High Commitment Management and Payment Systems

ABSTRACT This paper extends the analysis of high commitment management (HGM) reported in a previous Journal of Management Studies article (Wood and Albanese, volume 32, number 2) by examining its linkage to payment systems. It opens with an overview of what the literature on HCM portrays as the pay systems that are most compatible with it. Then it reports research, based on data from a representative sample of manufacturing plants in the UK, which examines what pay systems in practice are used in conjunction with HCM. It also assesses whether, as we might expect, plants using piecework and individual bonuses are less likely to adopt such an approach. Finally, the paper examines whether changes in payment systems are made as managements attempt to heighten their use of HCM. Contrary to the claims of many writers, there is no systematic association between the use of HCM and the use of performance or contingent pay systems, such as merit pay and profit‐sharing schemes. the study does, however, show that those plants in which merit pay is paid as a permanent increase in the basic wage are likely to have higher levels of HCM (and rates of change in it) than are those in which merit pay is simply paid as a bonus. Individual bonus systems appear to be associated with plants which are not pursuing high commitment management to any great extent. Finally, the research shows that for the period 1986 to 1990 payment system changes in British manufacturing, though highly varied, tended to be introduced in association with a greater use of HCM and not introduced as a substitute for this. Moreover, the research suggests that these were lagging other changes, rather than leading them.