Healthy and Productive Work

An International Perspective

Lawrence R. Murphy, Cary Cooper

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2000
• Print ISBN: 9780748408399
• eBook ISBN: 9781135734381
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Industrial Engineering
• Index: Technology & Engineering

The Enterprise Culture of the 1980s helped transform economies of Western Europe, but left behind a legacy of stress, both for managers and shop floor workers. The cost to business is seen in absenteeism, reduced productivity, compensation claims, health insurance and direct medical costs, which in the US cost approximately $150 billion a year.

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Chapter 1: Models of healthy work organizations

L.R.Murphy and C.L.Cooper

INTRODUCTION

The terms “healthy companies,” “healthy work organizations,” and “organizational health” all refer to the notion that worker well-being and organizational effectiveness can be fostered by a common set of job and organizational design characteristics. These represent significant departures from traditional models which have sought to improve either worker health (e.g. health promotion) or organizational effectiveness (e.g. total quality management). For the most part, these two lines of research inquiry have been carried out independently and few empirical studies have sought common antecedents or cross-cutting factors. Research on the topic of healthy work organizations, on the other hand, seeks this common ground, at the intersection of worker well-being and organizational effectiveness. The aim of such research is to identify those job and organizational factors which predict both health and performance outcomes.

The purpose of this chapter is to introduce the reader to the concept of healthy work organizations in its various formulations, and to describe theories or models which have been proposed to date on this topic. Since articles on the topic of healthy work organizations have appeared in diverse literatures, including human relations, health promotion, and job stress, a secondary purpose of this chapter is to assemble this literature in one place so that future research can build on a common knowledge base.

Although the term “healthy work organizations” has appeared only recently in the organizational literature, the basic premise of improved worker well-being plus organizational effectiveness is not new and has been discussed in the organizational behavior, health promotion and job stress literatures. Six models of healthy work organizations were identified in the research literature and are described in this chapter. As the reader will see, the level of development of these models varies widely; some models are very thorough, specifying antecedent, intervening, and outcome variables. Other models are normative, and present only general descriptions of major factors. It should be noted that none of the proposed models has been rigorously tested across a wide range of occupations or industries; indeed, some of the models are based on data from a single company while others have not been empirically tested at all.

For ease of presentation, the models have been grouped into three sections corresponding to the field of study from which they originated: organizational behavior; health promotion; or job stress.

ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR

Perhaps more than any other area of study, the organizational behavior literature has produced more articles on the topic of healthy work organizations than any other field. Indeed, three of the six models reviewed in this chapter originated from this literature.

Goal integration model

In one of the earliest empirical works in this area, Barrett (1970) discussed various ways that social organizations could integrate the individual goals of health and well-being and organizational objectives of productivity and competitiveness. Based on the writings of human relations theorists (e.g. Argyris 1964; Herzberg 1966; Likert 1961; McGregor 1960), Barrett (1970) proposed three goal integration models: exchange, socialization, and accommodation. In the exchange model, workers exchange time and energy for incentives offered by the organization, i.e. they agree to work for pay and benefits. The classic organizational theory of bureaucracy aptly characterized such an economic exchange model. The socialization model achieves goal integration by social influence, encouraging workers to value those activities which lead to organizational objectives or devaluing activities which do not lead to the objectives. Persuasive communication and modeling is used to encourage workers to adopt or internalize organizational objectives or to abandon activities which interfere with the objectives. As examples, Barrett cited leader and peer socialization processes as discussed in the work of Schein (1967) and Likert (1961).

Finally, the accommodation model achieves integration by incorporating individual needs into the design of organizational objectives. The organization is structured in such a way that the pursuit of organizational objectives is intrinsically rewarding and will additionally lead to the attainment of individual goals. The writings of human relation theorists provide abundant examples of how job design, role design, and participation can foster the attainment of both worker needs and organizational objectives (e.g. Argyris 1964; Likert 1961; McGregor 1960).

Barrett (1970) tested the three goal integration models using questionnaire data obtained from 1781 employees of an oil refinery. The sample represented employees from most employment classifications and from all 18 departments. Multi-item scales were used to measure elements in each of the three goal integration models and indexes were formed to measure the degree of goal integration achieved, and organizational and team effectiveness.

The results provided strong support for the accommodation model, moderate support for the socialization model, and only limited support for the exchange model (i.e. for certain demographic subgroups). The accommodation model was the most stable across demographic factors, followed by the socialization and exchange models. Barrett (1970) concluded that the accommodation and socialization models were closely linked in practice and both were independent of the exchange model. The former models seemed to represent variations of a single management system which he described as a participative or democratic management.

