TRAINING AND COMPANIES’ PERFORMANCE THROUGH THE LENS OF THE HIGH-PERFORMANCE PARADIGM: A CROSS-NATIONAL STUDY OF EUROPEAN COUNTRIES

Year 2012, Volume: 7 Issue: 2, 133 - 146, 01.12.2012

Pedro Ferreira Elizabeth Real De Oliveira

Abstract

The high-performance paradigm approach to human resources management argues that the combination of
human resources and work organization practices can boost individual and collective performance as well.
Among those practices, knowledge is an important dimension in so far it prepares workers to be more
participative and more autonomous. Although several studies look at the relation between high-performance
systems and companies’ performance, there is still a lack of understanding of the importance and contribution of
the training and development practices for companies’ performance, in the context of the high-performance
paradigm. This paper’s aim is to contribute to this subject by looking at the differences between companies with
and without training and development practices. Are the performance levels really different? To accomplish this
goal, we develop a cross-national study of European countries, using data from the last European Company
Survey (2009). The main conclusion is that there are differences between companies with and without training
and development practices, having the former higher levels of performance than the latter.

Keywords

High-performance paradigm, Training and development, Company performance, Europe

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