nep-hrm New Economics Papers
on Human Capital and Human Resource Management
Issue of 2011‒11‒28
thirteen papers chosen by
Tommaso Reggiani
Universita' di Bologna

  1. The growth effects of education in Australia By Paradiso, Antonio; Kumar, Saten; Rao, B. Bhaskara
  2. HRM and Workplace Motivation: Incremental and Threshold Effects By Alex Bryson; Michael White
  3. Work for Image and Work for Pay By Dessi, Roberta; Rustichini, Aldo
  4. Does Skilled Migration Foster Innovative Performance? Evidence from British Local Areas By Luisa Gagliardi
  5. Education or just Creativity: what matters most for economic performance? By Emanuela Marrocu; Raffaele Paci
  6. HUMAN NEEDS OF EMPLOYEES OF SELECTED GOVERNMENT FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS By Dr. Guillermina C. Vizcarra
  7. Human Capital and Spatial Heterogeneity in the Iberian Countries’ Regional Growth and Convergence By Catarina Cardoso; Eric J. Pentecost
  8. HR PRACTICES AND STRATEGIC CONTRIBUTIONS IN EDUCATIONAL INDUSTRY (ISLAMIC AZAD UNIVERSITY) By Reza Gheshmi; Hadi Rasoulzadeh; Bahdor Ganjeh Khosravi; Mehrdad salehi; Ali Haj Aghapour; Roozbeh Hojabri; Mahmoud Manafi
  9. Relationship between Various Employee Performance Recognition Techniques and Customer Satisfaction: Evidence from the Restaurant Industry of Pakistan By Hasan, Dr. Syed Akif; Subhani, Dr. Muhammad Imtiaz
  10. Work to Live or Live to Work? Unemployment, Happiness, and Culture By Krause, Annabelle
  11. Managerial Social Wisdom: A major facet for Employee Turnover Intentions, Work Commitments and Manager-Subordinate Relationships By Hasan, Dr. Syed Akif; Subhani, Dr. Muhammad Imtiaz
  12. Should Economists Listen to Educational Psychologists? Some Economics of Student Motivation By Donze, Jocelyn; Gunnes, Trude
  13. Employed but still unhappy? On the relevance of the social work norm By Chadi, Adrian

  1. By: Paradiso, Antonio; Kumar, Saten; Rao, B. Bhaskara
    Abstract: The growth effects of human capital, measured in various ways, are controversial and inconclusive. In this paper we estimate the growth effect of human capital with country specific time series data for Australia. In doing so, we extended the Solow (1956) growth model by using educational attainment as a measure of human capital developed by Barro and Lee (2010). The extended Solow (1956) model performs well after allowing for the presence of structural changes. Our results, based on alternative time series methods, show that educational attainment has a small and significant permanent effect on the growth rate of per worker output in Australia. For comparison of results, alternative measures of human capital are also utilized.
    Keywords: SSGR; Economic Growth; Education; Australia
    JEL: O56 C22 O40
    Date: 2011–11–15
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:34791&r=hrm
  2. By: Alex Bryson; Michael White
    Abstract: The HRM-performance linkage often invokes an assumption of increased employee commitment to the organization and other positive effects of a motivational type. We present a theoretical framework in which motivational effects of HRM are conditional on its intensity, utilizing especially the idea of HRM 'bundling'. We then analyse the association between HRM practices and employees' organisational commitment (OC) and intrinsic job satisfaction (IJS). HRM practices have significantly positive relationships with OC and IJS chiefly at high levels of implementation, but with important distinctions between the domain-level analysis (comprising groups of practices for specific domains such as employee development) and the across-domain or HRM-system level. Findings support a threshold interpretation of the link between HRM domains and employee motivation, but at the system-level both incremental and threshold models receive some support.
    Keywords: Human resource management, high performance, organizational commitment
    JEL: J28 L23 M12 M54
    Date: 2011–11
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cep:cepdps:dp1097&r=hrm
  3. By: Dessi, Roberta (Toulouse School of Economics (IDEI and GREMAQ), and CEPR); Rustichini, Aldo (University of Minnesota)
    Abstract: Standard economic models with complete information predict a positive, monotonic relationship between pay and performance. This prediction does not always hold in experimental tests: offering a small payment may result in lower performance than not offering any payment. We test experimentally two main explanations that have been put forward for this result: the "incomplete contract" hypothesis views the payment rule as a signal given to subjects on purpose of the activity. The "informed principal" hypothesis views it as a signal concerning the characteristics of the agent or of the task. The incomplete contract view appears to offer the best overall explanation for our results. We also find that high-powered monetary incentives do not "crowd out" intrinsic motivation, but may elicit "too much" effort when intrinsic motivation is very high.
