본 연구의 목적은 1990년대 들어 미국은 물론이고 영국이나 독일과 같은 유럽제국에서 새로운 노사관계 모형의 중심으로 자리매김을 해온 노사파트너십과 관련하여 과연 우리나라 중소기업의 노사파트너십이 기업경쟁력에 영향을 미치는 가를 살펴보고, 이어서 바람직한 발전방안을 모색해 보는 데 있다.

이러한 목적을 달성하기 위해 최근 5년 간 노동부에 의해 노사문화 우수기업으로 선정된 194개 전 중소기업에 대해 노사파트너십의 구성요소인 고용안정, 경영참가, 공정한 재무보상, 교육훈련에 대한 투자 및 정보공유 등 다섯 가지를 들어 이들 하위구성 변수들이 기업경쟁력에 유의한 영향을 미치는지를 분석하였다. 분석결과를 요약하면 다음과 같다.

첫째, 우리나라 노사문화 우수기업들은 5점 척도에서 3.64에서 4.00에 이를 정도로 대체로 노사파트너십 기법들을 제대로 활용하고 있는 것으로 나타났다. 특히 이 중에서도 정보공유와 교육훈련에 대한 투자가 높게 나타났다.

둘째, 공정한 재무보상과 교육훈련에 대한 투자변수는 재무적인 성과에 통계적으로 유의적인 영향을 미치고 있음을 보여준 반면, 다른 변수들, 즉 고용안정, 정보공유, 그리고 경영참가 등은 유의적인 영향을 보이지 않았다.

셋째, 공정한 재무보상 만이 비재무적인 성과에 통계적으로 유의적인 영향을 미칠 뿐 다른 변수들은 유의적인 영향을 보이지 않았다. 가장 재미있는 연구결과는 고용안정성이 재무적인 성과나 비재무적인 성과 어디에도 유의미한 영향을 미치지 않았는데, 이는 정리해고가 합법화되고 비정규직이 양산되면서 근로자들의 가치관이 ‘평생직장’에서 ‘평생직업’으로 바뀌고 있음을 단적으로 보여주는 중요한 결과로 해석되어진다.

이러한 연구결과를 바탕으로 본 논문은 여섯 가지의 시사점을 제시하였다.

Labor-management partnership is an innovative form of industrial relations and has been placed at the center of new industrial relations models in the USA and European countries, such as the UK and Germany. Its importance has been emphasized as one of ways to improve organizational performance and to become the basis of company competitiveness.

Recently there has been also much attention to the partnership from managers, trade unionists and labor policy makers in Korea. In retrospect, Korean companies have paid huge social costs stemming from industrial conflicts, specially the June 29th declaration of democracy in 1987. In order to establish stable, cooperative industrial relations, the Korean government has built a new form of industrial relations, which is called in different terms, such as new industrial relations, innovative industrial relations, and new labor management culture. The new form of industrial relations puts an emphasis on labor-management partnership, which aims to achieve cooperative industrial relations and mutual gains to both employers and employees through successful business practices.

Despite a lot of attention on the labor-management partnership and numerous studies that have been conducted at home and abroad, most empirical studies about labor-management partnership have been conducted in narrative and qualitative analyses of case studies. Therefore we need to analyze closely which partnership practices affect supposed outcomes such as company competitiveness.

In this context, the main purpose of this paper is to examine through a systematic analysis the impact on company competitiveness of the labor-management partnership in small and medium-sized enterprises that have been placed at the center of new industrial relations models in the USA and European countries, such as the UK and Germany.

To accomplish this research objective, all 194 small and medium-sized labor-management cooperation companies in Korea were selected and surveyed using a questionnaire method. The results of the study using the collected 77 questionnaires can be summarized as follows:

First, the labor-management partnership score of labor-management cooperation companies in Korea is slightly high from 3.64 to 4.00 (5 point scale). Especially, information sharing and investment in training were high.

Second, fair financial rewards and investment in training have significant effects on the financial organizational performance in the positive direction, but employment security, information sharing, and management participation have no significant effects on company competitiveness.

Third, fair financial rewards only have significant effects on the nonfinancial organizational performance in the positive direction, but employment security, management participation, investment in training and information sharing have no significant effects on company competitiveness in small and medium-sized enterprises.

