Concerns over the supply of skills in the U.S. labor force, especially education-related skills, have exploded in recent years with a series of reports not only from employer-associated organizations but also from independent and even government sources making similar claims. These complaints...

Using longitudinal data collected in 1996–98 from over 800 similar workplaces owned and operated by one corporation, the authors examine how workplace diversity and employee isolation along the dimensions of gender, race, and age affected employee turnover. This design controls for much...

Interviews with employees of a large, high-technology company reveal that computer-mediated communication (CMC) enhanced voice, defined as employees' ability to express their views and to participate in decision-making. The authors explore how two unique features of CMC enhanced voice. First,...

If, as has been widely suggested, internal labor markets are declining and a new employment contract with reduced employer-employee commitment is emerging, the criteria by which employees judge layoffs as fair or unfair may be changing. This paper presents findings relevant to that question,...

New United Motors Manufacturing, Inc. (NUMMI) is a GM-Toyota joint venture that has been lauded by some for achieving performance based on high employee involvement, and criticized by others for intensifying work and harming workers. In 1993, OSHA cited NUMMI for paying insufficient attention to...

Using data from surveys of employees and their supervisors in eight companies in 1992, the authors examine how each of two forms of employee involvement affected an important dimension of individual performance, organizational citizenship behavior (OCB), defined as individual discretionary...

Studies of how different work practices affect organizational performance have suffered from methodological problems. Especially intractable has been the difficulty of establishing whether observed links are causal or merely reflect pre-existing differences among firms. This analysis uses a...

Franchise jobs are often viewed as epitomizing a “low-road†employee-management approach characterized by high turnover and several practices that are deemed unsophisticated, such as low investment in training, deskilling of work, and little encouragement of employee involvement....

The authors develop a model in which the extent of use of a grievance system is determined by wage premiums and alternative job opportunities. Specifically, they hypothesize that when workers enjoy comparatively high wages or are faced with poor alternative job opportunities, they are less...

This paper examines changes in skill requirements for production jobs in 93 manufacturing establishments between 1978 and 1986 and clerical jobs in 211 firms between 1978 and 1988. The unique data set allows an analysis not only of changes in the distribution of employment across jobs—the...