nep-hrm New Economics Papers
on Human Capital and Human Resource Management
Issue of 2012‒01‒10
23 papers chosen by
Tommaso Reggiani
Universita' di Bologna

  1. Flexible contracts and human capital investments By Fouarge Didier; Grip Andries de; Smits Wendy; Vries Robert de
  2. The impact of human capital outsourcing on human capital management practices in Karachi pharmaceutical industry By Rana, Tariq Mehmood; Syed, Qamar Ali Zaidi; Muhmmad, Sajid; Herani, Gobind M.
  3. Can co-workers motivational efforts pave the way for morale and job commitment for employees? By Hasan, Dr. Syed Akif; Subhani, Dr. Muhammad Imtiaz
  4. Competition, Group Identity, and Social Networks in the Workplace: Evidence from a Chinese Textile Firm By Kato, Takao; Shu, Pian
  5. Job Separations and Informality in the Russian Labor Market By Lehmann, Hartmut; Razzolini, Tiziano; Zaiceva, Anzelika
  6. Top management’s snooping: Is sneaking over employees’ productivity and job commitment a wise approach? By Hasan, Dr. Syed Akif; Subhani, Dr. Muhammad Imtiaz
  7. Effects of subordinate various work behaviors on the motivational level of their bosses By Hasan, Dr. Syed Akif; Subhani, Dr. Muhammad Imtiaz
  8. Labour Contracts and Performance of Cameroonian Firms By Fomba Kamga, Benjamin
  9. Trust-Based Working Time and Organizational Performance: Evidence from German Establishment-Level Panel Data By Michael Beckmann; Istvàn Hegedüs
  10. INFLUENCE ACTIVITY AND ALLOCATION OF FIRMS' INTERNAL CAPITAL: EVIDENCE FROM AUSTRALIA By Vinod Mishra; Rajabrata Banerjee; Tania Dey
  11. Management Practices Across Firms and Countries By Nicholas Bloom; Christos Genakos; Raffaella Sadun; John Van Reenen
  12. Student effort and educatinal attainment: Using the England football team to identify the education production function By Robert Metcalfe; Simon Burgess; Steven Proud
  13. Excess Worker Turnover and Fixed-Term Contracts: Causal Evidence in a Two-Tier System By Centeno, Mario; Novo, Alvaro A.
  14. Severance pay compliance in Indonesia By Brusentsev, Vera; Newhouse, David; Vroman, Wayne
  15. Do Employers Use Unemployment as a Sorting Criterion When Hiring? Evidence from a Field Experiment By Eriksson, Stefan; Rooth, Dan-Olof
  16. Gender Differences in Rates of Job Dismissal: Why Are Men More Likely to Lose Their Jobs? By Wilkins, Roger; Wooden, Mark
  17. Not all employees are Real Professionals By Hasan, Dr. Syed Akif; Subhani, Dr.Muhammad Imtiaz; Osman, Ms. Amber
  18. Software piracy at work place: influence of organizational culture in the presence of various ethical orientations By Hasan, Dr. Syed Akif; Subhani, Dr. Muhammad Imtiaz; Osman, Ms. Amber
  19. Are Forced Turnovers Good or Bad News? By Axel Kind; Alain Schlaepfer
  20. EDUCATION AND LABOUR MARKET OUTCOMES: EVIDENCE FROM BRAZIL By Geraint Johnes; R Freguglia; G Spricigo; A Aggarwal
  21. Sickness Absence and Local Benefit Cultures By Lindbeck, Assar; Palme, Mårten; Persson, Mats
  22. Director Characteristics and Firm Performance By Pascal Gantenbein; Christophe Volonté
  23. Corporate culture and behaviour: A survey By Jakob de Haan; David-Jan Jansen

  1. By: Fouarge Didier; Grip Andries de; Smits Wendy; Vries Robert de (ROA rm)
    Abstract: As suggested by human capital theory, workers with flexible contracts participate lessoften in training than those with permanent contracts. We find that this is merely dueto the fact that flexworkers receive less employer–funded training, a gap they can onlypartly compensate for by their own training investments. Flexworkers particularlyparticipate less in firm–specific training that is meant to keep up with new skilldemands than workers with permanent contracts. However, for those who participatein employer–funded firm–specific training, a temporary contract appears to facilitatethe transition to a permanent contract with the same employer. However, this doesnot hold for participation in self–paid training. This training, which is usually generaltraining, does not help in finding a better job.
