We use an innovative survey tool to collect management practice data from over 4,000 medium sized manufacturing firms across Asia, Europe and the US. These measures of managerial practice are strongly associated with firm-level performance (e.g. productivity, profitability and stock market...

This paper studies the role of intrinsic motivation, reputation, and reciprocity in driving open source software innovation. Unlike previous literature based on survey data, we exploit the observed pattern of contributions - the .revealed preference. of developers - to infer the underlying...

The current study examined the impact of the human resource function and financing strategyon the financial performance of 104 UK manufacturing firms. Hypotheses are drawn from aresource-based perspective on human resource management and a financial theoryperspective on capital structure....

Contingency formulations of Human Resource Management (HRM) theory suggest thatthe effectiveness of HRM practices should vary across firms. This study examinedwhether the relationship between HRM practices and productivity in manufacturingcompanies is contingent upon organizational climate and...

Consistent with a growing number of models about affect and behaviour and with arecognition that perception alone provides no impetus for action, it was predicted thatassociations between company climate and productivity would be mediated by average levelof job satisfaction. In a study of 42...

This paper reports the findings of a longitudinal study into manufacturing performance, lean production principles and buyer supplier relations in the Japanese, US and UK automotive industries. A total of 26 first tier component makers in the three countries were subject to detailed benchmarking...

This paper develops a simple theory of pay structures and pay levels across heterogeneous agents by bringing together optimal contracts inside the firm and competitive resource allocation in the market. The central idea is that more talented people tend to create greater value but face larger...

This paper provides a rigorous analysis of the impact of training upon the employment growth characteristics of small and medium sized firms. Using appropriate statistical techniques to cope with sample selection biases and heterogenerous employment growth patterns it reveals that training is...

There is growing evidence of the importance of co-operation between managers and workers for improving industrial performance. One manifestation of this is the growing use of human resource management (HRM) strategies to increase the involvement of employees. The survey of small and medium sized...

Notwithstanding their remarkable recent growth, surprisingly little research has hitherto been conducted on the evolving geography of professional and business services in Britain. This paper analyses the results of a detailed survey of 300 small and medium-sized management and engineering...