Appendix A: The Research Roots of the Six-Factor Framework


The six factors are the essential components of a firm’s human capital strategy. Not coincidentally, they are the workforce drivers of an organization’s productivity. The six factors:

  1. provide a powerful, unified platform for addressing a wide range of “people” issues

  2. differentiate an organization from its competitors

  3. are deeply rooted in rigorous research linking human capital to business performance.

The bulk of this appendix summarizes research foundations for the framework. Toward the end, we address other assets and technology, and we recap the content and attributes of the six factors themselves.

Research Background

We reviewed and synthesized findings from hundreds of research studies in economics, psychology, communications, management, and related disciplines to identify factors that affect the productivity of people at work. The research foundation reflects more than 300 studies, over 1,000 organizations. Given the intense investment that research requires and the long-term nature of the studies reviewed, we estimate that the literature reflects at least 450 person-years of work.

Mercer looked for research that:

  • was published, especially in professional research journals, between 1971 and 1996.

  • took place in organizations engaged in producing goods and delivering services, thus excluding laboratory experiments, simulations, and research done in nonemployment settings.

  • measured productivity objectively rather than impressionistically.

  • emphasized tracking the effects of planned changes in human capital management practices.

  • was rooted in economics, psychology, management, communications, or related disciplines.

The search focused on leading research journals. The highly selective process by which articles are chosen for these journals ensures that the findings were of the highest quality and provided significant insights. For example, in the Journal of Applied Psychology—a source of many of the studies that Mercer reviewed—the majority of research papers are rejected for publication. In many years, only 10% of the submitted papers are published and truly represent the “cream of the crop” of research efforts.

Each study had to have objective end measures. “Objective” simply means that productivity was assessed in a way that, no matter who did the measuring, the same result would be found. Objective measures include counts of the quantity of production and the frequency of errors, measures of the time required to perform a cycle of work activity, and calculations of revenue per employee. (Alternatives to “objective” measures include opinion, gut feel, and intuitive experience.)

We also focused on interventions with lasting productivity effects. Intervention studies represent “experiments” in which a change is made in the organization and the effects are observed over time, a form of research that provides strong evidence of cause-and-effect. The time between an intervention and the measurement of its productivity consequences ranged from weeks to over five years in the research reviewed. Studies that were not interventions tended to make use of statistical controls to rule out the possibility that some other factor was driving productivity.

We did not include laboratory experiments and simulations because such techniques tend to strip away the context. Our emphasis on the importance of understanding productivity drivers in context squarely fits with the choice to emphasize research done in ongoing enterprises.




Play to Your Strengths(c) Managing Your Internal Labor Markets for Lasting Compe[.  .. ]ntage
Play to Your Strengths(c) Managing Your Internal Labor Markets for Lasting Compe[. .. ]ntage
ISBN: N/A
EAN: N/A
Year: 2003
Pages: 134

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