    Keywords: education, training and the labour market;
    Date: 2011
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dgr:umaror:2011013&r=hrm
  2. By: Rana, Tariq Mehmood; Syed, Qamar Ali Zaidi; Muhmmad, Sajid; Herani, Gobind M.
    Abstract: Purpose: The aim of this research is to examine relationship between Human Capital Management (HRM) and Human Resource (HR) Outsourcing in the Pharmaceutical sector. The specific objective is to find out that how important is HRM for an Organization to perform its operations more efficiently, and at what level Human Resource Outsourcing is affecting it. Literature review: Literature review shows that HR outsourcing has positive impact on HRM for an Organization to perform its operations more efficiently. Methods: In order to conduct this research the methodology that has been used is quantitative in nature and closed ended Questionnaire was used to collect data. The universe of study was the employees of Pharmaceutical industry in Karachi Pakistan. The responses of each respondent were thoroughly analyzed by using SPSS software, and the results show that there is a negative relationship between the Human Capital Management (Gaining Knowledge, Current Trend of Business Environment, Organization Managing Their Human Asset and Practices and Policies Regarding Human Resource) and HR Outsourcing. Conclusions: It is concluded that all Independent Variables have the strongest Positive correlation with each other. There are lots of constraints, which any organization faces in terms of time, finance and, in some cases factors like strategic focus.
    Keywords: Human Capital Management; Karachi; Pharmaceutical; Outsourcing
    JEL: L26 G32 M12 D24
    Date: 2011–12–31
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:35625&r=hrm
  3. By: Hasan, Dr. Syed Akif; Subhani, Dr. Muhammad Imtiaz
    Abstract: Can co-workers motivational efforts pave the way for morale and job commitment for the employees is a million dollar question which always matters for the organizations to perform. The purpose of this research is to develop an understanding on the relationship between the employees and their colleague in the organizations, The findings reveal that co-workers various motivational efforts may have a positive impact on employee morale but it still doesn’t guarantee the job commitment, precisely the motivation by co-workers may only boost the morale of employees for a short while, and thereafter a person may lose the interest towards his/her job again.
    Keywords: Co-workers motivational efforts; Motivation; Morale; Job commitment
    JEL: O15
    Date: 2011
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:35684&r=hrm
  4. By: Kato, Takao (Colgate University); Shu, Pian (MIT)
    Abstract: Using data on team assignment and weekly output for all weavers in an urban Chinese textile firm between April 2003 and March 2004, this paper studies a) how randomly assigned teammates affect an individual worker's behavior under a tournament-style incentive scheme, and b) how such effects interact with exogenously formed social networks in the manufacturing workplace. First, we find that a worker's performance improves when the average ability of her teammates increases. Second, we exploit the exogenous variations in workers' origins in the presence of the well-documented social divide between urban resident workers and rural migrant workers in large urban Chinese firms, and show that the coworker effects are only present if the teammates are of a different origin. In other words, workers do not act on pecuniary incentives to outperform teammates who are from the same social network. Our results point to the important role of group identities in overcoming self-interests and facilitating altruistic behavior.
