Tag

Productivity

Nov 20
0

Effect of Poor Employee Management Relations on Productivity in Business Organization

By | Case-study, Nigeria

Summary

This case study analyses the result of the poor management of Kotec Industries in Onitcha, Nigeria. With a lack of any form of social dialogue on an organisational or sector level, employees face late promotions, and late and inadequate pay, which leads to employee resentment and enmity towards the governing board of Kotec Industries. The author suggest governmental intervention in the import of raw materials in order to enhance productivity and the ability of the organisation to pay and promote its employees.

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Nov 19
0

Making sense of the numbers: Sector wage bargaining – a literature review

By | New Zealand

Summary

This study uses New Zealand collective agreements to assess the relationship between productivity and agreements. They find that collective bargaining does have a positive impact on wage markup, but that this does not necessary correlate with increases in profitability. However, evidence over 20 years does suggest that the erosion of collective bargaining leads to an increase in the gap between organisational productivity and wage markup.

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Apr 20
0

The Impact of Union-Management Cooperation on Productivity and Employment

By | Social dialogue

Abstract

This study examines the effects of union-management cooperative programs on productivity and employment. The author collected productivity and employment data for each of nine manufacturing plants at monthly time intervals over a period of four to five years—from two years before to at least two years after the introduction of the cooperative program. Regression analysis of these time-series data is supplemented by qualitative data from personal interviews and relevant records. The results show that after introduction of the cooperative programs, productivity increased in six of the eight firms in which it could be measured and employment remained stable in eight of the nine firms.

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Apr 20
0

Unions and Productivity, Financial Performance and Investment: International Evidence

By | Australia, Canada, Germany, Japan, Social dialogue, UK, United States

Abstract

If the presence of a union in a workplace or firm raises the pay level, unless productivity rises correspondingly, financial performance is likely to be worse. If the product market is uncompetitive this might imply a simple transfer from capital to labour with no efficiency effects, but is probably more likely to lead to lower investment rates and economic senescence. Therefore the impact of unions on productivity, financial performance and investment is extremely important. This paper distils evidence on such effects from six countries: USA, Canada, UK, Germany, Japan and Australia. It is not possible to use theory to predict unambiguously any union effect on productivity because unions can both enhance and detract from the productivity performance of the workplace or firm. The evidence indicates that, in the USA, workplaces with both high performance work systems and union recognition have higher labour productivity than other workplaces. In the UK previous negative links between unions and labour productivity have been eroded by greater competition and more emphasis on ”partnership” in industrial relations but there is a lingering negative effect of multi-unionism, just as there is in Australia. In Germany the weight of the evidence suggests that the information, consultation and voice role of works councils enhances labour productivity particularly in larger firms. In Japan unions also tend to raise labour productivity via the longer job tenures in union workplaces which makes it more attractive to invest in human capital and through the unpaid personnel manager role played by full-time enterprise union officials in the workplace. Unions will reduce profits if they raise pay and/or lower productivity. The evidence is pretty clear cut: the bulk of studies show that profits or financial performance is inferior in unionised workplaces, firms and sectors than in their non-union counterparts. But the world may be changing. A recent study of small USA entrepreneurial firms found a positive association between unions and profits and in the UK the outlawing of the closed shop, coupled with a lower incidence of multi-unionism has contributed to greater union-management cooperation such that recent studies find no association between unions and profits. North American and German evidence suggests that unionisation reduces investment by around one fifth compared with the investment rate in a non-union workplace. In both Canada and the USA this effect is even felt at low levels of unionisation. The UK evidence is mixed: the most thorough study also finds that union recognition depresses investment, but this adverse effect is offset as density rises. The exception is Japan where union recognition goes hand-in-hand with greater capital intensity.

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Apr 19
0

Union effects on performance and employment relations: Evidence from China

By | China, Social dialogue

Abstract

This paper empirically studies union effects on the performance of, and employment relations in, China’s private enterprises. The study finds a positive and statistically significant union effect on labor productivity, but not on profitability. It further finds that unions lead to better employee benefits and increased contract signing in employment. These findings suggest that, in the era of transition from a centrally planned to a market economy, unions in China’s private enterprises do promote workers’ interests as unions do in other economies. And they do that without abandoning their traditional role of harmonizing employment relations, as required by the Party.

