Perspectives on productivity: identifying attributes influencing productivity in various industrial sectors

The attributes affecting productivity concept have received much attention in the past four decades, however, different scholars who have investigated productivity issues have done it mostly independent of each other and widespread literature review has not been presented so far. This paper provides a review of several research papers published in core journals on productivity. The paper aims to identify the key attributes, so as to improve productivity and performance of various industrial sectors. This review is characterised by three factors: wide coverage, broad scope of productivity improvements, and a focus on attributes affecting productivity. The paper further categorises identified attributes into five major key factors: human resource management (HRM), organisational culture (OC), production methodology (PM), management strategy (MS), and performance (PER). Attributes are then tabulated and the meaning of each attribute has been explained. The study also helps to determine productivity index (PI) to assess current productivity-maturity-level of any industry.