    Keywords: coworker effects in the workplace, social networks, intergroup competition
    JEL: M5 J24 L2
    Date: 2011–12
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp6219&r=hrm
  5. By: Lehmann, Hartmut (University of Bologna); Razzolini, Tiziano (University of Siena); Zaiceva, Anzelika (University of Modena and Reggio Emilia)
    Abstract: In the years 2003-2008 the Russian economy experienced a period of strong and sustained growth, which was accompanied by large worker turnover and rising informality. We investigate whether the burden of informality falls disproportionately on job separators (displaced workers and quitters) in the Russian labor market in the form of informal employment and undeclared wages in formal jobs. We also pursue the issues whether displaced workers experience more involuntary informal employment than workers who quit and whether informal employment persists. We find a strong positive link between separations and informal employment as well as shares of undeclared wages in formal jobs. Our results also show that displacement entraps some of the workers in involuntary informal employment. Those who quit, in turn, experience voluntary informality for the most part, but there seems a minority of quitting workers who end up in involuntary informal jobs. This scenario does not fall on all separators but predominantly on those with low human capital. Finally, informal employment is indeed persistent since separating from an informal job considerably raises the probability to be informal in the subsequent job.
    Keywords: job separations, informality, Russia
    JEL: J64 J65 P50
    Date: 2011–12
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp6230&r=hrm
  6. By: Hasan, Dr. Syed Akif; Subhani, Dr. Muhammad Imtiaz
    Abstract: The management’s responsibility is to monitor the employee’s performance but when it becomes a desire of the management to snoop/spy the employees’ performance then this act has a direct influence on the employees and their motivations. The paper investigates the effects of top management’s spying/snooping in the organization on employees’ productivity and job commitment. For the purpose a sample of 3500 employees via self-administered survey technique were analyzed. Tobit Model (Censored regression) has been used to interrogate the effect of snooping/ spying on employee productivity and commitment. Tobit Model marked findings that the approach of top management to snoop/spy on the employees’ productivity and job commitment affects adversely on the employees. Policy makers should adopt informal ways to practice snooping as it causes stress, mental illness, de-motivation and especially when snooping is via other co-workers and employees, it creates major disruption and a rise to politicking in organization, which effect the proper streamlining of business operations across the departments.
    Keywords: Organizational spying/snooping; job commitment; employees’ productivity; stress
    JEL: O1 M12
    Date: 2012
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:35691&r=hrm
  7. By: Hasan, Dr. Syed Akif; Subhani, Dr. Muhammad Imtiaz
    Abstract: Subordinates at times are the source of rousing for their bosses at various organizations which always give a jump to the working relations among them. Primarily the focus of this paper is to interrogate the various constructs and the proxies of subordinates work behavior which motivate to their bosses while revealing the impact of subordinates those work behaviors on the motivational levels of the bosses and then the bosses and subordinates relationships due to such work behaviors. Personal survey via random sampling technique was used to acquire data from 1700 managers of various working units which includes Departments of research and development, admin, HR and accounts, of various organizations. Optimal scaling is used to conclude the relationships between the outlined variables. The findings reveals that there is strong and positive relationship between subordinates various work behaviors and the motivation level of their bosses.
    Keywords: Motivation; manager-subordinate relationship; work behavior
    JEL: M1
    Date: 2012
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:35692&r=hrm
  8. By: Fomba Kamga, Benjamin (University of Yaounde II)
    Abstract: The aim of this study is to evaluate employees' productivity in relation to their contract status. This study uses (a) survey data collected among manufacturing sector firms, having more than 15 employees, in Cameroon between April and May 2006 and (b) information issued by the National Institute of Statistics. Information collected concerned 45 firms spanning the period 2003 to 2005. This study uses the stochastic production frontier, distinguishing employees holding fixed-term contract (FTC) from employees that do not have fixed-term contracts (indefinite-term contract (ITC)). Results are estimated in 2 stages. First, we evaluate the determinants of the utilisation of FTC workers and second, we estimate the level of efficiency and productivity of two types of workers. Empirical results indicate that employees holding FTC are twice more productive than those holding ITC. Likewise, parameters indicating returns to scale are 1.3. This parameter, though not significant, is greater than one indicating constant returns to scale in the firm production function.