    Date: 2011–09–10
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tse:wpaper:24943&r=hrm
  4. By: Luisa Gagliardi
    Abstract: What is the effect of an increase in the stock of human capital on the innovative performance of a local economy? This paper tests the hypothesis of a causal link between an increase in the average stock of human capital, due to skilled migration inflows, and the innovative performance of local areas using British data. The paper examines the role of human capital externalities as crucial determinant of local productivity and innovative performance, suggesting that the geographically bound nature of these valuable knowledge externalities can be challenged by the mobility of skilled individuals. Skilled migration becomes a crucial channel of knowledge diffusion broadening the geographical scope of human capital externalities and fostering local innovative performance.
    Keywords: Innovation, migration, education, externalities
    JEL: O15 O31 I2 H22
    Date: 2011–11
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cep:sercdp:0097&r=hrm
  5. By: Emanuela Marrocu; Raffaele Paci
    Abstract: There is a large consensus among social researchers on the positive role played by human capital on economic performances. The standard way to measure the human capital endowment is to consider the educational attainments by the resident population, usually the share of people with a university degree. Recently, Florida (2002) suggested a different measure of human capital - the “creative class†- based on the actual occupations of individuals in specific jobs like science, engineering, arts, culture, entertainment. However, the empirical analyses carried out so far overlooked a serious measurement problem concerning the clear identification of the education and creativity components of human capital. The main purpose of this paper is to try to disentangle this issue by proposing a disaggregation of human capital into three non-overlapping categories of creative graduates, bohemians and non creative graduates. By using a spatial econometric framework to account for spatial dependence, we assess the concurrent effect of the human capital indicators on total factor productivity for 257 regions of EU27. Our main results indicate that the highly educated creative group is the most relevant one in explaining production efficiency, while the other two categories - non creative graduates and bohemians - exhibit negligible effects. Moreover, a relevant influence is exerted by technological capital and by the level of tolerance providing robust evidence that an innovative, open, inclusive and culturally diverse environment is becoming more and more crucial for productivity enhancements.
    Date: 2011–09
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa11p199&r=hrm
  6. By: Dr. Guillermina C. Vizcarra (Doctor of Public Administration, Trinity University of Asia, Quezon City, Philippines)
    Abstract: This study assessed the human needs of employees in selected government financial institutions. Human needs were categorized into three areas such as existence needs, relatedness needs, and growth needs. Using a descriptive-quantitative approach, data were gathered through a researcher-made questionnaire. The survey was conducted among randomly selected employees of four (4) Government Financial Institutions (GFIs)
    Keywords: human needs, government financial institutions, compensation
    JEL: M0
    Date: 2011–10
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cms:1asb11:2011-009-105&r=hrm
  7. By: Catarina Cardoso (School of Business and Economics, Loughborough University, UK); Eric J. Pentecost (School of Business and Economics, Loughborough University, UK)
    Abstract: Human capital is believed to be an important conditioning factor in explaining the convergence and the speed of convergence of regional economies, although it is usually excluded from the estimated models due to a lack of consistent data. In contrast this paper, using a newly constructed series on human capital at the NUTS III level for Portugal, evaluates the role of human capital on the speed of convergence using a spatial econometric methodology, for a sample of Iberian NUTS III regions over the period 1991-2006. This is the first study to consider human capital effects at the NUTS III level and the results show convergence, both absolute and conditional, occurs mainly in the peripheral group of regions, while human capital plays a positive role only in the club of the richest regions, in contrast with an insignificant effect in the periphery. There is also evidence of important regional spillovers between the regions and evidence of the importance of EU regional policy in enhancing the convergence of the NUTS III regions.
    Keywords: Regional growth, beta-convergence, Human Capital, Spatial Effects
    JEL: C23 I21 O18 R11
    Date: 2011–11
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:lbo:lbowps:2011_04&r=hrm
  8. By: Reza Gheshmi (Islamic Azad University, Marvdasht Branch, Marvdasht, Iran); Hadi Rasoulzadeh (Multimedia Universiti ,Cyberjaya); Bahdor Ganjeh Khosravi (MMU); Mehrdad salehi (MSU); Ali Haj Aghapour (MMU); Roozbeh Hojabri (MMU); Mahmoud Manafi (Islamic Azad University, Marvdasht Branch, Marvdasht, Iran)
    Abstract: This paper attempts to identify the current policies and problems of IAU (Islamic Azad University) in HR practices. On the other hand this research offers new HR practices according to experts and different persons in different levels of IAU. Finally, offered HR practices are in line with strategic contributions in educational industry
    Keywords: Human Resources, Human Resources Practices, and Knowledge Sharing
    JEL: M0
    Date: 2011–10
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cms:1asb11:2011-008-103&r=hrm
  9. By: Hasan, Dr. Syed Akif; Subhani, Dr. Muhammad Imtiaz
    Abstract: Employee performance recognition techniques are used extensively by every organization to recognize employees, which motivates employees to put more efforts in attaining more customer satisfactions in order to achieve organizational growth. Restaurants of contemporary epoch are putting more time, money and efforts to satisfy their employees because restaurant owners and managers know that external customers can never be satisfied until own internal employees are satisfied. In this paper, various techniques of employee performance recognition, which includes awards, bonus/cash, certificates of appreciations, praise in meetings, nominations for training and job redesign has been interrogated and gauged to evaluate their possible impacts on the customer’s satisfaction. A sample of 200 restaurant managers and 4000 customers of restaurants were taken for the study from the variety of restaurants of major cities of Pakistan, which includes Karachi, Hyderabad, Lahore, Multan, Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Peshawar and Quetta. Personal survey method was used to acquire data and General Linear Model was used to interrogate the relationship between various employee performance recognition techniques and customer satisfaction. Results show that all outlined performance recognition techniques have a positive relationship with the customer satisfactions which reflects that the employee performance recognition techniques have a pivot and vital role in making customers satisfied.
