As has been argued, Taylor believed that it was crucial to expand managerial control over work in order to improve efficiency and productivity. It is argued that Taylorism increased capitalist social control rather than efficiency; and that Taylorism reduced employer dependence on workers’ skill because work control is shifted to managers (Edwards, 1979). March and Simon (1958) say that both the managers and workers decisions can be programmed or bounded by rules. They believe that there is a large amount of leeway in the extent to which decisions are programmed, and both managers and workers are subjected to similar rules of work control. Dobbin and Boychuk claim individuals with good innate ability, education, and experience are most productive, and these workers are usually highly paid, “because salaries are based on productivity, and they will carry the highest levels of autonomy, because the value of human capital assets lies in scarce skills and the ability to make independent judgements” (1999, p.269). Jimenez-Jimenez et al. (2013, p.31) argue that autonomy is also closely related to knowledge management and many studies provide evidence that "autonomy increases employee intrinsic motivation to share knowledge”.
According to Edwards and Gilman, efficiency wage theory “holds that paying wages above the competitive level may induce increased productivity from workers while also reducing workers’ propensity to ‘shrink’” (1999, p.22). Grimshaw and Rubery say that efficiency wage theory would need to explain why women are more likely to be in low-paid jobs, “this logic implies that effort and performance in [female-dominated] caring occupations are easier
to monitor than in male-dominated production jobs” (1995, p.119). Rubery (1997) argues theories including efficiency wage theory were set out to explain wage hierarchies in terms of the need to motivate worker. In Rainbird’s research (2007), she explores to what extent training and education can help women who are predominately in low-paid local government jobs address in the issues women face in inequality. She assumes that based on the Human Capital theory whereby education, training and work experience are seen as contributing to qualities in the worker which are useful to the employer and rewarded in pay structures. She argues that those in low-paid jobs, predominately but not exclusively women have no opportunity for career progression, and that training for the immediate job is unlikely to give women opportunities for pay increase or career development. Rainbird also pointed out that even though many public sector workers take pride in the public service ethos and bring that to their job more than they are contracted to do so, it should not be used as a justification for their low pay.
March and Simon (1958) suggest that in industries and jobs where it is possible to predict work process, programmatic decision-making will reduce job autonomy while in those industries and jobs where it is not possible to predict work process, job autonomy will be increased. For example, it is argued that patrol police officers are the lowest ranking officers in the police organisational hierarchy, however they are the officers in the whole police force that have the most discretion at work due to mainly the solitary nature of the patrol function, with community police constables who are also able to
exercise a certain amount of autonomy over their work (Grimshaw and Jefferson, 1987; Fielding, 1995; Ramshaw, 2012;); “it is this ability to decide how to spend time which is the basis for the emergence of distinctive ‘styles’ of work” (Grimshaw and Jefferson, 1987, p.154).
These debates require special attention when applied to emergency service workers because public service professionals, “as holders of specialist expertise, expect to exercise a degree of autonomy over their work and their work processes” (Ferlie et al., 1996, p.168). In the case of emergency service workers the degree of autonomy is often confined to professional decisions in immediate situations and within a group-based decision making mechanism (Mather and Seifert, 2017). Autonomy is also circumscribed by the scrutiny of external observers.
It was only until after the recent “changes in philosophies and the structure of nursing, the educational pathways for nurses, the health care system, and society have led to generalised recognition of nursing as a profession” (Thompson, 2012, p.159). A large number of researches carried out on professional autonomy have mostly focused on general nursing practice, including the concept of job autonomy, and how it is perceived by nurses in different settings at various stages of their careers. The relationship between job autonomy and nurses’ job satisfaction, as well as the impact of dissatisfaction on nurse retention have been studied to help explore the reasoning behind the current global nursing shortage (Liu et al., 2013; Meng
been studied. Job satisfaction, a complex of organisational, individual, and environmental characteristics, has long been viewed as a critical factor in nurse retention (Thompson, 2012; Aiken, Clarke, Sloane, Sochalski, & Silber, 2002; Blegen & Mueller, 1987; Kovner, Brewer, Wu, Cheng, & Suzuki, 2006). Nurses’ job autonomy at work has been described as an important element for nurses and autonomy of practice has been described as a key contributor to nurses’ job satisfaction (Thompson, 2012; Aiken et al., 2012).