    Keywords: labour contract, fixed-term contract, indefinite-term contract, production frontier
    JEL: J41 J82 L25
    Date: 2011–12
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp6211&r=hrm
  9. By: Michael Beckmann; Istvàn Hegedüs (University of Basel)
    Keywords: Trust-based working time, working time flexibility, firm performance
    JEL: J24 J81 M50
    Date: 2011
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bsl:wpaper:2011/13&r=hrm
  10. By: Vinod Mishra; Rajabrata Banerjee; Tania Dey
    Abstract: This paper analyzes how influence activities in the form of signal jamming affect the capital budgeting process of corporate organizations in Australia. First, the relationship between investment in the smallest division and its past performances is tested. The relationship is defined as investment sensitivity. Second, how the investment sensitivity varies as influence problems become more severe is examined. Finally, the relationship between compensation incentives for the large division manager and the investment sensitivity is reviewed. The findings suggest that investment sensitivity is positive for Australian firms. Mixed evidence is obtained between investment sensitivity and increase in the severity of influence problems when measures such as, relatedness and number of divisions are used. With increase in number of divisions, influence activity becomes more severe and headquarters relies more on public signal. However, with the increase in relatedness across divisions, influence problem increases and headquarters relies more on private information from manager of the large division. Evidence suggest that Australian firms provide high short term incentive payments to managers of large divisions to mitigate the influence activity problems and thus rely more on managerial recommendations for investing in smallest division as compared to noisy accounting measures.
    Keywords: Influence activity, capital budgeting, compensation incentives
    JEL: G31 M52 J33 D82
    Date: 2011–12
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mos:moswps:2011-38&r=hrm
  11. By: Nicholas Bloom; Christos Genakos; Raffaella Sadun; John Van Reenen
    Abstract: For the last decade we have been using double-blind survey techniques and randomized sampling to construct management data on over 10,000 organizations across twenty countries. On average, we find that in manufacturing American, Japanese, and German firms are the best managed. Firms in developing countries, such as Brazil, China and India tend to be poorly managed. American retail firms and hospitals are also well managed by international standards, although American schools are worse managed than those in several other developed countries. We also find substantial variation in management practices across organizations in every country and every sector, mirroring the heterogeneity in the spread of performance in these sectors. One factor linked to this variation is ownership. Government, family, and founder owned firms are usually poorly managed, while multinational, dispersed shareholder and private-equity owned firms are typically well managed. Stronger product market competition and higher worker skills are associated with better management practices. Less regulated labor markets are associated with improvements in incentive management practices such as performance based promotion.
    Keywords: management, organization, and productivity
    JEL: L2 M2 O14 O32 O33
    Date: 2011–12
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cep:cepdps:dp1109&r=hrm
  12. By: Robert Metcalfe; Simon Burgess; Steven Proud
    Abstract: We use a sharp, exogenous and repeated change in the value of leisure to identify the impact of student effort on educational achievement. The treatment arises from the partial overlap of the world’s major international football tournaments with the exam period in England. Our data enable a clean difference-in-difference design. Performance is measured using the high-stakes tests that all students take at the end of compulsory schooling. We find a strongly significant effect: the average impact of a fall in effort is 0.12 SDs of student performance, significantly larger for male and disadvantaged students, as high as many educational policies.
    Keywords: Student effort, Educational achievement, Schools
    JEL: I20 J24
    Date: 2011
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:oxf:wpaper:586&r=hrm
  13. By: Centeno, Mario (Banco de Portugal); Novo, Alvaro A. (Banco de Portugal)
    Abstract: Portuguese firms engage in intense reallocation, most employers simultaneously hire and separate from workers, resulting in high excess worker turnover flows. These flows are constrained by the employment protection gap between open-ended and fixed-term contracts. We explore a reform that increased the employment protection of open-ended contracts and generated a quasi-experiment. The causal evidence points to an increase in the share and in the excess turnover of fixed-term contracts in treated firms. The excess turnover of open-ended contracts remained unchanged. This result is consistent with a high degree of substitution between open-ended and fixed-term contracts. At the firm level, we also show that excess turnover is quite heterogeneous and quantify its association with firm, match, and worker characteristics.
