High Road and Low Road Teamworking: Perceptions of Management Rationales and Organizational and Human Resource Outcomes

In this article, we explore the relationship between two different types of teamworking, perceptions of management rationales for introducing teamworking and organizational and human resource outcomes. Teamworking is classified into two different types: `high road' and `low road' teamworking. Management rationales for introducing teamworking are categorized as economic, social and cultural. Organizational performance is assessed by perceptions of plant competitiveness, customer care and product quality. We measure human resource outcomes through worker responses, training and promotion, communication and consultation, role of trade union and health and safety. The findings indicate that `high road' teamworking is associated with broader management rationales, and is perceived to have a greater positive impact upon both organizational performance and human resource outcomes. Particular features of high road teams - delayered management, flexible job descriptions, fewer pay bands and grades - were associated with positive outcomes.

[1]  P. M. Podsakoff,et al.  Self-Reports in Organizational Research: Problems and Prospects , 1986 .

[2]  Erich Bloch.  Workplace of the Future , 1984, IEEE Transactions on Industry Applications.

[3]  Frank Mueller,et al.  TEAMS BETWEEN HIERARCHY AND COMMITMENT: CHANGE STRATEGIES AND THE ‘INTERNAL ENVIRONMENT’* , 1994 .

[4]  T. Wall,et al.  A longitudinal field study of group work redesig , 1981 .

[5]  Casey Ichniowski,et al.  The Effects of Human Resource Management Practices on Productivity , 1995 .

[6]  J. Arthur.  The Link between Business Strategy and Industrial Relations Systems in American Steel Minimills , 1992 .

[7]  Peter Wickens,et al.  The Road to Nissan , 1987 .

[8]  Jos Benders,et al.  Team time: a model for developing self‐directed work teams , 1996 .

[9]  Gary W. Muller,et al.  Designing Effective Organizations: The Sociotechnical Systems Perspective , 1988 .

[10]  A. Sinclair.  The Tyranny of a Team Ideology , 1992 .

[11]  Nick Oliver,et al.  High-Performance Manufacturing: Evidence from the Automotive Components Industry , 1997 .

[12]  E. Trist,et al.  Some Social and Psychological Consequences of the Longwall Method of Coal-Getting , 1951 .

[13]  Roger Penn,et al.  Skill and Occupational Change , 1996 .

[14]  P. Blyton,et al.  Re-Casting the Occupational Culture in Steel: Some Implications of Changing from Crews to Teams in the UK Steel Industry , 1997 .

[15]  Ruth Milkman,et al.  The New American Workplace: Transforming Work Systems in the United States. , 1993 .

[16]  Jon R. Katzenbach,et al.  The Wisdom of Teams: Creating the High-Performance Organization , 1992 .

[17]  The Dynamics of Employee Relations , 1999 .

[18]  Bradley L. Kirkman,et al.  Beyond Self-Management: Antecedents and Consequences of Team Empowerment , 1999 .

[19]  Brian E. Becker,et al.  Methodological Issues in Cross-Sectional and Panel Estimates of the HR-Firm Performance Link , 1998 .

[20]  R. Drago.  Workplace Transformation and the Disposable Workplace: Employee Involvement in Australia , 1996 .

[21]  Alan Jenkins.  Teams : From 'Ideology' to Analysis , 1994 .

[22]  Stephen Wood,et al.  High Commitment Management in the U.K.: Evidence from the Workplace Industrial Relations Survey, and Employers' Manpower and Skills Practices Survey , 1998 .

[23]  R. Badham,et al.  Images of Good Work and the Politics of Teamwork , 1998 .

[24]  John Cordery,et al.  Attitudinal and Behavioral Effects of Autonomous Group Working: A Longitudinal Field Study , 1991 .

[25]  David I. Levine,et al.  Reinventing the Workplace: How Business and Employees Can Both Win , 1995 .

[26]  Paul E. Spector,et al.  Relation of job stressors to affective, health, and performance outcomes: a comparison of multiple data sources. , 1988, The Journal of applied psychology.

[27]  Gerald E. Ledford,et al.  A Predictive Model of Self-Managing Work Team Effectiveness , 1996 .

[28]  Harry Scarbrough,et al.  The Unmaking of Management? Change and Continuity in British Management in the 1990s , 1998 .

[29]  Paul R. Yost,et al.  Potency in groups: articulating a construct. , 1993, The British journal of social psychology.

[30]  Paul S. Goodman,et al.  Productivity in Organizations , 1995 .

[31]  Barry Wilkinson,et al.  Pushing back the frontiers: management control and work intensification under JIT/TQM factory regimes , 1992 .

[32]  Paul Stewart,et al.  The Nissan Enigma: Flexibility at Work in a Local Economy , 1992 .

[33]  Eric Trist,et al.  An Experiment in Autonomous Working in an American Underground Coal Mine , 1977 .

[34]  R. Osborn,et al.  Handbook of Organizational Design. Vol. 1: Adapting Organizations to Their Environments. , 1982 .

[35]  John Paul Macduffie.  Human Resource Bundles and Manufacturing Performance: Organizational Logic and Flexible Production Systems in the World Auto Industry , 1995 .

[36]  E. Cohen-Rosenthal.  Sociotechnical Systems and Unions: Nicety or Necessity , 1997 .

[37]  P. Blyton.  STEEL: A CLASSIC CASE OF INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS CHANGE IN BRITAIN* , 1992 .

[38]  E. Lawler.  High-Involvement Management , 1986 .

[39]  Peter Wickens,et al.  The Road to Nissan: Flexibility, Quality, Teamwork , 1987 .

