Is It Good to Talk? Information Disclosure and Organizational Performance in the UK

Abstract

The disclosure of information by management to employees varies significantly between workplaces. The effects of this variance on organizational performance are analysed using WERS98 data. The results show that the impact of information disclosure on organizational performance is more complex than is often assumed in the literature. Overall, there is a significant impact, both direct and indirect, and this varies depending on the level of employee organizational commitment, the type of information disclosed and the performance outcome involved. On the whole, the positive effects are less in union settings and in situations where unions are strong. Copyright Blackwell Publishing Ltd/London School of Economics 2005.

Varieties of Firm: Complementarity and Bounded Diversity

“…The Cranet survey confirms earlier findings that higher levels of information disclosure to employees by managers exist in unionized settings (Peccei et al 2005), and that individual voice seems to coexist with, rather than displace collective voice. These findings are therefore not entirely novel, but they are based on a much more extensive international dataset than used by other researchers (see for example the datasets used by Fenton O'Creevy 2005 andKessler, Undy andHeron 2004) and therefore allow the association to be confirmed as a European one transcending "VOC."…”

“…These findings are therefore not entirely novel, but they are based on a much more extensive international dataset than used by other researchers (see for example the datasets used by Fenton O'Creevy 2005 andKessler, Undy andHeron 2004) and therefore allow the association to be confirmed as a European one transcending "VOC." They are also based on more recently gathered data than those of Peccei et al (2005). .400…”

Organisation’s Commitment towards its Workers (OCW): Evidence from the Netherlands

“…We therefore present two additional propositions. Concerning the forms of voice, even though research suggests that information disclosure is important for achieving positive employee perceptions of organisation"s treatment (e.g., Guest & Conway, 2002;Peccei et al, 2005), voice seems to have a stronger influence: direct voice, which refers to having influence in decision-making without the mediation of representatives (Bryson, 2004), and the right to be heard, which P3: Employees will associate OCW more with direct voice than with representative voice.…”

Knowledge Sharing Through Face-to-Face Communication and Labour Productivity: Evidence from British Workplaces

“…Pertinently, Peccei et al (2005) highlight that existing studies "do not, by and large, make a clear distinction … between the various communication mechanisms that are used in organisations and the actual content of the information that is disclosed to employees (Peccei et al, 2005: 13)." Peccei et al (2005) address this concern by studying the association between subjective measures of productivity and downward communication, that is, information disclosure from managers to employees of information relating to internal investment plans, staffing plans and the financial position of the workplace. While the authors consider a well-defined channel of information disclosure, the latter simply entails unidirectional knowledge flows.…”