    Keywords: excess worker turnover, two-tier systems, quasi-experiment, fixed-term contracts
    JEL: J21 J23 J63
    Date: 2011–12
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp6239&r=hrm
  14. By: Brusentsev, Vera; Newhouse, David; Vroman, Wayne
    Abstract: This paper contributes new evidence from two large household surveys on the compliance of firms with severance pay regulations in Indonesia, and the extent to which changes in severance pay regulations could affect employment rigidity. Compliance appears to be low, as only one-third of workers entitled to severance pay report receiving it, and on average workers only collect 40 percent of the payment due to them. Eligible female and low-wage workers are least likely to report receiving payments. Widespread non-compliance is consistent with trends in employment rigidity, which remained essentially unchanged following the large increases in severance mandated by the 2003 law. These results suggest that workers may benefit from a compromise that relaxes severance pay regulations while improving enforcement of severance pay statutes, and possibly establishing a system of unemployment benefits.
    Keywords: Labor Markets,Wages, Compensation&Benefits,Social Protections&Assistance,Labor Policies,Labor Management and Relations
    Date: 2012–01–01
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:5933&r=hrm
  15. By: Eriksson, Stefan (Uppsala University); Rooth, Dan-Olof (Linnaeus University)
    Abstract: In this paper, we use unique data from a field experiment in the Swedish labor market to investigate how past and contemporary unemployment affect a young worker's probability of being invited to a job interview. In contrast to studies using registry/survey data, we have complete control over the information available to the employers and there is no scope for unobserved heterogeneity. We find no evidence that recruiting employers use information about past unemployment to sort workers, but some evidence that they use contemporary unemployment to sort workers. The fact that employers do not seem to use past unemployment as a sorting criterion suggests that the scarring effects of unemployment may not be as severe as has been indicated by previous studies.
    Keywords: scarring, unemployment, field experiment
    JEL: J64
    Date: 2011–12
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp6235&r=hrm
  16. By: Wilkins, Roger (Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research); Wooden, Mark (Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research)
    Abstract: Empirical studies have consistently reported that rates of involuntary job separation, or dismissal, are significantly lower among female employees than among males. Only rarely, however, have the reasons for this differential been the subject of detailed investigation. In this paper, household panel survey data from Australia are used that also find higher dismissal rates among men than among women. This differential, however, largely disappears once controls for industry and occupation are included. These findings suggest that the observed gender differential primarily reflects systematic differences in the types of jobs into which men and women select.
    Keywords: dismissals, gender differentials, involuntary job separations, HILDA Survey, Australia
    JEL: J16 J63 J71
    Date: 2011–12
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp6225&r=hrm
  17. By: Hasan, Dr. Syed Akif; Subhani, Dr.Muhammad Imtiaz; Osman, Ms. Amber
    Abstract: Organizations can’t do without professionals and giant organizations just can’t live without real professionals. Leaning towards the capabilities and proficiency of real professionals, one should understand the terminology of ‘professionalism’ from where the journey begins. The art of being a good professional is having a blend of appropriate knowledge, skills, attitude, efforts and relationships within the organization and to the outer-sets as well which might include as one’s testimonies etc. This paper marks a sheer distinction between employees and real professionals. The mark of real professionals creates organizations as learning establishments. Having a tag of just an employee is not like spark of the traits and qualities the real professionals contain in themselves to be outstanding and push the organization unanimously to prosper.
