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The "suite" smell of success: complementary personnel practices and firm performance

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Abstract

How do personnel practices affect firm performance?To examine this issue we use a panel of over 1,500 New Zealand firms, drawn from a diverse range of industries.The panel comprises respondents to official surveys of management practices in 2001 and 2005. These surveys ask a wide range of comparable qualitative questions covering organisational practices including human resource management (HRM). To this panel, we link longitudinal firm performance data from Statistics New Zealand's Longitudinal Business Database. We find that suites of complementary HRM-related practices impact positively on firm productivity and wages; effects on employee turnover depend on the practices considered.

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  • Richard Fabling & Arthur Grimes, 2009. "The "suite" smell of success: complementary personnel practices and firm performance," Reserve Bank of New Zealand Discussion Paper Series DP2009/13, Reserve Bank of New Zealand.
    • Handle: RePEc:nzb:nzbdps:2009/13
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    Cited by:

    1. Richard Fabling & David C. Maré, 2016. "Firm-Level Hiring Difficulties: Persistence, Business Cycle And Local Labour Market Influences," Journal of Labor Research, Springer, vol. 37(2), pages 179-210, June.
    2. Richard Fabling & David C Maré, 2015. "Production function estimation using New Zealand’s Longitudinal Business Database," Working Papers 15_15, Motu Economic and Public Policy Research.
    3. Richard Fabling & Lynda Sanderson, 2016. "A Rough Guide to New Zealand's Longitudinal Business Database (2nd edition)," Working Papers 16_03, Motu Economic and Public Policy Research.
    4. David C. Maré & Dean R. Hyslop & Richard Fabling, 2017. "Firm productivity growth and skill," New Zealand Economic Papers, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 51(3), pages 302-326, September.
    5. Richard Fabling & Arthur Grimes & David C. Maré, 2012. "Performance Pay Systems and the Gender Wage Gap," Working Papers 12_13, Motu Economic and Public Policy Research.
    6. Greene, Francis, 2012. "Should the focus of publicly provided small business assistance be on start-ups or growth businesses?," Occasional Papers 12/2, Ministry of Economic Development, New Zealand.
    7. Fabling, Richard & Sanderson, Lynda, 2013. "Exporting and firm performance: Market entry, investment and expansion," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(2), pages 422-431.
    8. Arthur Grimes & Robert MacCulloch & Fraser McKay, 2015. "Indigenous Belief in a Just World: New Zealand M?ori and other Ethnicities Compared," Working Papers 15_14, Motu Economic and Public Policy Research.
    9. Richard Fabling, 2011. "Keeping it Together: Tracking Firms on New Zealand’s Longitudinal Business Database," Working Papers 11_01, Motu Economic and Public Policy Research.
    10. Richard Fabling & Arthur Grimes & Levente Timar, 2014. "Natural Selection: Firm Performance Following the Canterbury Earthquakes," Working Papers 14_08, Motu Economic and Public Policy Research.

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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D21 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Firm Behavior: Theory
    • L20 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - General
    • O31 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Innovation and Invention: Processes and Incentives

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