How can competitiveness be achieved in post-crisis Europe: deregulating employment relations or enhancing high performance work practices?

Kornelakis, Andreas; Veliziotis, Michail; Voskeritsian, Horen

Abstract

© 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. The recent Eurozone crisis has reinvigorated neoliberal policies and brought to the fore an academic and policy debate over the deregulation of employment relations’ institutions ‘in the name of competitiveness’. In the context of this debate, we ask the following question: have firms with employment relations institutions been less able to improve productivity during the crisis? We consider this question by examining data from the European Company Survey. We also look into different models of capitalism to gauge whether there are context-specific institutional effects that may mediate firm-level outcomes. Contrary to the dominant neoliberal discourse, we do not find any strong evidence that employment relations institutions are negatively associated with productivity increases. Instead, we find that certain high performance work practices are positively and significantly associated with productivity increases across EU-15 and in particular institutional contexts. Taken together these results challenge the neoliberal ‘low road’ policies that are focused on dismantling employment relations institutions and suggest shifting the attention towards context-sensitive ‘high road’ policies and practices.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Oct 3, 2016
• Online Publication Date: Oct 8, 2016
• Publication Date: Nov 30, 2017
• Deposit Date: Oct 3, 2016
• Publicly Available Date: Apr 8, 2018
• Journal: International Journal of Human Resource Management
• Print ISSN: 0958-5192
• Electronic ISSN: 1466-4399
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis (Routledge)
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 28
• Issue: 21
• Pages: 2957-2976
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/09585192.2016.1233445
• Keywords: productivity, institutions, competitiveness, practices,; Europe, regulation
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/876845
• Publisher URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09585192.2016.1233445
• Additional Information: Additional Information : This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in International Journal of Human Resource Management on 08 October 2016, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/09585192.2016.1233445
• Contract Date: Oct 3, 2016