Are There Distinct Employment Systems? New Evidence from American Firms

Abstract

Theorizing in strategic human resource management has identified a "configurational" perspective in which firms put together distinct bundles of HRM practices called "employment systems" in order to exploit complementarities and synergies. This paper provides the most sophisticated and in-depth empirical test of this hypothesis to date. After surveying various typologies of employment systems, we select the one providing the most detailed predictions on alternative configurations of specific HRM practices. Using recent data on HRM practices among several hundred American firms, we find strong support for this particular model, the general idea of employment systems, and the configurational perspective.