Human Resource Management–Performance Research: Is Everyone Really on the Same Page on Employee Involvement?

• Author: Stephen Wood
• Published date: 01 October 2020
• Date: 01 October 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ijmr.12235

International Journal of Management Reviews, Vol. 22, 408–426 (2020)

DOI: 10.1111/ijmr.12235

Human Resource

Management–Performance Research: Is

Everyone Really on the Same Page on

Employee Involvement?

Stephen Wood

University of Leicester School of Business, Brookfield, Leicester LE2 1RQ, UK

Corresponding author email: s.j.wood@le.ac.uk

Differences in the treatment of involvement in the human resource management

(HRM)–performance research stream have been underplayed, as commentaries con-

centrate on showing that HRM produces a performance premium, and more recently

on exploring the mechanisms explaining this. This paper first identifies the two initial

concerns of the research stream – the value of employee involvement and the holistic

treatment of HRM – and the way these arejoined to present a unified view of the area.

It then reviews the studies, confirming that involvement has been underplayed or ne-

glected completely, and is only prioritized in a minority. A divide is identified between

HRM as an orientation towards fosteringemployee involvement – seen as a managerial

philosophy – and as a technology – a set of practices constituting high-performance

work systems. The paper then argues that acknowledgementof this divide matters, and

concludes by drawing out some implications for how we should progress the research

stream.

A strong relationship between human resource man-

agement (HRM) and the performance of an orga-

nization is now generally accepted by HRM aca-

demics and practitioners, as is the view that this

relationship is supported by a solid evidence base,

namely a stream of research studies which emerged

in the 1990s that used quantitative methods to eval-

uate the relationship between the modernization of

HRM and organization performance. This modern-

ization entailed two elements: a focus on employee

involvement and the holistic coordinated use of hu-

man resource practices, including involvement prac-

tices. Reviews of the stream, and introductions to

later studies, present it as a largely homogeneous set

of studies (e.g. Combs et al. 2006; Guest 2011; Wall

and Wood 2005; Wright and Gardner 2003). How-

ever, employee involvement has been underplayed or

I thank Nick Catley for his editorial assistance.

neglected in many studies and the focus has been

on the combined use of a set of practices that often

excludes involvement in favour of skill-acquisition

and motivation-enhancing practices (Wood and Wall

2007). The objectives of this paper are to: (1) re-

view the treatment of involvement in the HRM–

performance studies; (2) expose how the homoge-

neous portrayal of the HRM–performance research

stream is inaccurate; (3) identify how the neglect

of involvement reflects a schism between centring

on employee involvement and on high-performance

work systems; (4) suggest how a lack of appreciation

of this has stymied the development of the field and

led to an overconcentration on the mediation issue at

the expense of more fundamental concerns; and (5)

draw out the implications for the field if we are to

correct the neglect of involvement.

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Human Resource Management–Performance Research 409

Introduction

Reviews of the HRM–performance studies tell the

same story: HRM is good for the economic perfor-

mance of firms and public sector organizations. The

term ‘HRM’ can be used to refer either to a generic

range of sophisticated personnel or human resource

practices, or to a more specific approach built around

employee involvement and development. Both con-

cerns – the holistic approach to personnel manage-

ment and employee involvement – were major im-

petuses behind both the HRM–performance research

and its subsequent presentation as a unified stream.

Within these, HRM is used in a way that twins these

two concerns to signify a more strategic and holistic

approach to personnel management, which entails a

greater emphasis on employee involvement and de-

velopment and diverges from a rigid Taylorist model

based on a narrow division of labour and low em-

ployee involvement.

The portrayal of the field as self-contained and ho-

mogeneous assumes that the studies adequately mea-

sure such a concept and that the consistent finding of

positive relations between the measures and perfor-

mance can be readily generalized. Allied to this has

been the use of high-commitment management, high-

involvement management, and other such terms as

synonymous labels for the modern HRM (e.g. Jiang

et al. 2012; Latorre et al. 2016). It is as if the prolifer-

ation of terms reflects a desire on the part of authors

to differentiate their work, but they are all ultimately

assumed to amount to the same, post-TayloristHRM.

The perceived security of the evidence for the superi-

ority of this model is reflected in the widespread use

of the term ‘high-performance work system’ (a term

originated by the U.S. Department of Labor 1993)

as one of the synonyms for post-Taylorist HRM.

Paul and Anantharaman (2003: 1246) go so far as

to say that its connection to performance has been

‘proved’. Such confidence in the research has led to

calls to move on to explain this relationship between

HRM and performance, rather than simply proving

its existence, as initial studies were criticized for

treating this link as a ‘black box’ (Edgar and Geare

2007; Evans and Davis 2005). These calls have been

heeded, as the field has become dominated by studies

assessing mediators of the relationship (e.g. Beltrán-

Martín et al. 2008; Jiang et al. 2012; Takeuchi et al.

2007). However, while this is important, a more fun-

damental issue of the variety of concepts of HRM

across the studies remains.

Acknowledgement of variations betweenstudies in

reviews has largely been confined to differences in

the practices included in HRM measures, with oc-

casional consideration given to whether studies test

contingent relationships between HRM and perfor-

mance in addition to the universal one (Wood 1999a).

The variation in practices has not been presented as

a serious problem, as most studies are assumed to

cover a sufficiently comprehensive set of these prac-

tices for the field to be presented in a unified way.

It has become commonplace to accept that high-

performing HRM is made up of three types of prac-

tices – skill acquisition, motivation, and opportuni-

ties for participation – a notion that has been codified

in the Abilities–Motivation–Opportunities for Partic-

ipation (AMO) framework (Appelbaum et al. 2000),

and reviewers of the area appear to assume that most

studies cover all three types. Nonetheless, in one re-

view that focuses on the variation in practices, Wood

and Wall (2007) show that this is inaccurate; in par-

ticular, employeeinvolvement, the core of opportuni-

ties for participation, has been underplayed in a sig-

nificant number of studies.

The focus of this paper is on the inconsistency

in the treatment of employee involvement across

the quantitative studies of the HRM–performance

relationship and the implications of this. Employee

involvement is widely seen as having two dimen-

sions, defined by their focus. First is role or job

involvement, which concentrates on employees’ core

jobs, and is concerned with ensuring they have an

element of autonomy and responsibility in their

jobs (Wall et al. 2004; Wood et al. 2012). Second

is organizational involvement, which entails em-

ployees participating in decision-making beyond the

narrow confines of their jobs, so they are involved

in work-organization decisions, other immediate

aspects of their environment, and the ‘business as a

whole’ (Benson and Lawler 2003: 156); or, in Wall

et al.’s (2004: 19) terms, employees having ‘a say in

decisions about the management and strategy of their

organization’. This is often referred to as employee

participation. Throughout the paper we will adopt

the contrasting role- and organizational involvement

terminology.

Organizational involvement is itself differentiated

by whether employees are directly involved or in-

volved indirectly through trade unions or other rep-

resentatives. The focus in the HRM–performance

stream has been on direct involvement, potentially as

a competitor to formal processes, but it need not be

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