2. Bikhchandani, Sushil & Hirshleifer, David & Welch, Ivo, 1992. "A Theory of Fads, Fashion, Custom, and Cultural Change in Informational Cascades," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 100(5), pages 992-1026, October.
    3. Heli Koski & Tobias Kretschmer, 2004. "Survey on Competing in Network Industries: Firm Strategies, Market Outcomes, and Policy Implications," Journal of Industry, Competition and Trade, Springer, vol. 4(1), pages 5-31, March.
    4. Geroski, P. A., 2000. "Models of technology diffusion," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 29(4-5), pages 603-625, April.
    5. Heli Koski & Tobias Kretschmer, 2004. "Entry, Standards and Competition: Firm Strategies and the Diffusion of Mobile Telephony," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 26(1), pages 89-113, November.
    6. John Godard, 2004. "A Critical Assessment of the High‐Performance Paradigm," British Journal of Industrial Relations, London School of Economics, vol. 42(2), pages 349-378, June.
    7. Richard R Nelson & Alexander Peterhansl & Bhaven Sampat, 2004. "Why and how innovations get adopted: a tale of four models," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 13(5), pages 679-699, October.
    8. Bryson, Alex, 2001. "Union effects on managerial and employee perceptions of employee relations in Britain," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 4957, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    9. Michael T. Hannan & L·szlÛ PÛlos & Glenn R. Carroll, 2004. "The evolution of inertia," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 13(1), pages 213-242, February.
    10. Milgrom, Paul & Roberts, John, 1995. "Complementarities and fit strategy, structure, and organizational change in manufacturing," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(2-3), pages 179-208, April.
    11. Casey Ichniowski & Kathryn Shaw & Giovanna Prennushi, 1995. "The Effects of Human Resource Management Practices on Productivity," NBER Working Papers 5333, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Thomas Astebro, 2003. "The Return to Independent Invention: Evidence of Unrealistic Optimism, Risk Seeking or Skewness Loving?," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 113(484), pages 226-239, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Bruce E. Kaufman & Benjamin I. Miller, 2011. "The Firm's Choice of Hrm Practices: Economics Meets Strategic Human Resource Management," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 64(3), pages 526-557, April.
    2. Blanden, Jo & Machin, Stephen & Van Reenen, John, 2005. "New survey evidence on recent changes in UK union recognition," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 768, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    3. Bruce E. Kaufman, 2013. "The economic organization of employment: systems in human resource management and industrial relations," Chapters, in: Anna Grandori (ed.), Handbook of Economic Organization, chapter 16, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    4. Bryson, Alex & Freeman, Richard B., 2007. "Doing the right thing? does fair share capitalism improve workplace performance," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 4964, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    5. Antonioli, Davide & Mancinelli, Susanna & Mazzanti, Massimiliano, 2013. "Is environmental innovation embedded within high-performance organisational changes? The role of human resource management and complementarity in green business strategies," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 42(4), pages 975-988.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Adel Ben Khalifa, 2019. "Direct and Complementary Effects of Investment in Knowledge-Based Economy on Innovation Performance in Tunisian Firms," Journal of the Knowledge Economy, Springer;Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET), vol. 10(2), pages 561-589, June.
    2. Isabel Maria Bodas Freitas, 2011. "Technological learning environments and organizational practices--cross-sectoral evidence from Britain," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 20(5), pages 1439-1474, October.
    3. Francesco Bogliacino & Giorgio Rampa, 2010. "Monopolistic competition and new products: a conjectural equilibrium approach," Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination, Springer;Society for Economic Science with Heterogeneous Interacting Agents, vol. 5(1), pages 55-76, June.
    4. Battisti, Giuliana & Iona, Alfonsina, 2009. "The intra-firm diffusion of complementary innovations: Evidence from the adoption of management practices by British establishments," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(8), pages 1326-1339, October.
    5. Heli Koski & Tobias Kretschmer, 2004. "Survey on Competing in Network Industries: Firm Strategies, Market Outcomes, and Policy Implications," Journal of Industry, Competition and Trade, Springer, vol. 4(1), pages 5-31, March.
    6. Vaidyanathan, Geeta & Sankaranarayanan, Ramani & Yap, Nonita T., 2019. "Bridging the chasm – Diffusion of energy innovations in poor infrastructure starved communities," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 99(C), pages 243-255.
    7. Spyros Arvanitis & Florian Seliger & Tobias Stucki, 2013. "The Relative Importance of Human Resource Management Practices for a Firm's Innovation Performance," KOF Working papers 13-341, KOF Swiss Economic Institute, ETH Zurich.
    8. Luís Cabral & Gonçalo Pacheco-de-Almeida, 2019. "Alliance Formation and Firm Value," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 65(2), pages 879-895, February.
    9. Sandra E. Black & Lisa M. Lynch, 2001. "How To Compete: The Impact Of Workplace Practices And Information Technology On Productivity," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 83(3), pages 434-445, August.
    10. Giovanni Dosi & Richard Nelson, 2013. "The Evolution of Technologies: An Assessment of the State-of-the-Art," Eurasian Business Review, Springer;Eurasia Business and Economics Society, vol. 3(1), pages 3-46, June.
    11. Xiong, Hang & Payne, Diane & Kinsella, Stephen, 2016. "Peer effects in the diffusion of innovations: Theory and simulation," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 1-13.
    12. RAITERI Emilio, 2015. "A time to nourish? Evaluating the impact of innovative public procurement on technological generality through patent data," Cahiers du GREThA (2007-2019) 2015-05, Groupe de Recherche en Economie Théorique et Appliquée (GREThA).
    13. Heli Koski & Tobias Kretschmer, 2004. "Entry, Standards and Competition: Firm Strategies and the Diffusion of Mobile Telephony," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 26(1), pages 89-113, November.
    14. Grajek, Michal & Kretschmer, Tobias, 2009. "Usage and diffusion of cellular telephony, 1998-2004," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 27(2), pages 238-249, March.
    15. Guo, Xiaoli & Ryvkin, Dmitry, 2022. "When is intergroup herding beneficial?," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 120(C), pages 66-77.
    16. Sandra E. Black & Lisa M. Lynch, 2005. "Measuring Organizational Capital in the New Economy," NBER Chapters, in: Measuring Capital in the New Economy, pages 205-236, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Rui Leite & Aurora Teixeira, 2012. "Innovation diffusion with heterogeneous networked agents: a computational model," Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination, Springer;Society for Economic Science with Heterogeneous Interacting Agents, vol. 7(2), pages 125-144, October.
    18. Bodas Freitas, Isabel Maria, 2008. "Sources of differences in the pattern of adoption of organizational and managerial innovations from early to late 1990s, in the UK," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(1), pages 131-148, February.
    19. Bocquet, Rachel & Brossard, Olivier & Sabatier, Mareva, 2007. "Complementarities in organizational design and the diffusion of information technologies: An empirical analysis," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 36(3), pages 367-386, April.
    20. Bohlin, Anders & Gruber, Harald & Koutroumpis, Pantelis, 2010. "Diffusion of new technology generations in mobile communications," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 22(1), pages 51-60, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    High-commitment work practices; voice; unions; technology diffusion; complementarities;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • M54 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Personnel Economics - - - Labor Management
    • J51 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor-Management Relations, Trade Unions, and Collective Bargaining - - - Trade Unions: Objectives, Structure, and Effects
    • O33 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Technological Change: Choices and Consequences; Diffusion Processes

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:19909. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: LSERO Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/lsepsuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.