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“High Performance Work Practices represent a ‘win-win’ solution: benefitting both
employers and employees”. Discuss the extent to which you agree/disagree with this
statement.
Yufei Gao
Student number: 159027560
Total Words: 4880
Since the emergency, High Performance Work Practices (HPWPs) have been accepted by
a large number of companies in the UK (DTI, 2003, cited in Armitage and Ramsay, 2009:
59). Ashton and Sung (2005: 3) introduce the definition of HPWPs as “a set of
complementary work practices” which are divided into three part: high employee
involvement practices; human resource practices; reward and commitment practices.
Ramsay et al. (2000: 506, cited in Sparham and Sung, 2007: 5) use a diagram to illustrate
the HPWPs model that HPWPs can be divided into three elements: management
relations, discretion and extrinsic satisfaction. In his theory, management relations and
discretion are contributing both to high commitment and high involvement management,
while extrinsic satisfaction is just related to high commitment. Then high commitment
and high involvement approaches contribute to organizational performance. As the power
of people occupies an important role in both of the two approaches, and the two
approaches both contribute to organization performance, we can get the result that the
main purpose of HPWPs is to increase the performance of organization by managing
people (Sparham and Sung, 2007).
Source: Adapted from Ramsay et al. (2000: 506, cited in Sparham and Sung, 2007: 5)
Organisations accept differing perspectives on the employment relationship that have
impact on the HPWPs adoption for organizations. High-involvement practices include
motivation by offering opportunity, team working, better communication and higher
degree of empowerment (Macky and Boxall, 2007). As the central perspective of unitarist
is high involvement of employees (Lewis et al, 2003), we can see the high-involvement
practices are underpinned the unitarist perspectives to a large extent. For high-
commitment approach, Sparham and Sung (2007: 3) hold the idea that it takes a function
of bridge for practices and performance by a “cultural/motivational” perspective that
emphasis “loyalty of employees” and “sharing of organisational goals”, that correspond
to unitarist perspectives of “developing a more engaged, involved and motivated
workforce” (Crow, 2016). From these theories, it seems that unitarist perspectives are
closer to HPWPs adoption than pluralist and radical perspectives.
However, unitarism also includes contents that are not related to high-involvement
practices. The element of unitarism also reflects paternalism, which means employees are
required to take few suspects towards employer, and this may be contrary to the mission
of high-involvement practices——“involving employees in the decision-making process”
(Ashton and Sung, 2002: 1).
Besides, a survey from Cully et al. (1999, cited in Lewis et al., 2003: 261) provided data
that prove unionised (represented by pluralism) organisations did better than non-union
(represented by unitarism) organisations in communicative aspect: “Forty-nine per cent
of unionised workplaces provided information to employees about their financial
position, investment and staffing plans, compared with just 27 per cent of non-union
workplaces that provided all three of these types of information.” Therefore, sometimes
in the implementation process of high-involvement practices and reality, pluralist
perspectives are adopted.
In this article, we will discuss HPWPs mostly from high involvement/commitment
practices, present the HPWPs’ impact on organization and employee, discuss the extent
of HPWPs that can lead to a ‘win-win’ situation that benefit both employers and
employees, with both theoretical method, case study, and relate to the perspectives of
management/employee relations.
Many arguments about the impact of HPWPs refer to the positive link between
organisational performance and HPWPs. For example, Ashton and Song (2002: 3)
explain the organisational performance is enhanced by higher productivity and
profitability that “in HPWOs human beings produce higher-quality goods and services
using less human labor”, Mihail et al. (2013: 191) also emphasize the importance of
productivity to performance as “improving productivity is one of the critical success
factors in order to keep up with global competition”. Sparham and Sung (2007: 2) hold
the idea that not only organisations can enjoy higher productivity and profitability, but
also workers can share positive results by the increasing of employees’ skills and
rewards, which is called “win-win” situation.
