A Qualitative Analysis of Employees’ Experience of High Performance Work Systems in the UK Financial Service Sector

The dominant theme within Human Resource Management (HRM) literature concerns the identification of human resource (HR) practices which will yield favourable firm level outcomes and employee behaviours. While a number of studies have investigated the relationship between High Performance Work Systems (HPWS) and improved organisational performance, outcomes from the perspective of employees have received less attention. This is despite claims that a causal path from the HR practices to increased performance is mediated by employees. Furthermore, previous studies have frequently been reductionism-ridden because of employing a positivistic approach which limits its analysis to empirically concrete phenomena or a constructionist approach which reduces a phenomenon to a discourse of it. Consequently, studies of HPWS are under-theorised and lack explanatory power. The present study advances the theoretical developments of HPWS by adopting a critical realist approach. An analysis of the dynamic interaction between structure, culture and employee individual agency casts light on the ways in which their interplay impacts on the actual form that High Performance Work Practices (HPWP) take on the office floor and how they shape employees’ experience. This project explores employee outcomes in the form of the levels of autonomy employees can exercise in the High Performance Work Organisation (HPWO) and the ability of HPWS to elicit employee organisational commitment and the form it takes. Two case studies of organisations from the financial services sector in the UK were undertaken using qualitative methodology. The empirical level of respondents’ experiences and perceptions is explored, based on their answers during semi-structured interviews. Insights into the actual stratum of reality are attempted by triangulating the interviews with observation and analysis of materials provided by the organisations studied. Insights into the deeper realm of underlying causal mechanisms is gained by an examination of rich contextual information on global capitalism, the UK’s liberal market economy, the financial service sector and organisational culture. The analysis identifies counteracting causal mechanisms which result in a hybrid form of HPWS and a differentiated implementation according to employee categories. The study has not found significant evidence to suggest that commitment strategies have effectively replaced control strategies in HPWO. Employees’ agency, evident in their relationship with the organisation which many base on the exchange principle, shows that respondents do not passively give in to the emergent properties of structures but actively and reflexively pursue their ‘projects’. However, the study also highlights the structural constraints on employees’ agential behaviours and the respondents’ willing acceptance of the circumscribed form of HPWS implementation and the limited positive employee outcomes. The project explores these findings in the light of the specific organisational and political-economic context and discusses how social structures condition employees’ orientations and the way they engage with HPWS. The thesis provides a new line of interpretation through contextually sensitive, multilevel analysis of the key causal forces shaping HPWO dynamics by examining social structure and agency without collapsing one into the other.

Name dc:type.qualificationname

PhD

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

Doctoral

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

De Montfort University

Year dc:date.issued

2010

Author dc:creator

• Wilkowska, Iwona

Licence

• https://dora.dmu.ac.uk/bitstreams/344c0c92-5ac8-4318-84fc-21bbb2c76e71/download