Read the summary and the most important questions on Contingency Perspective

• 1 Lecture Contingency Perspective

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• What is the best fit (contingency perspective/approach)?

  Suggests that HRM practices and policies should be aligned with various aspects of the organisation and the context in which they are implemented

• What is the best-practice approach?

  Suggests that certain HR practices and policies are universally effective, irrespective of the context or situation involved. (coherent set of HR practices = high performance organisational performance)

• What is environmental (institutional) fit?

  HRM practices and policies --> external environment
  Refers to the integration of HR practices with the external environment of the organisation

• What are High performance work systems (HPWS)?

  A set of practices that typically comprise of comprehensive recruitment and selection, incentive-based compensation, performance management, extensive employee involvement, and detailed training initiatives.

• 2 Human resource management and performance - Wood 1999

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• What is the research aim/question of Wood 1999

  This paper reviews the large amount of studies that sought to test whether high-perfomance systems are universally relevant and the best or if this is only the case in certain situations (best-practice vs best-fit)

• What does the contingency theory of HRM imply? (Wood, 1999)

  That generally HR systems with internally fitted practices that match the strategy of the firm will perform best.

• What practices according to Wood 1999 are linked with high-commitment and involvement (now usually referred to as high-performance practices)?

  This includes practices such as job flexibility, team-working, and minimal status differentials that are assumed to reverse past Taylorist methods. And these are assumed to generate high performance through their enhancement of the commitment and skills of employees

• What is the underlying usage of high performance management ?

  - highlights benefits when marketing HR models to managers who appear increasingly oriented towards bottom-line results
  - Treated as a broader notion as unity of HIM and TQM or lean production (includes team-working, quality circles and the sharing of performance data)
  - more focus on performance as an outcome (skill formation, work structuring, performance management and pay satisfaction)

• What is lean production referred to in operational management terms (Wood, 1999)?

  As they focused on the minimisation of buffers associated with just-in-time, and thus neglected the 'expansion of work force skill and conceptual knowledge required for problem-solving under this approach'

• How is high-commitment management generally characterised as? (Wood, 1999)

  Involves the emphasis on the part of employers to their employees, based on an underlying perception of them as assets to be developed rather than as unimportant factors of production, and the combined use of certain personnel practices, such as job redesign, job flexibility, problem-solving groups, team-working and minimal status differences