Impacts of high performance work practices on employee outcomes: Investigating their independent and integrated influences in the British National Health Service

Central to research on high-quality management is the question of whether High Performance Work Practices (HPWP) produce mutual benefits for the organization and employees, or whether such practices promote undesirable employee outcomes through work intensification. In this study we investigated the integrated and independent effects of HPWP on employee attitudes and well-being in the British National Health Service (NHS), and simultaneously examined the mediating role of work intensification in these relationships. The study informs two main debates of the HPWP literature – ‘the integrationist and isolationist perspectives of HPWP’, and ‘the mutual gains versus the critical perspectives of HPWP’. The results show that HPWP produce varying independent effects on employee-level outcomes, and work intensification may explain the intermediary processes underlying some of these effects. The results also indicate HPWP may have beneficial integrated effects on employee-level outcomes within the British NHS.