    Keywords: Real Professionals; Knowledge; Skills; Efforts; Relationships; Attitude; Organization; Employees
    JEL: J0
    Date: 2011
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:35679&r=hrm
  18. By: Hasan, Dr. Syed Akif; Subhani, Dr. Muhammad Imtiaz; Osman, Ms. Amber
    Abstract: Technology in terms of ‘information technology’ is a revolutionary discovery from time to time. On the similar note, one of the famous issues of IT is the Software Piracy, which has been the talk of the organizations every now and then. Software Piracy i.e. to avoid the illegal act of copying and stealing others information has always been a headache for organizations leading to billion dollars losses and no returns. This paper tracks the association of organizations’ ethical culture with its orientations and software piracy. It is understand the influence of ethical behavior of the organization on software piracy handling. The study revealed that there is a negative association between perceived organizational ethical culture and software piracy in organizations. In particular, organizational ethical culture significantly influences software piracy decisions for individual having ‘Exceptionist’ ethical orientation. Subsequently, there is no significant association between organizational ethical culture and software piracy for Subjectivists, Absolutists and Situationists.
    Keywords: Software Piracy; Software Licensing; Ethical Orientations; Organizational Culture
    JEL: D23
    Date: 2012
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:35683&r=hrm
  19. By: Axel Kind; Alain Schlaepfer (University of Basel)
    Keywords: CEO turnover; Corporate governance; Firm performance
    JEL: G14 G30 G34
    Date: 2011
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bsl:wpaper:2011/10&r=hrm
  20. By: Geraint Johnes; R Freguglia; G Spricigo; A Aggarwal
    Abstract: The effect of education on labour market outcomes is analysed using both survey and administrative data from The Brazilian PNAD and RAIS-MIGRA series, respectively. Occupational destination is examined using both multinomial logit analyses and structural dynamic discrete choice modelling. The latter approach is particularly useful as a means of evaluating policy impacts over time. We find that policy to expand educational provision leads initially to an increased take-up of education, and in the longer term leads to an increased propensity for workers to enter non-manual employment.
    Date: 2011
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:lan:wpaper:4280&r=hrm
  21. By: Lindbeck, Assar (Stockholm University); Palme, Mårten (Stockholm University); Persson, Mats (IIES, Stockholm University)
    Abstract: In many countries, sickness absence financed by generous insurance benefits has become an important concern in the policy debate. It turns out that there are strong variations in absence behavior between local geographical areas, and it has been difficult to explain these variations by observable socioeconomic factors. In this paper we investigate whether such variation is related to group effects in the form of social interaction among individuals within neighborhoods. Well-known methodological problems arise when trying to answer such a question. A special feature of our attempt to deal with these problems is that we adopt several alternative approaches to identify group effects. We base the study on a rich set of Swedish panel data, and we find indications of group effects in each one of our approaches.
    Keywords: sick-pay insurance, work absence, moral hazard, reflection problem, social norms
    JEL: H56 I38 J22 Z13
    Date: 2011–12
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp6245&r=hrm
  22. By: Pascal Gantenbein; Christophe Volonté (University of Basel)
    Keywords: Corporate governance: Board of directors; Director characteristics, Education and business experience
    JEL: G30 G34 G38
    Date: 2011
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bsl:wpaper:2011/11&r=hrm
  23. By: Jakob de Haan; David-Jan Jansen
    Abstract: Drawing on the literature on organizational psychology, this paper discusses the potential of studying corporate culture and organizational behaviour for financial supervision. First, we discuss how corporate culture is often linked to long-term firm performance. From that perspective, factoring in corporate culture seems worthwhile. Second, the literature on organizational psychology suggests many pitfalls regarding leadership and group decision-making, which would be relevant to monitor. The realization that these mechanisms may materialize seems an important starting point for supervision. Finally, behaviour is often driven by deeper norms and values. To understand these mechanisms, interviews and survey questionnaires would be useful instruments
    Keywords: corporate culture; organizational behaviour; leadership; groups; supervision
    JEL: D22 G20 G30 L20 M14
    Date: 2011–12
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dnb:dnbwpp:334&r=hrm

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