It has long been discussed that investment in employee training and development has benefits for the organisation and for its workforce (Storey, 1995; Salas and Cannon-Bowers, 2001; Sloman, 2003; McDowall and Saunders, 2010). Nearly all organisations offer staff some form of training (Cannell, 2004). The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) learning and development annual survey (2015) found most UK organisations describe the purpose of learning and development as improving individual and organisational performance through developing employee capability. On-the-job training is the most commonly used and considered most effective. Only a fifth of UK managers believe that formal courses are the most effective method.
Keep (1989, p.109-125) suggests that training activities “reflect the adoption of HRM within organisations”. According to Storey (1995), HRM is a distinctive approach to employment management which seeks to achieve competitive advantage through the strategic deployment of a highly committed and capable workforce, using an integrated array of cultural, structural and personnel techniques. The main objective of HRM is to find out
ways to use labour efficiently and productively. Workers in this case are seen as a kind of valued resources for any companies, same goes to any resources, it needs to be properly used. Then the question of how it can be best used in order to bring out the maximum benefit for the companies becomes a question for HR managers. The notion of control exists through the management process, HRM is no exception. It is believed that training is placed ‘at the very centre of the business strategy’ due to it is seen as the main source of competitive advantage for companies. Therefore, training needs should be considered more focus on the organisational perspective rather than individually (McDowall and Saunders, 2010).
There are five main effective factors that influence training needs: organisational strategy, external labour market shortages, changes in internal labour market forces, changes in internal systems and values, and government initiatives and external support (Warr, 2002). Training is not necessary when the supply of generic skills or labour is plentiful in the external labour market because companies could choose whether or not to develop internal employees or recruit externally. However, once there is a shortage of current and future skills or labour, especially shortage of specialists, it becomes difficult to recruit externally and the cost thus consequently becomes more expensive (Ashton and Felstead, 2001; Sisson and Storey, 2000). Management training is necessary because managers are capable of reliable and efficient performance, high conformity, cost reduction, and ‘satisfying’ behaviour (‘social pleasers’) do not have enough capabilities to ensure a well-managed organisation (Storey, 1995). CIPD
(2015) found similar findings to previous years, 80% of organisations report they would carry out leadership development.
It is argued that training is seen as a fundamental element in companies’ strategies, where training activities focus on building a high and multi-skilled instead of specific work-setting workforce, and increases the functional flexibility; training systems has a positive impact on quality and productivity which leads to corporate growth and prosperity (Cheung and Chan, 2012). Investors in People (IiP) was introduced in 1991 by the UK Government to help better the UK's poor industrial performance (Smith et al., 2014). IiP was set up to help UK organisations improve the way they manage and develop their workforce. It is a quality standard by which organisations can measure themselves in relations to their human resource practices (IiP, 2015). One of the nebulous and unsatisfactory aspects of the training job is evaluating its effectiveness in order to optimise training quality (Pineda, 2010; Griffin, 2012).
However, the measurement of training value varies because the definition of ‘value’ varies from different angles and emphasis (Cervai and Polo, 2015). Training value measurement is fairly straightforward when the outputs are clear (Harrison, 2009). Some training programme might produce indirect values to business at the same time, and there are also some training programmes supposed to only focus on indirect values such as “cultural change” employee attitudes training programmes (Sisson and Storey, 2000, p.146) and the training courses such as customer care training and health
and safety training course which are implemented to enable people to develop the capacity to alter employee’s attitude and social skills, then it is more difficult to measure the training added values.