This results show that as large-scale downsizing layoffs were legalized and irregular workers dramatically increased, the workers' values were moving from lifetime employment to lifelong jobs.

Based on these results, this paper presents six suggestions.

First, fair rewards should be given. Recently procedural and distributive justice becomes an important issue in human resource management area. For pay, internal and external fairness plays an important role. Thus, it is necessary for the human resource management department to secure pay fairness within a company. Organizations can increase employees' motivation and organizational commitment by building a mechanism to pay rewards based on increases in productivity.

In addition, the government needs to consider making careful policies to reduce structural pay differences to secure external fairness. Our country shows a higher pay difference across gender, occupation, industry, and education levels than other countries. However, the pay difference was substantially reduced in these areas thanks to the continuous efforts from the government and unions during the last 20-30 years. Nevertheless, the pay difference across company size became bigger, rather than smaller.

Second, extensive investment should be made for training and education. Nowadays companies can make a plan for a new business, find a process to achieve an organizational goal, and share and expand individual experiences to produce creative ideas by education. This education mechanism can be made by knowledge exploitation by organizations in response to environmental changes, or by newly combining existing resources and experimental processes. Our small organizations paid little attention to training and education due to lack of recognition for the importance of training and education and lack of investment for actual training and education. By linking training and education to business strategy and thus increasing their investment to training and education, small organizations can develop core staff, and knowledge workers, who can contribute to build a knowledge-based society with core competency.

Third, this study can provide a theoretical and practical guidepost for the partnership between employees and employers. Due to the labor dispute after the June 29th declaration in 1987 and the fluctuation of employment law in 1996, Koreans learned a painful lesson that there is no growth for individual companies and the development of national economy without peace between employees and employers. In addition, Samsung Economy Research Institute conducted research on the status of labor relationship using long-lasting companies in Korea and found that there are several common characteristics among those companies: a strong sense of oneness, emphasis on investment for employees and job security, focus on solving individual difficulties, and culture for partnership between employees and employers. Also, global long-lasting companies emphasize job security and independent labor relationships without being influenced by external forces. Thus the partnership between employees and employers can prevent labor disputes and maintain industrial peace and thus eventually provide guidelines to improve productivity and a company’s competitive advantage.

Fourth, the commitment and philosophy of CEOs for the partnership between employees and employers is more important than anything else. Small organizations are a very important portion in the national economy in terms of the number of organizations, net values, the amount of production, and the number of employees. Nevertheless, they are not systematic or organized compared to large companies due to lack of human resources, finance, technology, and information. In particular, unlike operation, accounting, and finance, human resource management can be frequently changed based on the preferences of top managers. As a result, top managers' individual personality and attitudes strongly influence organizational structure and strategy throughout the company business as well as employees, especially middle managers. In that sense, top managers need to have a strong commitment to improve company competitive by building cooperative labor relationships.

Fifth, labor-management partnership can enhance Korean small organizations’ competitiveness. Small organizations in the manufacturing industry have continuously increased since 1976. However, it is time for these small organizations to enhance their competitiveness. Their long-growth ratio has decreased, as shown in the decrease in their portion for added values in manufacturing industry, shipping amounts, and employee numbers as it becomes problematic for small organizations to have sustainable success due to the growth for subcontracting, high competition among small organizations, and the small size of the organizations.

Human resources are the main factor for company competitiveness in these knowledge-based societies. Thus, to review a partnership between employees and employers that emphasizes training and education based on the emphasis of human beings can provide an appropriate direction for business strategy, as well as enhance small organizations’ management abilities and levels in the long-term perspective. In the short-term perspective, it can also contribute to the effectiveness of human resource management of small organizations and eventually enhance the competitive advantage of all organizations in Korea.

Finally, there should be a strong, trustful relationship between employees and employers. Now it is so important to have a cooperative and tactical partnership between employees and employers as the partnership between employees and employers becomes a ‘requirement rather than choice’. In this process, the trust between employees and employers become a basic requirement and also play its role as a moderating variable that can influence the relationship between the components of high-performing organizations and organization performance.