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We present theoretical and empirical evidence challenging early studies that found unions were detrimental to workplace innovation. Under our theoretical model, unions prefer product innovation to labor-saving technological process innovation, thus making union wage bargaining regimes more conducive to product innovation than competitive pay setting. We test the theory with population-representative workplace data for Britain and Norway. We find strong support for the notion that local bargaining leads to product innovation, either alone or together with technological innovation.

There is an increasing concern on the quality of jobs and productivity witnessed in the flexible employment arrangements. The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between various flexible employment arrangements and the workplace performance.

Home-based working, teleworking, flexible timing and compressed hours are the main employment types examined using the Workplace Employee Relations Survey (WERS) over the years 2004 and 2011 in Great Britain. The workplace performance is measured by two outcomes – the financial performance and labour productivity. First, the determinants of these flexible employment types are explored. Second, the ordinary least squares (OLS) method is followed. Third, an instrumental variable (IV) approach is applied to account for plausible endogeneity and to estimate the causal effects of flexible employment types on firm performance.

The findings show a significant and positive relationship between the flexible employment arrangements and the workplace performance. Education, age, wage, quality of relations between managers-employees, years of experience, the area of the market the workplace is operated and the competition are significant factors and are positively associated with the propensity of the implementation of flexible employment arrangements.

The insights derived from the study can have various profound policy implications for employees, employers and the society overall, including family-work balance, coping with family demands, improving the firm performance, reducing traffic congestion and stress among others.

It is the first study that explores the relationship between flexible employment types and workplace performance using an IV approach. This allows us to estimate the causal effects of flexible employment types and the possible associated social implications.

High-involvement work processes (HIWPs) are associated with high levels of employee influence over the work process, such as high levels of control over how to handle individual job tasks or a high level of involvement at team or workplace level in designing work procedures. When implementations of HIWPs are accompanied by companion investments in human capital – for example, in better information and training, higher pay and stronger employee voice – it is appropriate to talk not only of HIWPs but of “high-involvement work systems” (HIWSs). This chapter reviews the theory and practice of HIWPs and HIWSs. Across a range of academic perspectives and societies, it has regularly been argued that steps to enhance employee involvement in decision-making create better opportunities to perform, better utilization of skill and human potential, and better employee motivation, leading, in turn, to various improvements in organizational and employee outcomes.

However, there are also costs to increased employee involvement and the authors review the important economic and sociopolitical contingencies that help to explain the incidence or distribution of HIWPs and HIWSs. The authors also review the research on the outcomes of higher employee involvement for firms and workers, discuss the quality of the research methods used, and consider the tensions with which the model is associated. This chapter concludes with an outline of the research agenda, envisaging an ongoing role for both quantitative and qualitative studies. Without ignoring the difficulties involved, the authors argue, from the societal perspective, that the high-involvement pathway should be considered one of the most important vectors available to improve the quality of work and employee well-being.

The purpose of this paper is to survey developments in four aspects of collective employment relations (ER) since the mid-1960s: collective representation and organisation; collective bargaining coverage and structure; the collective bargaining agenda; and joint consultation arrangements. It considers the reasons underlying change.

A range of published sources are drawn on, including quantitative, survey based and qualitative, case-study and other evidence.

The landscape of collective ER has changed markedly over the past half century. Membership of trade unions has fallen from around half of the workforce to one-quarter. Employers who mainly conducted collective bargaining through employers’ associations now negotiate, if at all, on a firm-by-firm basis. Collective bargaining coverage has sharply declined and now only extends to a minority of the private sector workforce. The bargaining agenda has been hollowed out. Joint consultation arrangements too are less widespread than they were around 1980.

The paper contends that change has been driven by three underlying processes. “Marketization” of collective ER entailing a shift from an industrial or occupational to an enterprise frame of reference. The rise of “micro-corporatism”, reflecting increased emphasis on the common interests of collective actors within an enterprise frame. Finally, the voluntarism, underpinning Britain’s collective ER became more “asymmetric”, with employers’ preferences increasingly predominant.

The purpose of this paper is to take a serious look at the relationship between joint consultation systems at the workplace and employee satisfaction, while at the same time accounting for the (possible) interactions with similar union and management-led high commitment strategies.

Using new, rich data on a representative sample of British workers, the authors identify workplace institutions that are positively associated with employee perceptions of work and relations with management, what in combination the authors call a measure of the “good workplace.” In particular, the authors focus on non-union employee representation at the workplace, in the form of joint consultative committees (JCCs), and the potential moderating effects of union representation and high-involvement human resource (HIHR) practices.

The authors’ findings suggest a re-evaluation of the role that JCCs play in the subjective well-being of workers even after controlling for unions and progressive HR policies. There is no evidence in the authors’ estimates of negative interaction effects (i.e. that unions or HIHR negatively influence the functioning of JCCs with respect to employee satisfaction) or substitution (i.e. that unions or HIHR are substitutes for JCCs when it comes to improving self-reported worker well-being). If anything, there is a significant and positive three-way moderating effect when JCCs are interacted with union representation and high-involvement management.

This is the first time – to the authors’ knowledge – that comprehensive measures of subjective employee well-being are being estimated with respect to the presence of a JCC at the workplace, while controlling for workplace institutions (e.g. union representation and human resource policies) that are themselves designed to involve and communicate with workers.

The paper aims to explore the role of union strategic influence on the adoption of High Performance Work Systems (HPWS) in organisations and examines how the effects of job security and then in turn the industrial relations climate, mediate this relationship in a serial manner.

