ABSTRACT
One of the most widely researched issues in contemporary employment relations is the link that might exist between the nature of employment relations and performance. This is sometimes reduced to quite narrow prescriptive investigations into ‘what works at work’, the search for which often proves illusive-‘there are no one or two “magic bullets” that are the work practices that will stimulate worker and business performance (Ichniowski et al., 1996:322). Recently, a body of research has emerged from the United States and from Britain which, cumulatively, suggests that bundles of innovative management practices yield realisable gains. It follows in the wake of earlier work which examined the impact that unions might have on economic performance (Freeman and Medoff, 1984).