Design features for a participative system

Drawing upon the same human relations literature as Barrett (1970), Lawler (1982) reached similar conclusions in his research on high involvement. He defined a “high involvement work organization” as one which fostered organizational effectiveness and employee quality of work life. He offered a detailed description of how to design an effective, high involvement work organization and constructed a model showing the key design variables, intervening variables, and well-being and performance outcomes.

Lawler’s guidance on how to create an effective, high involvement work organization required attention to nine categories or systems:

1. Organizational structure: flat, lean, mini-enterprise oriented, team-based, participative structure.
2. Job design: individually enriched or self-managing teams.
3. Information system: open, inclusive, tied to jobs, decentralized-team based, participatively set goals.
4. Career system: career tracks and counseling available, open job posting.
5. Selection: realistic job preview, team-based, potential and process skill oriented.
6. Training: heavy commitment, peer training, economic education, interpersonal skills.
7. Reward system: open, skill based, gainsharing or ownership, flexible benefits, all salary, egalitarian perquisites.
8. Personnel policies: stability of employment, participatively established policies through representative group.
9. Physical layout: designed around the organizational structure, egalitarian, safe and pleasant.

In addition to providing great detail on job design, Lawler also specified two tiers in his model: one for organizational effectiveness and one for quality of work life. Within each tier, organizational characteristics were linked to outcomes via multiple intervening variables in a flow or path diagram.

Values-based organizational system

Rosen (1991) described the results of a three-year project to “…examine the intersection of human and economic concerns…” in US workplaces. Using a wide range of information sources which included newspapers, journals, books, company publications, plus hundreds of interviews with key business people, Rosen found that companies that fostered employee development and organizational effectiveness based their operations on eight core values. These values were: respect for all; leadership; managing change; life-long learning; workers are appreciating assets; sick jobs sabotage long-term investment; celebrating diversity; and work/family balance. He described the eight core values as “…the glue that binds healthy successful employees with healthy productive workplaces” and represented a set of perpetually interacting factors. Healthy companies demonstrate their commitment to the core values through actions, not just words. Thus, the values influence how workers treat each other, how managers communicate with workers, how jobs are designed, how reorganizations are undertaken, and how business decisions are made.

Based on these core values, Rosen developed a model of a healthy company which contained 13 dimensions:

• open communication
• employee involvement
• learning and renewal
• valued diversity
• institutional fairness
• equitable rewards and recognition
• economic security
• people-centered technology
• health-enhancing environment
• meaningful work
• family/work/life balance
• community responsibility
• environmental protection.

For an organization to be considered healthy, each dimension is required to be present both at the organizational level and the individual (worker) level. For example, the open communication dimension was operationally defined at the organization and individual levels by the statements: “The organization openly communicates about its operations and its plans and sharing occurs at all levels; Individuals respect the confidence of such information and participate in honest and forthright dialogue.”

WORKSITE HEALTH PROMOTION

Health promotion involves education and motivational efforts to improve health and well-being through behavioral and lifestyle change. In work settings, these programs stand in contrast to traditional workplace health activities that seek to ensure worker protection from hazardous environmental conditions. Interest in health promotion programs has grown rapidly since the early 1980s, in large part because of soaring medical care costs and the realization that behavioral factors play a significant role in seven of the ten leading causes of death in the United States (Department of Health and Human Services 1979).

Corporate health promotion

Pfeiffer (1987) recommended that traditional health promotion programs be broadened from a singular focus on individual workers to include attention to team and organizational level factors. He proposed a model of corporate health that included three levels: individual health; work team health; and organizational health. Individual health is affected by heredity, the environment, lifestyle, and the medical care system, and interventions seek to improve the knowledge and decision-making of individual workers. Actions to improve individual health would include stress management, smoking cessation, exercise, nutrition, weight management, and hypertension screening. Team health focuses on the execution of assigned work, quality of services provided, nature of the work environment, and health and satisfaction of team members. Poor team health occurs when a team is forced to work short-handed, or when the team discourages individual participation in decision-making. Team health can be promoted by improved communication and problem-solving skills, conflict resolution training, peer support, employee involvement (e.g. quality circles), and occupational safety and health committees. Organizational health is a function of the interrelationship of the psychosocial work environment (i.e. the accepted or prescribed culture and norms), the quality of its products and services, the administrative systems that regulate day-to-day performance (e.g. policies, procedures, and program), and the employees themselves. Organizational health requires coordination of occupational health and safety, human resources, health promotion, medical services, and training/development functions. Actions to improve health at this level would include occupational health and safety programs, employee benefits, job security, compensation, smoking policies, health promotion programs, and educational assistance.

