Using nationally representative workplace data we find substantial use of high-performance work systems (HPWS) in Britain's small enterprises. We find empirical support for the proposition that HPWS have a non-linear association with employees' overall job attitude, with a positive association...

Using nationally representative linked employer-employee data for Britain in 2004 and 2011 we find school staff are more satisfied and more contented with their jobs than "like" employees in other workplaces. The differentials are largely accounted for by the occupations school employees...

Working remotely can complement and sometimes completely substitute conventional work at the workplace of the company. Until the COVID-19 crisis the share of remote workers was relatively low and empirical investigations show inconsistent results. The recent work has highlighted a dramatic shift...

Using linked employer-employee data for Finland we examine associations between job design and ten measures of worker wellbeing. In accordance with Karasek's (1979) model we find positive correlations between many aspects of worker wellbeing and job control. However, contrary to the model, job...

Few studies investigate the links between high-performance work systems (HPWS) on public sector organizational performance and worker job attitudes. We fill this gap with analyses of these links using linked employer-employee surveys of workplaces in Britain in 2004 and 2011. We find robust...

Using new, rich data on a representative sample of British workers, we examine the relationship between joint consultation systems at the workplace and employee satisfaction, accounting for possible interactions with union and management-led high-commitment strategies. We focus on non-union...

A long-running debate in the small firms' literature questions the value of formal 'human resource management' (HRM) practices which have been linked to high performance in larger firms. We contribute to this literature by exploiting linked employer-employee surveys for 2004 and 2011. Using...

I examine the history of employee engagement and how it has been characterised by thinkers in sociology, psychology, management and economics. I suggest that, while employers may choose to invest in employee engagement, there are alternative management strategies that may be profit-maximising. I...

We describe the nature, scope and effects of various non-mandated participatory work practices in Japan, the U.S. and Europe through the lens of complementarity in organizations. Specifically, rather than treating each work practice in isolation, we consider it an element of HIWS (High...

Using nationally representative linked employer-employee surveys of workplaces with 50 or more employees we find the adoption of High-Performance Work Systems (HPWS) in the private sector is largely positively correlated with employee job attitudes pre-recession. However, high intensity HPWS has...