THE "SUITE" SMELL OF SUCCESS: PERSONNEL PRACTICES AND FIRM PERFORMANCE.

The authors use a panel of more than 1,500 New Zealand firms, from a diverse range of industries, to examine how the adoption of human resource management (HRM) practices affects firm performance. The panel is based on managerial responses to mandatory surveys of management practices in 2001 and 2005 administered by the national statistical office, linked to objective longitudinal firm performance data. The authors find that, after controlling for timeinvariant firm characteristics and changes in a wide range of business practices and firm developments, a suite of general HRM practices has a positive impact on firm labor and multifactor productivity. Conversely, these practices tend to have no effect on profitability, in part because the adoption of performance pay systems raises average wages in the firm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]