[40]  John A. Wagner,et al.  Participation's Effects On Performance and Satisfaction: A Reconsideration Of Research Evidence , 1994 .

[41]  Jeffrey B. Arthur,et al.  Effects of human resource systems on manufacturing performance and turnover , 1994 .

[42]  Richard,et al.  Motivation through the Design of Work: Test of a Theory. , 1976 .

[43]  T. Wall,et al.  Outcomes of Autonomous Workgroups: A Long-Term Field Experiment , 1986 .

[44]  Paul Sparrow,et al.  Human Resource Management: the new agenda , 1998 .

[45]  Jos Benders,et al.  Quality Management - Teams and their context: Moving the team discussion beyond existing dichotomies , 1999 .

[46]  Elizabeth C. Ravlin,et al.  The Design and Activation of Self-Regulating Work Groups , 1987 .

[47]  Daniel T. Jones,et al.  The machine that changed the world : based on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 5-million dollar 5-year study on the future of the automobile , 1990 .

[48]  R. H. Franke.  The Ultimate Advantage: Creating the High-Involvement OrganizationThe Ultimate Advantage: Creating the High-Involvement Organization By LawlerEdward E.III, San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 1992—371 pages. $29.95 , 1992 .

[49]  Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld,et al.  Japanese Team-Based Work Systems in North America: Explaining the Diversity , 1994 .

[50]  T. G. Cummings,et al.  A Methodological Critique of Fifty-Eight Selected Work Experiments , 1977 .

[51]  D. Wells,et al.  Choosing Sides: Unions and the Team Concept , 1988 .

[52]  B. Dankbaar,et al.  From Complex Organizations with Simple Jobs to Simple Organizations with Complex Jobs , 1997 .

[53]  P. Christopher Earley,et al.  The Impact of Participation on Goal Acceptance and Performance: A Two-Step Model , 1985 .

[54]  J. Richard Hackman,et al.  Psychology and work : productivity, change, and employment , 1986 .

[55]  Mark Fenton-O'Creevy,et al.  Employee involvement and the middle manager: evidence from a survey of organizations , 1998 .

[56]  C. Pearson.  Autonomous Workgroups: An Evaluation at an Industrial Site , 1992 .

[57]  D. Guest.  Human resource management and performance: a review and research agenda , 1997 .

[58]  Ulrich Pekruhl.  New Forms of Work Organisation. Can Europe Realise its Potential? Results of a Survey of Direct Employee Participation in Europe. , 1997 .

[59]  Christian Berggren.  The Volvo Experience: Alternatives to Lean Production in the Swedish Auto Industry , 1993 .

[60]  A. E. Eaton,et al.  The Survival of Employee Participation Programs in Unionized Settings , 1994 .

[61]  Paul Thompson,et al.  Redesigning production through teamworking: Case studies from the Volvo Truck Corporation , 1996 .

[62]  J. Winterton,et al.  Public Enterprise in Transition: Industrial Relations in State and Privatized Corporations , 1993 .

[63]  Nicolas Bacon,et al.  Among the Ashes: Trade Union Strategies in the UK and German Steel Industries , 1996 .

[64]  John E. Delery,et al.  Modes of theorizing in strategic human resource management: Tests of universalistic, contingency, and configurational performance predictions , 1996 .

[65]  J. Wagner,et al.  Percept-Percept Inflation in Microorganizational Research: An Investigation of Prevalence and Effect , 1994 .

[66]  J. Forth,et al.  The 1998 workplace employee relations survey: first findings , 1998 .

[67]  J. Hackman,et al.  The psychology of self-management in organizations , 1986 .

[68]  Susan Albers Mohrman,et al.  Employee Involvement and Total Quality Management: Practices and Results in Fortune 1000 Companies , 1992 .

[69]  J. S. Phillips,et al.  Notes on the Practical and Theoretical Consequences of Implicit Leadership Theories for the Future of Leadership Measurement , 1986 .

[70]  Jay R. Galbraith,et al.  Tomorrow's Organization: Crafting Winning Capabilities in a Dynamic World , 1998 .

[71]  M. Safizadeh.  The Case of Workgroups in Manufacturing Operations , 1991 .

[72]  Gerald E. Ledford,et al.  The Effectiveness of Self-Managing Teams: A Quasi-Experiment , 1994 .

[73]  Brian E. Becker,et al.  Methodological Issues in Cross‐Sectional and Panel Estimates of the Human Resource‐Firm Performance Link , 1996 .

[74]  B. Gerhart,et al.  The Impact of Human Resource Management on Organizational Performance: Progress and Prospects , 1996 .

[75]  H. P. Sims,et al.  Beyond imitation: Complex behavioral and affective linkages resulting from exposure to leadership training models. , 1986 .

[76]  Thomas A. Kochan,et al.  What works at work : overview and assessment , 1996 .

[77]  Dexter Dunphy,et al.  Teams: Panaceas or Prescriptions for Improved Performance? , 1996 .

[78]  S. Smith.  Internal Cooperation and Competitive Success: The Case of the U.S. Steel Minimill Sector , 1995 .

[79]  R. Gooding,et al.  Effects of Societal Trends on Participation Research. , 1987 .

[80]  Frank Mueller,et al.  Designing Flexible Teamwork: Comparing German and Japanese Approaches. , 1992 .

[81]  Ben Dankbaar,et al.  Lean Production: Denial, Confirmation or Extension of Sociotechnical Systems Design? , 1997 .

[82]  E. A. Locke.  Toward a theory of task motivation and incentives , 1968 .

[83]  The New American Workplace: High Road or Low Road? , 1998 .

[84]  David P. Lepak,et al.  Human Resource Management, Manufacturing Strategy, and Firm Performance , 1996 .