High Involvement Work in the New Zealand Public Service
Authors:   , Kirkham Rebecca Fiona 
Published: December 2021

<p>The aim of this research is to investigate the relationship between high involvement work practices (HIWP) and employee outcomes, such as job satisfaction and organisational commitment, in the core New Zealand public service. It also investigates whether certain demographic factors may influence this relationship and proposes a structural model to test this.  Information about HIWP and employee outcomes was originally gathered as part of the 2013 Workplace Dynamics Survey conducted by the New Zealand Public Service Association (PSA) and Victoria University of Wellington (Plimmer et al., 2013). Participants, all of whom were PSA members, were asked a variety of questions about their work, workplace and themselves. For the purposes of this current study, the sample was then limited to only those members of the core public sector who reported that they had no managerial responsibilities, which comprised 1,665 unique responses. The data were then analysed in order to generate descriptive statistics and trends regarding opinions, and to conduct inferential analysis. This included exploratory factor analysis to confirm the principal factors, confirmatory factor analysis to test the measurement of the constructs, and structural equation modelling to explicate the relationship between HIWP and employee outcomes. Moderating factors such as age, gender, and level of educational attainment were then introduced to the proposed structural model.  The model suggests that HIWP, as measured by items associated with power, information, rewards, and knowledge (PIRK), have a positive effect on employees’ reported job satisfaction and organisational commitment. The model tests the influence of a second-order latent variable that describes the PIRK attributes working collectively, as well as a second-order latent variable, labelled Passion, for employee outcomes, based on the work of Vandenberg, Richardson and Eastman (1999), and Langford (2009), respectively.  The findings of this study largely support the relationships proposed in the literature on HIWP, which was used to develop the theoretical model. It finds that employees reporting higher PIRK also experience higher job satisfaction and organisational commitment. It also suggests that age and level of educational attainment individually have some effect on the PIRK-Passion relationship. While gender did not affect this particular causal relationship, the model was different in some respects for men and women, particularly with respect to the effect of length of time spent working for a particular employer.  This study contributes to theoretical and practical knowledge by providing evidence of the influence of high involvement practices for people management in the New Zealand public service on employee outcomes, an under-researched area. It also highlights the need for public sector managers and HR professionals to be aware of the different experiences of different demographic groups. This research makes recommendations for further research, including in the data-gathering stage, as well as suggestions for practitioners.</p>