| The Shamrock Organization: Determinants and Consequences of Externalization |
| | Bendapudi, Venkat | Ohio State U., Columbus | bendapudi.3@osu.edu | (614)-292-0868 |
| | Ash, Ronald A. | U. of Kansas | rash@bschool.wpo.ukans.edu | (785)-864-7550 |
| | The traditional full-time employment relationship is increasingly giving
way to contingent employment via temporary, part-time or contract work.
This trend has led writers such as Charles Handy (1990) to suggest that
organizations are moving toward a shamrock structure, with one leaf
comprising full-time workers, and the two others comprising temporary/
part-time workers and contract workers respectively. However, very little
is known about the nature or impact of these emerging employment
relationships. This paper examines two important issues in the use of
contingent or externalized workers. First, when are externalized workers
more likely to be used? Second, what is the effect of externalization
on firm performance? Specifically, the paper examines the conditions under
which externalization enhances or decreases firm performance.
Results from a random sample of U.S. firms show that a variety of
environmental variables (munificence, dynamism, complexity, and government
role), and strategic variables (intensity of internalization, cost vs.
differentiation) can successfully predict when externalized workers are
more likely to be used. Further, the relationship between externalization
and firm performance is moderated by specific boundary conditions. Firm
performance is enhanced (turnover is lower, productivity is greater, and
financial performance is better) when greater usage of externalized workers
is matched with intense internalization of full-time workers. Firm
performance is also boosted when greater externalization is used in
conjunction with a differentiation strategy as opposed to a cost focused
competitive strategy. The implications of the findings for theory and
practice are discussed.
|
| | Keywords: Contingent Work; Firm Performance; HR-strategy fit |
| Strategic and Environmental Determinants of HRM Innovations in Post-Socialist Poland |
| | Weinstein, Marc Glenn | U. of Oregon | marcw@oregon.uoregon.edu | 541-346-3292 |
| | Obloj, Krzysztof | U. of Warsaw | kobloj@wspiz.edu.pl | 48-625-3126 |
| | In the last two decades, research in human resource management has increasingly focused on strategic linkage between the activities of the human resource function and the business goals of enterprises. Most of the theoretical and empirical work in this area has focused on the U.S. context. This paper extends this research to a non-U.S. context. Specifically, we examine data from 303 state-owned, domestic private, and foreign-owned firms to test how strategic and environmental variables are related the adoption of human resource innovations. This analysis suggests that business strategies, local labor markets, and the presence of foreign competition are related to the complexity and extensiveness of firm-level human resource practices. |
| | Keywords: HRM; Poland; Strategy |
| Do Part Timers Pull Their Own Weight: Evidence from a Software-Intensive Industry |
| | Bronson, James W. | U. of Wisconsin, Whitewater | jbronson@badlands.nodak.edu | (414) 472-5588 |
| | Dougan, William L. | U. of North Dakota | dougan@badlands.nodak.edu | (701)-777-3228 |
| | Flexible work options include the use of permanent part-time (PPT)
employees, a category that comprises about 10% of the U.S. work force.
This paper tests the proposition that the use of PPT's creates strategic
advantage via an intra-industry examination of travel agencies. The
results show that firms do not make effective use of PPTs to accommodate
changes in work flow during times of higher demand. The use of PPTs was
significantly negatively associated with one performance measure,
efficiency. Additional findings suggest that the successful use of PPTs
may be related to business-level strategy, but not related to the
technology employed by the firm. The use of PPTs was found to decline in
larger and older firms. Finally, findings show that the use of PPT’s
does not differ between single-unit and multi-unit firms. |
| | Keywords: flexible; part-time; efficiency |
| Information Value in High Involvement Work Systems: The Adoption of Participation in Hospitals |
| | Preuss, Gil A. | Case Western Reserve U. | gap4@po.cwru.edu | (216)-368-0799 |
| | This paper examines the determinants of employee involvement, a key component of high involvement work systems, in organizations. In contrast to existing research, this paper focuses on the nature of unique information held by different employee groups within the production process as the determinant of employee involvement in decision making. Through an analysis of multiple occupations within organizations, I find that the adoption of employee involvement is significantly shaped by the type of information available to occupational groups through the conduct of their work. Those with access to unique and critical information for the organizational production process are most actively integrated into decision making processes. In addition, several competitive and strategic factors shape the adoption of employee involvement across occupational groups controlling for access to information.
This finding suggests that organizations are strategically adopting employee involvement on the basis of potential contribution of employees to organizational performance. While previous research has focused on organizational and environmental determinants of employee involvement programs, future research must examine how differences in occupational access to critical information shape the adoption of high involvement work systems. This research is conducted in acute care hospitals within a single metropolitan region of the United States.
|
| | Keywords: Employee involvement; Information; Health care |