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Apr 19
0

How Industrial Relations Affects Plant Performance: The Case of Commercial Aircraft Manufacturing

By | Case-study, Social dialogue, United States

Abstract

This analysis examines how changes in major industrial relations policies affected productivity over the years 1974–91 at one of the most important manufacturing plants in the United States. The authors find that productivity fell greatly, both in percentage terms and in absolute dollars, during strikes and a slowdown and during the terms of office of tough union leaders. In contrast with much of the firm performance literature, they find only small initial productivity effects of a movement from adversarial labor-management relations, which is the norm in this industry, to total quality management (TQM) and back again. How and why TQM is adopted, the authors suggest, may be as important as whether it is adopted. Finally, major industrial relations events like strikes, a slowdown, and the TQM program did not have long-term productivity effects; the firm returned to pre-event levels of productivity within one to four months.

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Apr 18
0

Co‐determination, Efficiency and Productivity

By | Germany, Social dialogue
Abstract
We present the first panel estimates of the productivity effects of the unique German institution of parity, board-level co-determination. Although our data span two severe recessions when labour hoarding costs of co-determination are probably highest, and the panel is too short to capture the likely long-run benefits in terms of human capital formation and job satisfaction, we find positive productivity effects of the 1976 extension to parity co-determination in large firms. Copyright Blackwell Publishing Ltd/London School of Economics 2005.
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Apr 18
0

What Do Unions Do to Productivity? A Meta‐Analysis

By | Meta-analysis, Social dialogue, UK, United States

Abstract

The impact of unions on productivity is explored using meta‐analysis and meta‐regression analysis. It is shown that most of the variation in published results is due to specification differences between studies. After controlling for differences between studies, a negative association between unions and productivity is established for the United Kingdom, whereas a positive association is established for the United States in general and for U.S. manufacturing.

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Apr 13
0

Labour Relations Quality and Productivity: an Empirical Analysis on French Firms

By | France, Social dialogue

Abstract

We empirically characterise how good labour relations can alleviate the negative impact on productivity of regulatory constraints or workforce opposition. The estimates are based on a unique survey of French manufacturing firms collected by the Banque de France over the period 1991-2008. Our main results may be summarised as follows:

i) workforce or union opposition interacted with regulatory constraints has a negative significant impact on total factor productivity (TFP). When this interaction is not taken into account, a deteriorated labour climate, through workforce or union opposition, weighs directly on TFP. But when this interaction is taken into account, this negative impact relies solely on the combination of regulatory constraints and labour opposition: workers or unions can successfully oppose managements decisions and weigh on TFP when they can use or threaten to use appropriate regulation; otherwise, their opposition may be harmless;

ii) regulatory constraints interacted with branch or firm agreement has a positive significant impact on TFP. These agreements, which can only be obtained if labour relations are supportive, would be used by firms to offset the negative impact of regulatory constraints. This favourable impact can be obtained through two channels: first, informally, a good labour climate can lead to a flexible implementation of regulation; second, formally, the French labour code incorporates provisions that allow firm or branch agreements to adapt or even alleviate the constraints of regulation.

These results emphasise that the implementation of regulatory constraints and their impact on productivity crucially hinges on the quality of labour climate.

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Apr 13
0

Worker Voice, Managerial Response and Labour Productivity: An Empirical Investigation

By | Social dialogue

Abstract

This article investigates the relationship between worker voice practices, employee perceptions of managerial responsiveness and labour productivity. It argues that managerial responsiveness is a critical but under-investigated variable in the study of the relationship between worker voice, human resource management and performance. Our results suggest that managerial responsiveness to worker voice does lead to superior labour productivity. However, this relationship is only found in non-union workplaces and there is little relationship between formal voice regime and productivity. One important implication of this finding is that more responsive management will result in improved productivity, so policy interventions should focus on how to motivate managers to become more responsive to their employees.
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