High
Performance
Work Systems
Arezou Biabani, Brittany Cook,
Sanober Hashmi, Jo Short,
Trisha Tran
What is a High Performance Work System?
Group of separate but interconnected HR practices
Designed to enhance employee effectiveness.
Results in better skills, more motivation, and more opportunities to
excel.
HR practices must be aligned and work in harmony
A Meta-Analysis of Country Differences in
the High-Performance Work SystemBusiness Performance Relationship: The
Roles of National Culture and Managerial
Discretion
Brittany Cook
Key Terms
HPWS
High Performance Work
Practices
Cultural Tightness-Looseness
Power distance
Institutional Flexibility
Purpose
Will HR practices that work in one country work the same in another.
To determine if the HPWS-Business Performance relationship is
moderated by country differences in national culture and
institutional factors.
Method
Consisted of 156 studies from 35,767 firms, and 29 countries.
Studies had to measure both HPWS and Operational/Financial performance
outcomes
Moderators:
Cultural Tightness-Looseness
Institutional flexibility
Results
Take Home Message
HPWS are effective on a global level
HPWS should be tailored to some extent to local culture, but not to the
extent that previous National Culture Theories believed
HPWS can potentially lead to lower turnover
Major gaps in this study
Fails to take into account the variance in cultures within a country
Fails to consider if HPWS are common in that country
An Employment Systems Approach to
Turnover: Human Resources Practices, Quits,
Dismissals, and Performance
Jo Short
The Study
Turnover
HPWS
Customer
Service
Incentives
Survey of call centers in 1998 and 2003
Senior managers took surveys about their core workforce
HPWS measured by extant of employee discretion, use of problem-solving
groups, and use of self-directing teams
Results
Long Term
Incentives
HPWS
Short Term
Incentives
Turnover
Customer
Service
Take Home Message
Implementing a High Performance Work System...Depending on the
business model
Reevaluate current incentive models to make sure it aligns with the
business
Contract employees
Internal promotional paths
Mentorships
Developing Collective Customer Knowledge
and Service Climate: The Interaction Between
Service-Oriented High-Performance Work
Systems and Service Leadership
Sanober Hashmi
Key Terms
Service Climate: employee perceptions of the practices and
procedures that get rewarded with regards to customer service and
customer service quality.
Service Leadership: business leader’s behavioral focus as an example
for the unit
Collective Customer Knowledge: knowledge employees have on
different customer types and dealing with customer needs.
Is there a positive correlation???
1. Service Leadership will positively relate to customer
knowledge and service climate.
1. Service-Oriented HPWS will positively relate to customer
knowledge and service climate.
The Method
Huge high fashion shoe retailer with more than 5,000 retail stores
used to collect data.
1st round: Implementation of Service Oriented HPWS
2nd round: Employees = Service leadership and service climate
Store managers = Collective customer knowledge and service
performance
Service
Leadership
Collective
Customer
Knowledge
Service Oriented
HPWS
Service
Climate
HPWS *
Service
Leadership
Low to High Leadership makes a
difference!
Take Home Message
Invest in HRM practices or rely on the behavior
of leaders for superior customer service.
It may not be efficient to invest heavily in both
of these approaches at the same time.
Redundancy.
The role of employee HR attributions in the
relationship between high-performance work
systems and employee outcomes
Trisha Tran
Key Terms
HR Attributions
Organizational Commitment
Job Strain
Multi-level
The Study
The Study
High Performance Work
Systems
HR Well-Being
Attribution
Job Strain
Method
HPWS data is collected from line managers
Data on HR attributions, commitment, and job strain are directly from the
employees
Collected within a wide variety of industries
Measured along 5 functional HPWS areas
26 HPWS items were grouped into 3 bundles: skill enhancing, motivationenhancing, and opportunity enhancing
Results
The Study
Not significant
High Performance Work
Systems
HR Well-Being
Attribution
Job Strain
-.13
Take Home Message
Find a balance between well-being attributions and performance
attributions in order to utilize HPWS to retain quality employees
Work-life balance
Performance appraisals
Surveys
Group goal setting
Turnover group (slide 30): Career development, company specific trainings
Walking The Tightrope: An Assessment of the
Relationship between High-Performance
Work Systems and Organizational
Ambidexterity
Arezou Biabani
Key Terms
● Ambidexterity: to exploit and explore opportunities concurrently
● Ambidexterity congruence: extent to which exploration and exploitation
are conducted simultaneously
● Discipline: to have clear performance standards & expectations
● Stretch: to set goals that “raise the bar”
The Study
● Using HPWS to get ambidexterity
● Achieving firm growth through ambidexterity
?
→
HPWS
?
→
Ambidexterity
Firm growth
Method
● 215 high-tech small/medium-sized firms 10-250 employees
● Likert scale survey
→ HPWS: 27-item scale measuring HR practices
→ Ambidexterity: 12-item scale measuring exploitation & exploration
● Firm growth: Compounded annual growth rate of sales & employee
growth
Scale Items
1, “strongly disagree,” to 5, “strongly agree”
Ambidexterity:
Exploration → Looks for novel technological idea by thinking “outside the box”
Exploitation → Commits to improve quality and lower cost
HPWS:
Employees in our firm are often asked to participate in decisions
Results
Take Home
● To produce an ambidextrous organization, HR practices should be linked
to discipline, stretch, support & trust
● To successfully link HPWS to ambidexterity, HR practices should ensure:
→ Selective staffing
→ Extensive training
→ Results-oriented appraisal, rewards & participation
→ Internal mobility
→ Employment security
Group Take Home Message
Before investing in a HPWS make sure it aligns with the organization
Know that the results of a HPWS take time and are hard to measure
One HPWS will not necessarily work the same way in another company