무노조사업장에서 노사협의회를 통한 간접참여와 근로자 직접참여가 기업성과에 미치는 영향

Abstract

This paper analyses the impact of employee participation on human resource management performance,industrial relations performance, and organizational performance after sorting employee participation at non-unionized workplace into direct employee participation and indirect employee participation through a joint labor-management conference(work council) by using WPS (Workplace Panel Survey) of Korea Labor Institute. According to the HPWS (high performance work system) theory, active participation of employees in managerial decision-making system is one of the major components of HPWS. So it is indispensible for companies to construct relevant employee participation polices and practices. Thus it is necessary to examine the effectiveness of employee participation based on various contextual background. This research is meaningful in the point that there are only a few empirical studies on the effectiveness of the adoption of employee participation at non-unionized workplace though the importance of employment relations at non-unionized workplace has been increased along with worldwide decrease of union density including South Korea. This research also deducts the effectiveness of a joint labor-management conference by showing the significant positive relationship between indirect employee participation and organizational performance using credible panel data. The findings and implications of our research are summarized as follows. First, direct and indirect employee participation at non-unionized workplace have both significant positive relationship with volunteer turnover rate, industrial relations, quality improvement, innovative activity. This results empirically show that the adoption of direct employee participation through human resource management policies and practices is valuable for the improvement of firm performance at non-unionized workplace. In addition, the result that indirect employee participation through a joint labor-management conference has positive relationship with firm performance suggests that firms need to more activate a joint labor-management conference at non-unionized workplace. While there exist labor unions representing the interests of employees at unionized workplace, companies can not fully attend to the interests of employees if there do not exist effective representative mechanisms at non-unionized workplace. But,empirical results in this study show that direct and indirect employee participation at non-unionized work-place have both significant positive relationship with organizational performance. So, employee participation at non-unionized workplace is necessary to meet employee’s growth desire and industrial democracy as well as improvement of firm performance. Considering the contextual background of South Korea where work council is legal obligation of most companies, firms are inclined to passive role in installation and operation of work council. But positive relationship between indirect employee participation and organizational performance propose more active approach at the use of a joint labor-management conference. Second, direct and indirect employee participations have no linear interaction effects on human resource management performance, industrial relations performance, organizational performance. But, in additional analysis, we can find that the type with both higher direct employee participation and indirect employee participation levels has superior performance than other types in volunteer turnover rate, industrial relations,quality improvement, innovative activity. Thus, to improve human resource management performance,industrial relations performance, and organizational performance effectively by using direct and indirect employee participations, firms should design and operate direct and indirect employee participations mutually complementary. This research is differentiated from prior research in the points that our research model integrates direct and indirect form of employee participation at non-unionized workplace and analyzes the interaction effects of direct and indirect employee participation, while most prior studies have focused on the individual effects of each form of employee participation. By integrated approach on employee participation, we can find out the implications of the adoption of dual forms of employee participation in the perspective of labor-management cooperation at non-unionized workplace. The result that indirect employee participation through a joint labor-management conference at non-unionized workplace has significant positive relationship with organizational performance suggests the implication that it is important for achievement of superior performance to motivate representative organization for employees. Especially, the result of hypothesis 3 suggests that preposition concerning interaction effects of direct and indirect form of employee participation polices and practices which has been usually discussed as a conceptual argument should be more examined empirically in depth by using various research models and variables at non-unionized workplace in South Korea. In future studies, it is necessary to conduct additional research on the accurate process that direct and indirect form of employee participations affect firm performance and the specific conditions which could produce positive interaction effects on organizational performance. In addition, it is also necessary to analyse and compare the effectiveness of direct and indirect employee participation polices and practices at non-unionized workplace based on more elaborate theoretical background and various research methods.