Pfeiffer (1987) proposed that a healthy work organization was one which offered “meaningful employment.” Meaningful employment was defined as “a generalized set of values that the employee believes provides the satisfaction and rewards (fair compensation, job security, opportunity for advancement, safe/ attractive work conditions, ability to make decisions) that make work self-fulfilling when compared with its sacrifices (low compensation, long hours, low autonomy).” Pfeiffer (1987) felt that the bottom line measure of meaningful employment was the “Personal Return on Investment (PROI).” The PROI considered the attributes of the work environment weighed against the downside of work. Low PROI was evidenced by poor quality work, low output, apathy, tardiness, excessive absenteeism, and poor morale.

In this same vein, Pelletier (1984) earlier had suggested that health promotion programs be expanded to include interventions aimed at improving environmental work conditions. In his book Healthy People in Unhealthy Places, he described the individual worker as the center of three concentric “spheres of influence,” of which the team and organization were outer spheres. In this view, effective worksite programs to improve health would require attention to spheres beyond just the individual worker.

JOB STRESS

Over the past 20 years, there has been growing recognition of job stress as an important occupational health problem. In industry, there is a heightened awareness that occupational stress contributes to a significant portion of worker compensation claims, healthcare costs, disability, absenteeism, and productivity losses (Sauter et al. 1990). In a national survey by the Northwestern National Life, 46 percent of the 600 workers interviewed indicated that their job was very stressful, and 27 percent said it was the single greatest cause of stress in their lives (Northwestern National Life 1991).

In the sense that many models of job stress contain references to both worker health and performance outcomes, they could be considered healthy work organization models (e.g. Caplan et al. 1975; Cooper and Marshall 1976). On the other hand, they fall short of healthy work organization models because they usually separate health and performance outcomes, often testing them in separate, independent models.

Organizational health

In a series of editorials in the journal Work and Stress, Cox (Cox 1991; Cox and Cox 1992) recommended that job stress models be broadened to incorporate the concept of organizational health. He proposed that organizational health is affected by the consistency between the objective organization and the subjective organization. The objective organization refers to structure, policies and procedures. The subjective organization refers to the task of the organization, the way the organization perceives and solves problems, and the development environment provided to staff (i.e. employee growth). Unhealthy organizations are created when 1) there is inconsistency between the objective and subjective organization; 2) the subjective organization lacks coherence and/or is not well-integrated; or 3) the organization lacks a strong culture so that subsystems function rather independently, and often in conflict.

Cox and Cox (1992) proposed two examples of research questions which emerge from this new model: 1) To what extent does the health of the organization determine the health of individual worker or moderate the relationship between work and individual health? and 2) How does the health of the individual determine the structure, function, and culture of the organization? Research targeted to answer these questions presumably would generate a list of healthy work organization characteristics.

Healthy work organizations

Working in partnership with a private manufacturing company, the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health (FIOH) and the Manchester Institute for Science and Technology (UMIST), the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) developed an empirical model of a healthy work organization (Murphy and Lim 1997; Sauter et al. 1996). Three rounds of bi-annual employee climate survey were obtained from over 10,000 workers in 30 company locations and analyzed to empirically determine those characteristics associated with both worker well-being and organizational effectiveness.

The climate survey contained measures of management practices (e.g. leadership, strategic planning, employee performance rewards, career development); organizational climate (e.g. innovation, empowerment, diversity, intergroup cooperation); corporate values (e.g. individual worker, total quality, leadership, integrity); organizational performance (e.g. overall organizational effectiveness, workgroup performance, personal effectiveness); and worker well-being (e.g. job satisfaction, stress, turnover intent).

Canonical correlation analyses identified eight organizational characteristics associated with both organizational performance and worker well-being health outcomes: open, two-way communication, worker growth and development (training), trust and mutual respect, strong commitment to core values, strategic planning to keep the organization competitive and adapti...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Figures and Tables
• Contributors
• Preface
• Chapter 1: Models of healthy work organizations
• Part I: Targeted organizational change based on employee survey data
• Part II: Company-wide policies and programs