As mentioned above, HPWPs emphasize the power of people, and it increase productivity
by managing people (Sparham and Sung, 2007). For achieving higher skills employees,
job rotation and multi-skilling (Ashton and Sung, 2003: 3) are introduced, and
continuously learning opportunities are provided. This is presented by Gerhart (2004,
cited in Macky and Boxall, 2007: 540) as ‘AMO’ theory (ability, motivation,
opportunity) ——increasing employees’ working abilities, enhancing their motivation,
and offering employees with more opportunities to “make full use of their knowledge”.
From Lewis et al. (2003: 260)’s understanding, excepts the “task-level involvement” that
is related to fulfillment of employees’ skills”, “communicative involvement” and
“financial involvement” are other two elements of employee involvement. “Being in a
high performance work organization has been associated with higher job satisfaction”
(Armitage, 2009: 61), that job satisfaction is the consequence of developed
communication and higher reward. In HPWOs, teamworking and self-managed that
related to employee empowerment help communication developed from management to
co-workers, that means employees have more possibility to enjoy the working
environment (Ashton and Song (2002: 3).
Evidences also prove that there is a clear link between involvement and HPWPs
(OECD,1999; Cappelli, 1998; Applebaum, 2000, cited in Ashton and Song, 2002: 20).
The reason may be divided into two sides, firstly it is because the increase of profitability
in organisation leads to higher reward, another is because in HPWOs, performance-
related reward system is widely used, that increases other possible financial benefits. The
Laiki Bank is an example, it is a company that HPWPs adopt largely in financial and
business sector. In Laiki Bank, reward is closely related to individual performance, stock
is offered to employees who can reach certain standard, for enhancing employees’
commitment to organization, thus can maximize individual efforts and performance
(Ashton and Sung, 2002: 37). Another HPWO example is SATS Security Services. This
company has a typical performance-related system, salary is determined by upgrading,
promotions, awards and so forth. The company offers a number of awards, such as
“Service Excellence Awards, Citation Awards, Merit Awards, Best Team, Best Employee
and Long-service Awards”, these awards carry a number of points, and then the points
can transfer into cash reward. Non-financial benefits are also related to individual
performance, such as every year the top five performers could receive an oversea meeting
trip. Under the system, employees are praised by better performance. (Ashton and Sung,
2002: 51)
We can see that, though implementing HPWPs, organisations make effort to develop
employee’s skills and make fulfillment of their working ability. Besides, they also use
reward system to motivate workers, workers in HPWOs usually could gain more money.
In the process, the quality of workforce is developed, and job satisfaction is increased,
employee performance is enhanced by employee attitude and skills, vice versa,
organizational performance is enhanced by employee performance, thus can benefit
employee and employer, and leads to a win-win situation.
Theoretically, ‘win-win’ situation is easy to explain. From unitarist perspective, the ‘win-
win’ situation of HPWPs has little suspect because unitarist does think the employees and
employees share the same objective and interest. They “tend to overlook or downplay the
conflicting interests of employers and employees”, and “organisational goals are aligned
with employee’s interest”, therefore, “any potential conflict between the two parties can
be avoided through enhancing HRM” (Zhang et al., 2013: 3198).
In 2005, Ashton and Sung choose 10 cases from ‘100 Best Companies (To Work For)’
survey in 2004 to analysis, among these cases, Pannone and Partners was really
remarkable, from unitarist perspective, the analysis of Pannone and Partners conveys a
large extent of factors that would lead to ‘win-win’ situation.
Pannone and Partners is one of the fastest growing legal companies in Manchester, UK,
with 600 staff and a turnover of 33.5 million pounds. In 2004, facing with the industrial
competition, the turnover of Pannone and Partners still grew 20 per cent and profit grew
22 per cent. It is noticed that one of the most important factors for the success of Pannone
and Partners is the HPWPs implementation (Sparham and Sung,2007).
