Employee morale, non-financial performance measures, deployment of innovative managerial practices and shop-floor involvement in Italian manufacturing firms

A. Abdel-Maksoud, F. Cerbioni, F. Ricceri and S. Velayutham

The British Accounting Review, 2010, vol. 42, issue 1, 36-55

Abstract: The relationship between performance measures and the development of innovative managerial practices (IMPs) is far from clear. The deployment of IMPs often requires shop-floor involvement and this might intensify the level of importance of shop-floor non-financial performance measures (SFNFPMs) of Employee Morale. On the other hand, human resource managers have long been concerned with measures of lateness, absenteeism and staff turnover (core SFNFPMs relating to Employee Morale), but from a diagnostic rather than interactive standpoint. This study investigates whether the level of importance of SFNFPMs of Employee Morale in manufacturing firms should be ascribed to the deployment of IMPs or to shop-floor involvement (human resource) considerations. In late 2003, a survey of medium-large Italian manufacturing firms was undertaken. The Italian context was considered particularly appropriate because Italian firms lag behind in their application of contemporary management techniques, and, until the late 1990s, industrial relations were based on a conflict relationship. Our findings suggest that, contrary to human resources literature, the significant positive associations between the importance of SFNFPMs related to Employee Morale and the deployment of IMPs seem to be independent of shop-floor involvement. Furthermore, the significant positive association between training (one of the shop-floor involvement variables) and the level of importance of SFNFPMs related to Employee Morale is found to be dependent upon IMPs deployment.

Keywords: Employee morale measures; Italian manufacturing firms; Management accounting systems; Non-financial performance measures; Shop-floor involvement (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S089083891000003X
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:bracre:v:42:y:2010:i:1:p:36-55

DOI: 10.1016/j.bar.2010.01.002

Access Statistics for this article

The British Accounting Review is currently edited by Nathan Lael Joseph and Alan Lowe

More articles in The British Accounting Review from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().