    Keywords: Customer Satisfaction; Employee Performance; Performance Recognition Techniques
    JEL: M31 M2
    Date: 2011
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:34759&r=hrm
  10. By: Krause, Annabelle (IZA)
    Abstract: Happiness drops when individuals become unemployed. The negative impact of the unemployment shock, however, may differ by cultural background. To test the hypothesis of a 'Teutonic work ethic', this paper takes advantage of Switzerland in its cultural diversity. By comparing different cultural groups in the same institutional setting, I empirically test whether such deep psychological traits have an influence on how unemployment is perceived. It is found that unemployment has a significantly negative effect on life satisfaction in Switzerland. I furthermore present evidence which confirms to some extent the hypothesis that Swiss German individuals suffer more from unemployment, although for the most part, these results are without statistical significance. Swiss Germans are additionally found to be happier than their French-speaking compatriots – independent of whether they are unemployed. This difference between Romanic and Germanic cultural backgrounds is in line with previous findings, but deserves further research attention.
    Keywords: life satisfaction, unemployment, cultural differences, Switzerland
    JEL: J28 J60 Z1
    Date: 2011–11
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp6101&r=hrm
  11. By: Hasan, Dr. Syed Akif; Subhani, Dr. Muhammad Imtiaz
    Abstract: Working under a wise manager is incredibly worth it. There are some managers worth dying for and is a cast of ‘rare breed’. Leaders/Managers that have managerial wisdom, makes employees love to work long hours, exceed one’s abilities to perform just because they have asked for it. The aim of this study was to study this social wisdom of managers beyond being socially intelligent. This paper investigates the relation of social wisdom with employees’ turn over intentions, work commitments and manager subordinate relationships. A structured, personal survey on a sample of 3500 organizational employees was tested and analyzed via correlation analysis. Extremely strong positive correlation between social wisdom of managers and factors like employee turnover intentions, work commitments and manager subordinate relationships have been found and reported. This paper marks from the organizational-wide perspective that the wise manager build long and valuable relationships with the their employees and in turn pass on the managerial wisdom and are a major cause for a retaining employees and making them perform better every day.
    Keywords: Managerial Social Wisdom; Employee Turnover Intentions; Work Commitments; Manager-Subordinate relationships
    JEL: M54
    Date: 2011
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:34757&r=hrm
  12. By: Donze, Jocelyn; Gunnes, Trude
    Abstract: This paper sheds light on the role of student motivation in the success of schooling. We develop a model in which a teacher engages in the management of student moti- vation through the choice of the classroom environment. We show that the teacher is able to motivate high-ability students, at least in the short run, by designing a com- petitive environment. For students with low ability, risk aversion, or when engaged in a long-term relationship, the teacher designs a classroom environment that is more focused on mastery and self-referenced standards. In doing so, the teacher helps to develop the intrinsic motivation of students and their capacity to overcome failures.
    Keywords: Education; Student achievement; Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation
    JEL: I21
    Date: 2011–05–22
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tse:wpaper:24739&r=hrm
  13. By: Chadi, Adrian
    Abstract: In the modern welfare state, people who cannot make a living usually receive financial assistance from public funds. Accordingly, the so-called social work norm against living off other people is violated, which may be the reason why the unemployed are so unhappy. If so, however, labour market concepts based on the notion of promoting low-paid jobs that are subsidised if necessary with additional payments would appear far less favourable. It could be that people are employed, but still unhappy. Using German panel data, this paper examines the relevance of the social work norm and finds a significant disutility effect of living off public funds. Although this is true for employed people as well, the results show that the individual is generally better off having a job that requires additional assistance, than having no job at all. On the other hand, such policies as the recent German labour market reforms can trigger undesired side-effects, if policy-makers ignore the issue of the social work norm. --
    Keywords: Unemployment,Social benefits,Low-wages,Labour market policies,Social norms,Well-being
    JEL: I31 J38 J60
    Date: 2011
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:cawmdp:42&r=hrm

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