Furthermore, it is also very difficult to measure the success of a management training course. Five aspects should be considered when measuring the values of a training programme: firstly, it is important to know why the values should be measured. That is to say, it is necessary to know whether training is to justify costs, to improve performance, to support career development or any number of other reasons. For instance, according to the IiP (2015), the investment in training can be measured by improved business performance when the training is tied directly to business objectives. Secondly, the measure target, which may be inputs, outcomes or reactions, should be determined. Thirdly, who takes the measurement process is quite significant due to there may be a range of stakeholders involved with the training process whoever participates in the evaluation will bring with them a personal perspective and hence a subjectivity to the evaluation. Fourthly, the timing and frequency of an evaluation is critical to the outcomes of the evaluation processes. In other words, the measurement period cannot be ignored because it influences the measurement result of training value. Finally, the measurement results may vary through different approaches such as financial report and feedback (Harrison, 2009).
However, every measurement method may have its advantages and disadvantages. Therefore, how to decide the measurement approach should
be considered more on the whole training and development strategy which generally fits within a wider HRM strategy (Felstead et al., 2010). Explicitly, due to the unitarist nature of HRM perspective, there is no conflict among employers and employees on their goals and leadership and so on (Storey, 1995); therefore, the organisational competitive advantage through the workforce commitment should be placed at the centre of training strategy.
Training programmes facilitate organisations in increase employees’ productivity and efficiency (Asadullah, 2015) to meet their goals of commitment, flexibility and quality (Carey, 2000). Ashton and Felstead (2001, p.166) suggest that “training has moved from being driven by business strategy to a position in which it is seen as the main source of competitive advantage for companies which is a goal of HRM.”
As a component of employee development process, training is of key importance especially when it relates closely to organisational needs (Green
et al., 2016). First of all, skills training programme might influence
organisational efficiency and productivity directly (Birdi, Patterson and Wood, 2007). For example, it may reduce the working error caused by insufficient skills or knowledge, increase the working speed, although it is difficult to provide sufficient evidence to correlate them. The higher efficiency and productivity consequently lead to the financial benefits profit to the organisation, which is the key centre of the organisational goals. Training programme may add values in analogous terms such as to increase in sales, conversion of leads to sales. nowadays, along with the keen market forces,
training also becomes an efficient alternative to reduce the expensive cost to recruit skills in short supply in the external labour market (Barrett and O’Connell, 2001), and an efficient alternative to shorten the recruitment timing with the rapid changes of labour market and technology (Sission and Storey, 2000).
Training programmes also produce indirect values to business (Zwick, 2006). For instance, customer care training may help organisations increase product additional value and enhance its brand or organisation image to retain existing customers and gain potential customers through better customer service by improving employee social skills and thus circuitously increase sales. This then leads to direct organisational profits. It is also believed that management training is another important aspect which adds indirect value to the organisation although it is hard to measure (Felstead et
al., 2010).
However, training is not supposed to be carried out to provide benefits to individuals as much as to organisation. One benefit to individuals is that when the organisation gains benefits from training activities, they will directly or indirectly become profits, then the employee whom involves in the training activities may share this profit through financial or other forms benefits. The value of training itself adds to individuals only exists when training provides employee transferable skills, which ensures employee could find another job in the labour market, but the transferable skills training programme
consequently causes high training cost to secure employee’s commitment to the organisation (Altuntas and Baykal, 2010; Hsu et al., 2015).
Training has become a must have feature in questionnaires studying labour issues around the world (Arulampalam, Booth and Bryan, 2004). Typically, such questionnaire would include questions asking respondents to indicate if they have taken part in job-related training in a specific period before interview, time spent being trained and whether they thought the training was helpful for their work. Based on these data, studies can examine the incidence of training activity and its potential link to skills and performance outcome (Birdi, Patterson and Wood, 2007). The study of nurses’ attitudes towards training and personal development in this research supports Kanter’s organisational empowerment theory that organisational factors within a workplace are important in shaping organisational behaviours and attitudes (Sun et al., 2009). Nurses in China compared with nurses in the west, felt that they had less access to resource and training opportunities within an organisation (Laschinger, Wong and Greco, 2006).