90% of employees of Pannone and Partners strongly recommended working here, and the
turnover was just 4.6% (Sparham and Sung,2007). We can infer from the data that the
employees have high intrinsic satisfaction towards their company. Intrinsic satisfaction,
which is seen as a benchmark if organization can achieve a ‘win-win’ solution, is
different from extrinsic satisfaction, that is mentioned in Ramsay et al. (2000)’s diagram.
Extrinsic satisfaction can be enhanced by performance-related pay (Sparham and Sung,
2007), it would increase the commitment of employees, then transfers into organisational
performance. However, even though payment and reward is an essential part of high
performance practices, just implementing one aspect is probably not enough for receiving
employee’s well-being and will not lead to intrinsic satisfaction.
Like many other high performance working organisations, Pannone and Partners also
relate payment to high-commitment, for example, employees who take no sick leave in
the past year could have a £100 award, and if the sickness leave time is less than three
days, the money would be £75. However, last year, just 15% of workers reported work
stress. That is because enjoyment and social are essential in the Pannone and Partners’
working life. Besides the benefits such like free healthcare, unexpected gift and free
internet usage after working time, there is even a social club in Pannone and Partners,
where staff go there to have a drink after working. The work-life balance gets a
satisfaction of 72 per cent for Pannone and Partners (Sparham and Sung, 2007).
As I mentioned before, the problem of unitarist perspective of HPWPs is unitarist
organisation has paternalism culture, which means employees are required to take few
suspects towards employer, and it may decrease the involvement of employees. Pannone
and Partners solves the potential problem by establishing employee’s trust towards
leadership and emphasizing communication.
Trust in management is positively correlated with job satisfaction and employee
performance. Employee’s trust emerges from how the management’s attitude towards
them in day-to-day life, and “providing employees with more opportunities to participate
in decisions” increases employees’ trust towards management (Macky and Boxall, 2007:
541). Whitener (2001, cited in Macky and Boxall, 2007) believes that trust in
management has a mediating function in their “attitudinal responses” to HPWPs. Macky
and Boxall (2007: 559) suggest that trust in management helps employees to identify
organisational values, enhances the effort they put into the organisational success, and
feeling pride to belong to it, that is actually, that refers to organisational commitment and
involvement at workplace.
The leader of the company started working in basic-level as a trainee 25 years ago, and
has already worked in Pannone and Partners for 10 years. The working experience gives
her a deeper understanding of employees and the company. Feeling the leadership is
more supportive and committed to them, employees would develop higher trust in
management (Whitener, 2001, cited in Macky and Boxall, 2007). Under the leadership,
Pannone and Partners adopts high-involvement approach that emphasizes
communication. In Pannone and Partners, employees are free to talk to management, they
also have an internal notice board for information access. It creates a communicative and
high-involvement culture, and increases employee’s trust in management. Thus, good
suggestions and ideas are interacted and leadership disapproval rate is low, from the
survey, about 84 per cent of the employees trusted their leader (Sparham and Sung,
2007). So, paternalism and high-involvement are not always contrary. When employer’s
decisions represent the benefits of employers and employees still involve in the decision-
making process, employee’s trust in employers would be high, and increase job
satisfaction and organisational performance.
We can see from above that people is valuable in the process of implementing HPWPs in
Pannone and Partners. They insist that profit should not increases at the cost of
employee’s happiness, and “creating a satisfied workforce is more important as a basis
for sustained performance” (Sparham and Sung, 2007: 12). It has already been formed as
a culture. The change of culture is the essence of implementing HPWPs, only with that,
the process could be completed successfully and a ‘win-win’ solution can be achieved.
Another case that forms a typical culture is Bacardi-Martini, the company which got the
fifth rank in ‘100 Best Companies’ survey. Their practices adoption is famous for PACT
(Productivity, Accountability, Creativity, Teamwork) which increases organisational
performance, and family culture which benefits employee’s welfare (Sparham and Sung,
2007).