The research analyses an original quantitative survey of union negotiators and representatives in 382 workplaces in England. The analysis employs structural equation modelling techniques to examine the relationships between union influence, job security, industrial relations climate and HPWS.

Union strategic influence has a positive effect on the take up of HPWS in unionised workplaces. Job security and the industrial relations climate demonstrate a serial mediation effect between union strategic influence and the take up of HPWS: union strategic influence has a positive effect on job security, which in turn positively impacts the industrial relations climate, thereby increasing the likelihood of the adoption of HPWS. The findings for the industrial relations climate are particularly strong.

Findings suggest that organisations will benefit from focussing on the development of positive industrial relations, where unions have genuine strategic influence, because this maximises the likelihood that HPWS can be adopted and sustained.

The paper provides a novel focus on the take up of HPWS within unionised workplaces. It focusses on the role of union strategic influence and the mediating effects of job security and the industrial relations climate, which are contextual factors that have been underexplored in the HPWS literature to date.

To examine the experience of agency employment for workers and employers' use of agency workers in Britain to evaluate competing claims made about this form of work.

This paper draws on results from three recent representative surveys of employment in Britain to examine the current nature and experience of agency work: the Labour Force Survey; the Workplace Employment Relations Survey and the Working in Britain, 2000 Survey.

The findings indicate that there is little evidence of the purported association between agency work and the emergence of the “knowledge economy”, as suggested by some. Turning to employers' use of agency labour, it is found that this has been driven by pressures relating to labour costs, possibly reflecting short‐term considerations. As for workers' experience of agency employment, this paper reports their dissatisfaction with many aspects of agency work, resulting in low levels of commitment and high anxiety about their work situation.

Whilst the use of agency workers may provide short‐term benefits for organisations there is considerable evidence that, in the absence of remedial action, a number of challenges are likely to emerge for human resource practitioners. In particular, organisations may incur longer‐term costs through extensive utilisation of employment agency labour.

Agency work has grown rapidly but little is known about short‐term experiences or longer term implications. The paper fills a gap in knowledge about the current nature of agency work, and provides an empirical assessment of competing claims about this form of work

The purpose of the paper is to compare employment relations in the hotel industry in Australia and the UK. Australian industry employment is regulated by the state and union recognition is enshrined. A substantial proportion of Australian hotel employers engage directly in firm‐level bargaining with trade unions, with unionisation rates across the industry far higher than in the UK. The analysis focuses on employment strategies emphasising numerical/temporal and functional flexibility since efforts to enhance workplace flexibility underpin employment regulation in Australia.

The paper draws on interviews conducted in 13 exclusive, luxury hotels in Australia. Interviewees consisted of HR and departmental managers, employees across all hotel departments and relevant union officials.

Labour utilisation practices in Australian luxury hotels reflect relatively sophisticated and systematic endeavours on the part of employers. The specific content and effect of these strategies varies in accordance with hotels' bargaining arrangements. Whilst employee relations outcomes were not entirely without problems in Australian luxury hotels, they do signify that regulation and trade union recognition can produce substantial benefits for employers and employees.

Recognition of potentially positive employment relations outcomes in Australia points to the need for further research in the UK to reassess employers' attitudes to trade unions in a changing employment relations landscape.

The paper offers a comparison between Australia and the UK in an area that is still relatively under‐researched.

The purpose of this paper, with an organisational focus, is to offer a novel examination of the association between workforce nationality composition and workplace flexibility practices (WFPs), an under-researched topic with high potential benefits at microeconomic and macroeconomic level.

British data are used, as the UK has experienced significant immigrant flows and has a relatively high level of labour market flexibility. The Workplace Employee Relations Survey 2011, sampling 2,500 British workplaces, offers for the first time data on workforce nationality. Via zero-inflated regressions, the number of non-UK nationals employed in a workplace is assessed against a wide range of numerical, functional and cost WFPs.

There are significant links between WFPs and the employment of non-UK nationals, and these are distinct for non-UK nationals from the European Economic Area (EEA) when compared to non-UK nationals from outside the EEA. The former are more likely to be in “good” employment, with job security, working from home, job autonomy and training. Yet, both types of non-UK nationals are more likely to be employed in workplaces making high use of causal contracts. The implications of these results are discussed.

The paper addresses the need to research migration from a relatively new perspective of WFPs while also taking into account the diversity of non-UK nationals. The topic is of importance to organisations, as well as to labour market and migration policymakers. Timely results are of value in view of heightened interest in migration.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze employer responses to vacancies and skill shortages by adopting certain workplace practices.

Making use of the longitudinal nature of the Workplace and Employee Survey, a nationally representative sample of Canadian organizations, the paper applies both linear and probit models to examine incidence of positive vacancies and vacancy rates and subsequent adoptions of various workplace practices in response to such vacancies and skill shortages.

Employers respond to labour and skill shortages in a number of ways, focusing more on short‐term and less costly solutions, such as adoption of flexible working hours and increases in overtime hours, greater reliance on flexible job design and part‐time workers, and implementation of self‐directed work groups and problem‐solving teams. There is no evidence that workplaces would raise employee wages or fringe benefits to alleviate shortages.

In the absence of a well‐developed internal market, firms are likely to continue using short‐term and less costly solutions. Governments should work with firms, workers and their representatives and act strategically to resolve issues of timely identification of skill shortages in order to make informed decisions and put mechanisms in place to address such shortages.

The results are based on a national longitudinal survey and a number of important practical and policy implications are discussed in the paper