Tracing the link: organisational structures and skill demands

Abstract

T his article focuses on the impact that organisational innovations ± new management practices or high performance work systems, as they are variously termed ± have on employers' skill demands. There has been considerable debate about the extent to which these innovations and practices merely represent another management fad, how far they have been adopted by organisations across the economy and, more recently, what impact they have had on organisational performance and pro® tability. During these debates it is sometimes assumed that such practices automatically call forth new skill demands, such as problem solving, communication and teamworking. Yet, apart from a few case studies, there has been no systematic attempt to identify the existence and distribution of these skills within the labour force and to link them to the existence of new organisational forms.The article begins by critically reviewing the existing literature on this topic. It goes on to outline a new source of survey data which offers the prospect of con® rming or denying the link between organisational structure and skills used at work. The methods used to identify these new organisational features and the skill demands they are said to call forth are then presented. The results are based on interviews carried out in 1997 with 2,195 employees in Britain. The article argues that these results provide robust evidence of a relationship between the adoption of these new organisational practices and the demand for new types of skill among sections of the labour force. 1 It concludes with an examination of some of the implications that these ® ndings have for practitioners, policy makers and academics. Changing organisational formsThe processes of globalisation, technological change and the intensi® cation of international competition have produced a series of changes in organisational forms which are well established in the literature. These include the delayering of organisations, the greater use of techniques such as total quality management (TQM), quality circles (QCs), teamwork, the more widespread adoption of information technologies , multiskilling, improved communication systems and more participatory forms of management. These are adopted as organisations struggle to reduce costs while increasing the quality of their products (Ezzamel et al, 1996). The introduction of competitive tendering and the more extensive use of market mechanisms in the delivery of public serv ices have produced similar consequences in the public sector and among not-for-pro® t organisations.Yet there is a lack of agreement in the literature about the precise terminology to be used to denote these new practices. In the US, Ichniowski et al (1996) refer to them as `workplace innovations' (ibid: 300). In the UK, Bacon et al (1996: 87) drawing on the work of Storey (1992) refer to similar innovations under the umbrella of the `new management' model or the `new management agenda'. This consists of the following: a culture change programme, devolved management, teamworkin...

Supporting Innovation through HR Policy: Evidence from the UK

“…It is noteworthy that our observations concerning the lower relevance of training and ideas management to importance of innovation confirms the results of Felstead and Ashton (2000) and enriches from those of Sanz-Valle et al (1999). The former argued that the fostering of new skills is not always associated with training, whilst the latter argued that innovative organizations performed more product and process-based training actions.…”

“…It also strongly reflects HopeHailey et al's (1997) observation that HR practitioners are increasingly adopting a pragmatic 'nuts and bolts' approach to their organizational role. Furthermore, if we follow Campbell et al (1996) who regard innovation as action, and invoke Felstead and Ashton's (2000) arguments which hint at a time lag between the occurrence of innovative behaviour in the organization, and its subsequent codification and re-inforcement by HR departments, this patchy picture of coherent HR policy is not altogether unexpected.…”

A competence‐based and multidimensional operationalization and measurement of employability

“…New production concepts, such as total quality management, lean production, business process redesign, and socio-technics (De Lange, 2001;Steijn, 2002) all decrease the division of labor and increase teamwork. These changes have implications for the ideal employee profile and the type of skills that are needed (Felstead & Ashton, 2000). Furthermore, human capital or human resources have been gaining in importance and increasingly should be taken into account in organizational strategy making.…”

The development and psychometric evaluation of a multi-dimensional measurement instrument of employability—and the impact of aging

“…We found evidence from both (Strategic) Human Resource Management theory [5,6] and career theory [7,8], to point into the direction of the importance of a broad competence package [9], and the increase in importance of flexible and social competence of individual employees, next to occupational expertise.…”