Bacardi adopts an unitarist perspective on management, the company emphasizes
employee’s loyalty and “happy to be associated with Bacardi” (Sparham and Sung, 2007:
50). For achieving this objective, Bacardi adopts family culture to enhance employee
intrinsic satisfaction. Family culture means that in Bacardi-Martini, benefits are not only
for employees but also for their family members even for lived-in partners, these benefits
include free hot meals at the dining room, private health care, life insurance, sports
facilities, and so forth. In addition, social events are about family also. This helps Bacardi
have a good working environment and has positively efforts with employee’s
commitment. The survey showed that 87 per cent of employees are pride of working for
Bacardi (Sparham and Sung, 2007).
However, the factors to achieve employee’s satisfaction is complicated, as personal favor
differs from one to another. Workers who have babies may think highly of family-
friendly policy while some energetic employees value career prospects and promotion
opportunities most. What companies can do, is find the general needs of employee and
offer practices that can cover common demands, such as payment and reward,
participation, family-friendly policy, promotion opportunities, training, and so forth.
What we need to notice is even in the typical example offer a solution of ‘win-win’ such
like Pannone and Partners and Bacardi-Martini, it is impossible to achieve 100 per cent
employee satisfaction, they still have employees who are stressful with the working life.
‘Win-win’ solution is achieved just in an extent, not absolutely.
Regardless of the extent of ‘win-win’, in reality, not all the organizations could develop a
successful ‘win-win’ HPWPs like Pannone and Partners and Bacardi-Martini. The link
between HPWPs and ‘win-win’ solution is still seen as “black box” (Macky and Boxall,
2007: 537; Mihail et al., 2013: 190).
In this article, the analysis of the reason that HPWPs not leading to a ‘win-win’ solution
will include three aspects: from the reason; from the process; from the result.
Firstly, it is normal for most of researchers ignore one limitation: they always focused on
the implement of HPWPs make organisations get better performance and higher
profitability, but ignore other factors’ broader that HRD strategy such as “mergers and
acquisitions, economies of scales, relationship with government and politics” (Lloyd,
2000; Keep and Coleman, 2001, cited in Ashton and Sung, 2002: 22), business market
strategy, and research expenditure (Ashton and Sung, 2002: 22). This breaks the ‘HPWPs
can lead to win-win situation’ from reason perspective, that even the performance
enhanced in the organization, that is not necessarily because of the adoption of HPWPs.
Besides the reason level issue. There are a number of issues that prevent the
implementation of HPWPs, many factors can make HPWPs fail to complete in
organisations.
It is well-known that the process to implement HPWPs lasts long time, as it aims to
“provide continuous improvement and long-term competitive advantage” (Bulter et al,
2004, cited in Armitage and Ramsay, 2009: 59) through changing the culture of the
organization and employee attitude. And “no one programme is sufficient to ensure the
effective of HPWPs” no matter how well organized (Ashton and Sung, 2002: 30). The
fourth largest manufacturer beverage company——South African Breweries has accepted
HPWPs from about 25 years ago. It took nine years and several programmes to complete
the process. The first phase was in 1992-1993, called “Best Operating Practice” (BOP1),
including “redesigning work”, work teams establishing, “shop-floor problem solving”
(Ashton and Sung, 2002: 30). In 1993, line managers took the responsibility of people
management, and the role of HR specialists transferd to support line managers. In 1995, a
structured “realignment” done and 50 per cent of SAB employees were distributed. It was
until 1997 that the second phase took place, under the preparation of first phase, aims at
developing employee skills, and received satisfied result (Ashton and Sung, 2002: 30).
Another example is Mandarin Hotel——one of the biggest luxury hotel chains
worldwide. The strategy for introducing HPWPs concluded five dimensions: “recruitment
and selection; training and development; succession planning; compensation and
benefits; employee relations” (Ashton and Sung, 2002: 30). The process contained a
number of stages, that means some dimensions were placed earlier than others, and it was
estimated to be completed in three to four years, which was also a long time.
