Documents Long, Richard J. 6 results

"Based on data from 315 Canadian and Australian firms, this study examines the incidence of 13 specific forms of performance pay, along with factors that may affect their incidence. Overall, Canadian and Australian firms showed similar incidences of most forms of performance pay, with employee profit sharing the notable exception. Depending on the type and form of performance pay, various factors predicted the incidence of performance pay. As expected, firm size and unionization were among the most important predictors of individual and organizational performance pay, but neither factor predicted group performance pay. The results also indicated that high involvement firms in both Canada and Australia used more organizational performance pay than other firms, but not more group or individual performance pay. This study provides qualified support for convergence in international pay practices, but also highlights the continued importance of contextual and firm-level factors."

"Despite the growing interest in strategic human resource management and strategic compensation, the firm's strategic context has rarely been examined as a possible predictor of profit sharing adoption, especially in longitudinal research, nor have all three possible strategic alignments (internal, horizontal, and vertical) been included in the same study. Based on three panels of longitudinal data from Canadian establishments drawn from three consecutive time periods, this paper finds strong support for internal (within compensation strategy) alignment, as a high-wage compensation policy is a significant predictor of profit sharing adoption in all three time periods. At the same time, significant support for a diffusion or institutional perspective on profit sharing adoption is also noted. These findings highlight the importance of including both strategic factors (particularly those that may be associated with internal alignment) and institutional factors in studies seeking to understand profit sharing adoption."

"Using panel data from a large sample of Canadian establishments, the authors examine whether there is any link between adoption of an employee profit-sharing plan and subsequent employee earnings. Overall, growth in employee earnings during the five-year period subsequent to adoption of profit sharing was significantly higher in establishments that had adopted profit sharing, as compared with those establishments that had not done so. Employees in establishments that paid high wages before profit sharing adoption appeared to benefit more than employees in other establishments, although employees in other establishments did eventually benefit from profit sharing."

"Drawing on two waves of survey data collected from 250 Canadian firms in 2000 and 2004, this study examines union influence on the mix of compensation methods used by employers. As expected, firms with more unionization devoted a larger proportion of total compensation to indirect pay (also known as "employee benefits") than did firms with less unionization, a finding that held in both time periods. However, while more unionized firms devoted a smaller share of compensation to individual performance pay in 2000, this was not true in 2004. Also surprising, more unionized firms did not differ significantly from less unionized firms in their proportions of base pay, group performance pay, or organizational performance pay in either time period. The paper concludes that although unions may still have the power to influence some aspects of the wage bargain (i.e. the compensation mix), this power may be declining."

"The purpose of this study is to contribute to knowledge of profit-sharing by utilizing a before-and-after analysis of panel data to assess whether the effects of profit-sharing adoption on productivity growth vary, depending on whether a profit-sharing adopter utilizes work teams or not, while controlling for numerous variables that may affect these results within a carefully constructed sample of Canadian establishments. To our knowledge, this is the first study to examine the moderating role of teamwork in the relationship between profit-sharing and productivity growth. Besides the implications for profit-sharing, ascertaining whether profit-sharing and work teams are complementary practices would have important implications for understanding how to develop more effective work teams, a topic of ongoing interest.

We utilized a longitudinal research design to compare within-firm productivity growth during the three-year and five-year periods subsequent to profit-sharing adoption and within-firm productivity growth during the same periods in firms that had not adopted profit-sharing. Overall, our results suggest that use of team-based production plays an important moderating role in the success of employee profit-sharing—at least in terms of workplace productivity growth. Establishments that had adopted profit-sharing showed a substantial and highly significant increase in workplace productivity over both the three-year and five-year periods subsequent to adoption, but only if they had work teams.

These findings are in line with the notion that work teams help to mitigate potential shirking behaviour in profit-sharing firms (Freeman, Kruse and Blasi, 2010) and are also in line with the argument that work teams serve as an effective mechanism to help translate the purported motivational and other benefits of profit-sharing into tangible productivity gains (Heywood and Jirjahn, 2009)."