High Commitment Management in the U.K.: Evidence from the Workplace Industrial Relations Survey, and Employers' Manpower and Skills Practices Survey

Abstract

Are the practices widely associated with thehigh commitment or involvement model, such as jobflexibility and minimal status differences, actuallyused in conjunction with each other? Or rather are they being used, as some commentators speculate, ina fragmented or ad hoc manner? The authors use LatentVariable Analysis to assess whether practices identifiedwith high commitment management do form a unity. They are simultaneously attempting to see ifsuch practices can be used as indicators for measuringan underlying high commitment orientation on the part ofmanagement. The analysis uses data from the 1990 UK Workplace Industrial Relations Survey andits sister survey, the Employers' Manpower and SkillsPractices Survey, on the use of a range of highcommitment practices across the whole economy. Theevidence suggests that there is an identifiable patternto the use of high commitment practices. Fourprogressive styles of high commitment management (HCM)were discovered. Though the use of it in its entirety is still relatively rare in the UK, theproportion of organizations with medium levels of highcommitment management is higher than is perhaps commonlyassumed. High degrees of high commitment management are not necessarily associated with nonunionworkplaces. The research also demonstrates that HCM doeshave some performance effects, though they are notunique to it since those organizations that adopt high commitment management in its entirety donot perform better on any performance criteria than allothers, but they do perform better than sometypes.