Besides the long length of time, studies also found that it is only when “bundles of
practices”(MacDuffie, 1995: 197) combined to work that performance do improve,
sole practice even can lead performance to a decline (Inchiowski and Shaw, 1995; Wood,
2001, cited in Ashton and Sung, 2002: 19). The number of bundles is not small, in 2000,
Guest identified 18 practices and in 2003 extended the number to 48 (Guest et al., 2003).
In a CIPD report written by Ashton and Sung (2005), they introduced 35 practices. For
specific company, they should choose the right practices and constitute effective bundles,
and not more HR practices results in better performance (Guest et al., 2003: 307). Macky
and Boxall (2007) consider the complementariness among HPWPs, the practices in the
bundles should be interactive and not just simply addition. They relate the bundles of HR
practices to ‘internal fit’ of HRM strategy, and business strategy to ‘external fit’. The two
should be integrated to get the goals of the organization (Wilton, 2013: 59), and consider
how to balance “short-run productivity and long-run agility” (Macky and Boxall, 2007:
538).
The requirement of long time and correct bundles of practices both can restrain the
employers’ interest of insisting HPWPs. Employers might not continue to add high
performance practices because it is not cost-effective during the implementing process,
and need time to show the positive effect. Previous studies suggest that HPWPs are not
cost-effective for organizations (Macky and Boxall, 2007). It is said that HPWPs are just
for “rich man’s club” (Ashton and Sung, 2002: 148), The high cost may include higher
financial rewards, training cost, “possible inefficiencies arising from participatory
decision processes” and “various resource requirements to maintain high involvement
levels” (Godard, 2004: 367). Because of that, employees need to balance the investments
and gains, and it may cause finance tension and what we will discuss later, work
intensification (Godard, 2004). In a Hong Kong company which successfully built a new
team provided technique solution interviewed by Ashton and Sung (2002: 165), they
needed to pay for the training and the labor turnover fees for replacing the objectors,
besides, the company’s existing procedures also need to change for cooperating the new
team. So the company might not keep on the adoption of HPWPs. For the companies
which interrupt HPWPs, a rebound might arise and has a disadvantage effect on
employees and organizations, causes lose-lose solution.
SMEs (small and medium-size organizations) are under more risks. Even though most
SMEs do have a family climate, and the hierarchy in SMEs is flatter than large firms, the
owner normally hold the power of strategic decision-making (Marlow, 2002, cited in
Kroon et al., 2013). Additionally, SMEs have less source of fund, support and time than
larger firms. They are busy completing short-term goals and have less possible to keep on
providing appropriate rewards. Some SMEs may just try HPWPs and soon could not bear
the financial pressure, then give up. It can result in two disadvantages: for employees,
with not enough rewards, workers will withdraw their commitment to organizations
(Ashton and Sung, 2002: 4), HPWPs may transfer to work intensification; for employers,
they may suffer operation funds shortage, and less employee satisfaction also would lead
to performance decline. In this case, HPWPs represent a ‘win-lose’ even ‘lose-lose’
solution.
Similar situation happens in the “domestic market of the older societies that still have a
strong demand for mass-produced goods” (Ashton and Sung, 2002: 149). In this kind of
market, the price of goods is the most concern, shareholders are tending to emphasize
short-term gains. If HPWPS implement in these markets, the adoption of HPWPs could
remain in a low level, they are either less likely to represent a ‘win-win’ situation. In
contrary, the industries that have used to require high quality and skilled products can
adopt HPWPs better.
The last rejection of ‘win-win’ solution is from the result of HPWPs implementation,
Mackey and Boxall (2008, cited in Zhang et al., 2013: 3198) find that HPWPS can lead
to “either higher job satisfaction or dissatisfaction”, and the lever is workload. Wood and
de Menezes (2011, cited in Zhang et al., 2013: 3198) find that HPWPS reduce job
satisfaction and increases employee anxiety.
Different from unitarism, pluralists have a pessimistic view towards employers and
employees share the same interests and organisational goals match employee well-being.
