Employer Strategies and Wages in New Service Activities: A Comparison of Co-ordinated and Liberal Market Economies

• Published in: British journal of industrial relations Vol. 48; no. 2; pp. 400 - 435
• Main Authors: Batt, Rosemary, Nohara, Hiroatsu, Kwon, Hyunji
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford, UK Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01.06.2010; Wiley
• Subjects: Correlation analysis; Economics and Finance; Human resource management; Human resources; Humanities and Social Sciences; Institutions; International comparisons; Job design; Liberalism; Market economies; Market economy; Monitoring; Performance appraisal; Service industry workers; Strategic planning; Studies; Wage levels; Wages & salaries; service sector; HRM; performance-based pay; monitoring; High-involvement work design; wage
• ISSN: 0007-1080; 1467-8543
• DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8543.2010.00789.x

Using survey data for call centre establishments in eight countries, we examine the relationship between wages and human resource practices. High‐involvement work design and the use of performance‐based pay are significantly positively related to wages, whereas intensive use of performance monitoring is negatively associated with wages. These relationships are larger among liberal economies compared with co‐ordinated ones, but individual country differences are large and, in many cases, do not conform to expectations regarding institutional differences between liberal and co‐ordinated market economies. The exception is Denmark.