  There is no doubt that management practices are linked to the productivity
and performance of a company. However, research findings are mixed. This paper
provides a multi-disciplinary review of the current evidence of such a
relationship and offers suggestions for further exploration. We provide an
extensive review of the literature in terms of research findings from studies
that have been trying to measure and understand the impact that individual
management practices and clusters of management practices have on productivity
at different levels of analysis. We focus our review on Operations Management
(om) and Human Resource Management (hrm) practices as well as joint
applications of these practices. In conclusion, we can say that taken as a
whole, the research findings are equivocal. Some studies have found a positive
relationship between the adoption of management practices and productivity,
some negative and some no association whatsoever. We believe that the lack of
universal consensus on the effect of the adoption of complementary management
practices might be driven either by measurement issues or by the level of
analysis. Consequently, there is a need for further research. In particular,
for a multi-level approach from the lowest possible level of aggregation up to
the firm-level of analysis in order to assess the impact of management
practices upon the productivity of firms.