They suggest that “high performance and work intensification are two sides of the same
coin”, performance gains are obtained through work intensification (Zhang et al., 2013:
3198). And even for organisations which prefer not to impose work intensification, as the
cost of HPWPs is high, employers need to ensure high profit otherwise it would fail.
Employees may still feel stress, even though not be forced from employers (directly) but
stress can be generated by themselves (indirectly) (Godard, 2004: 368). Besides,
performance-related payment has potential to cause work intensification, either. With
many HPWOs adopt performance-related payment, some organisations recognise “team
reward detracts from teamwork” (Ashton and Sung, 2002: 27). Thorn Lighting, Ltd is a
company does not adopt reward system based on team or individual performance. With
payment related to performance, it is possible for individuals giving up cooperating with
each other to complete working tasks but result in competition among co-workers and
mental anxiety.
Therefore, from pluralists’ perspective, there is a high possibility of HPWPs leading to a
‘win-lose’ solution.
However, the opinion that all organizations with pluralist perspective would not lead to a
‘win-win’ solution is untenable. Wilkowska (2005: 2) shows her opinion that for HPWPs,
employees will work harder in HPWPs but also “derive more satisfaction from work if
given more autonomy, responsibility and flexibility”. Mihail et al. (2013) provide a
positive ‘win-win’ example of a company that stresses the workload.
Aesculap AG is a Germany globally company. At the end of 1990s, Aesculap AG carried
out a “turnaround plan” facing with the industry market competition. In the process, it is
clear that employees faced with more pressures because the increase of working time.
Employees accepted additional working time without payment——24 minutes per day,
and they had no more flexible smoking breaks before 10 March, 2004. The plan does
gain a positive organization outcome: even during world economic crisis, Aesculap AG
still exceed 7 percent increasing in revenues and 13 increasing in workforce. In addition,
the company is seen achieving ‘win-win’ situation for both employers and employees.
(Mihail et al., 2013)
Firstly, we should see that in Aesculap AG, many measures are made to ensure job
security. The additional working time is separated partly into training program taught by
external experts. It is called “qualification time”, and regarded by employees as an
advantage to secure their jobs as Aesculap AG is a fast growing company. The company
have a good environment for employees to get career promotion. And no layoffs accepted
in Aesculap without the involvement of works council, it does enhancing the sense of
security for employees who work there. In rewards area, though wages are not increased
by extra working time, employee’s earning are increased as the bonus are performance-
related. (Mihail et al., 2013)
Besides enhancing job security, Aesculap AG emphasizes factors that related to
employee’s trust, involvement, and communication. Formal participation processes that
collecting suggestions and feedbacks are adopted. “Knowledge comes with people”
(Mihail et al., 2013: 205) is pointed out, teamwork, communication and information
sharing are seen as the key factors of HPWPs. Norbert Braun, a management
representative explained:
We try to advance communication and information among the employees. Many
companies have to face that: there can’t be only top-down management; today’s
employees actively get involved. Open communication means sharing good and negative
feedback. Through that we prove our trust-based relationship. (Mihail et al., 2013:
206)
Measures also reflect in recruitment process, since 2001, Aesculap AG has recruited
about 400 employees. Employee’s impact on HPWPs is not only providing skills and
knowledge, but also, as mentioned above, worker’s favor on job differ from one
candidate to another, with employees who are consistent with the mission of
organization, job satisfaction can be arose easier. Aesculap AG thinks higher of the
candidate’s “ability to learn continuously and work cooperatively towards the company’s
goal” (Mihail et al., 2013: 207).
Trade union takes a vital role in the pluralist organizations still could have a ‘win-win’
situation. Trade union’s function was mentioned in Aesculap AG. From the beginning of
implementing HPWPs, trade union “Arbeitgeberverband Südwestmetall”took part into
the negotiation with the company. Union helps to ensure employees participate in
decision-making process and “share in the benefits of enhanced productivity and
profitability” (Ashton and Sung, 2002:138). Conflicts of interest should be “resolved
through negotiation and collective bargaining” (Wilton, 2013: 252). That can reduce the
effect of workload and give more possibility to lead to job satisfaction.
The case of Aesculap AG shows the possibility that work intensification leads to
worker’s benefit. It means with pluralist perspectives, HPWPs could lead to ‘win-win’
situation. What’s more, unitarism also has possibility to lead to ‘win -lose’ solution. One
of the danger of high-involvement practices implementation is they may be used to
enhance control of workers in unitarist organizations (Ashton and Sung, 2002:138). As
the existing of paternalism, employees may be forced to show interests the same as
employers. In this case, employees may drive less satisfaction as unitarism against the
existing of trade union and they receive less job security.
Actually, it is indicated that there are at least two types of HPWPS in practice. One is the
profit-oriented HPWPs and the other is a ‘win-win’ HPWPs. Organizations introduce the
profit-oriented HPWPS as “a tool to boost financial performance” (Sparham and Sung
2007, cited in Zhang et al., 3198). It has a possibility for these organizations sacrificing
the benefit of employees in the process of implementing HPWPs. As a result, profit-
oriented organizations have a higher chance lead to job dissatisfaction (Ramsay et al.
2000; Sparham and Sung 2007, cited in in Zhang et al., 2013: 3198). The ‘win-win’
HPWPs emphasize the effect of “high-commitment, job satisfaction and extra-role
behaviors” in enhancing organizational performance (Zhang et al., 2013: 3198). The
employers know sacrificing the benefit of employees makes a negative effect on the long-
term implementation of HPWPs. It is possible for these organizations to lead to a ‘win-
win’ solution. Therefore, “easily come out the conclusion that Pluralism result in profit-
oriented HPWS and unitarism leads to another” is not correct, we need to “exam the
nature of HPWPs in different organizations” (Zhang et al., 2013: 3198).
However,two types of HPWPs do not available at Radical organisation. The difference
between radical and pluralist perspectives is that radical hold the idea that there are “deep
class conflicts of interest” (Wilton, 2013: 252), rather than group conflicts(pluralism), so
conflicts are “constant, inevitable, and irreconcilable” (Wilton, 2013: 252), it is until the
“structure of society” (Wilton, 2013: 252) changes that true workplace harmony could be
realized. As “employee interests are subordinated to those of owners” (Godard, 2004,
cited in Macky and Boxall, 2007: 558). So, from radical perspectives, there is always
have a reason for employers to sacrifice the benefit of employees, and “employees always
have a reason not to trust employers” (Godard, 2004, cited in Macky and Boxall, 2007:
558). In the radical organisations, ‘win-win’ solution is not available for radical
organisation, a ‘win-lose’, even ‘lose-lose’ result would be lead to.
In conclusion, both with unitarist and pluralist perspectives, high performance work
practices can represent a ‘win-win’ solution under certain conditions. Different types of
organisations have different HPWPs adoption. Generally, organisations realize the
situation by enhancing employee involvement/ commitment, offering better reward and
opportunity, receiving higher employee trust and satisfaction. From unitarist perspectives,
‘win-win’ situation is easily to be achieved as employers and employees share the same
interests and objectives. Pluralist perspectives hold an opinion that work intensification is
inevitable in the process of implementing HPWPs, as a result, a ‘win-lose’ situation is
usually leaded to. However, if work intensification could be handled appropriately, it can
also lead to job satisfaction, trade union also make an effort to the result of ‘win-win’.
However, implementing HPWPs is not easy to complete successfully. The process
requires long length of time and fund, besides, employers should have high skills of
management as the right bundles of practices are required to choose. Small and medium
organisations take more risks in this case, as they have less resource and support.
Domestic market of the older societies is in a similar condition. In addition, even the
organisational performance enhanced after HPWPs adoption, it has a possibility that is
not because of this reason.
From radical perspectives, it is until the society changes that deep conflicts between
employers and employees can be solved. So it is not possible for organisations achieve
‘win-win’ solution, even with HPWPS implementation.
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